This year’s A-level results in England explained in five charts

It’s been a rollercoaster few years for English A-level students. The results were based on exams until 2019; relied on an algorithm in 2020, which resulted in major controversy and a U-turn; then switched to teacher assessment in 2021 and then back to exams for 2022.

However, students have come down to earth with a bump after the government sought to rein in grade inflation. This year’s grades have fallen sharply from 2021’s peak, though they are not as low as those from the last comparable exam year, 2019.

But what else did we learn from this year’s results?

1 Mind the gap

To reverse the cliche, a falling tide lowers all boats. This year’s exam results were down compared with those from 2021, regardless of the kind of school a student attended, but everyone did better than in 2019.

The exams reduced the gap between independent students and their state-school counterparts but did not close it.

Almost three in five private, fee-paying students (58%) achieved either an A* or an A, compared with 35% of those attending academies and 30.7% of those in state comprehensives. While that is a smaller gap than in 2021, it is worse than in 2019.

2 The regional divide

While the gap between regions is not as stark as the gap between school types, disparities remain.

In every region grades dropped year on year, but they increased compared with 2019. However, while nearly 40% of students sitting their exams in the south-east and London – the two most affluent English regions – achieved A* or A grades this year, the same was true of just 31% of those sitting exams in the north-east.

So while the gap between the north-east and London was slightly less than four percentage points in 2019, it is now 8.2 points (the north-east/south-east gap grew from 5.3 points to 8.7 points over the same period).

3 Whither the English students in England?

English is less popular than it once was in England. English literature, the most popular of the three English subjects, has fallen outside the Top 10 most popular subjects for the first time since its introduction in 2017 (geography also fell outside the Top 10 in England this year though across the UK it is the 10th most popular subject).

While the number of students taking English has fallen (19,814 fewer this year compared with 2017) the number taking psychology has grown sharply (an increase of 18,858 from 2017 to present). Sociology has also grown in popularity; in 2017 it just made the Top 10, but it rocketed up the charts to become the fifth most popular subject among A-level students in England this year.

Economics attracted more than 35,000 students in England in 2022, bringing it into the Top 10 for the first time.

4 Stem up, humanities down

The English phenomenon is part of a broader trend towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem). The number of students taking Stem subjects – biology, chemistry, computing, design and technology, mathematics, physics and “other sciences” – rose by 3.5% compared with in 2019.

Conversely, those choosing humanities subjects – the three English A-levels, geography and history – dropped by 3.3% in the same period.

The increase is most notable in computing, with 43% more students taking this subject compared with 2019. And though computing still attracts fewer girls than most Stem subjects, in both absolute and proportional terms, those numbers are growing. This year, the number of girls sitting the exam hit 2,000 for the first time, or 15.2% of the total.

5 Testing times for girls

The return to an exam-based marking system has favoured boys. While boys and girls saw their grades drop significantly, girls fared worse in terms of grade deflation. Across all subjects in England, 44.3% of students achieved an A grade or above last year; that fell back to 35.9% this year, an 8.4 percentage point drop.

However girls’ grades fell further, down by 9.5 percentage points compared with seven among boys.

Compared with 2019, the top grades have increased for both sexes. The proportion of girls getting an A or above was 11.8 percentage points higher in 2022 compared with 2019; for boys there was a 9.5 percentage point increase.