{"id":4435,"date":"2023-08-20T08:45:23","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T07:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=4435"},"modified":"2023-08-20T08:45:23","modified_gmt":"2023-08-20T07:45:23","slug":"a-level-results-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/?p=4435","title":{"rendered":"A Level Results 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You will, no doubt, have heard in the media that 2023 has marked a return to sanity in regard to A Levels, reversing the preposterous grade inflation in 2020, 2021 and 2022 which came about due to basing awards on teachers’ assessments, unmoderated. Last year, 2022, the policy to take a “half-way position” was adopted (because, apparently, being only 50% nonsense is OK). Peak-nonsense was attained in 2021. I refer you to my previous posts A Level Awards 2022<\/a>, A Level Awards 2021 and Their Obfuscation<\/a>, State Education Dying, Dying\u2026.Dead?<\/a> and A Levels 2020: The Year of Utter Nonsense<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, is it true that sanity has been restored? Broadly, yes it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data has been taken from Brian Stubbs’ site<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table 1 below shows the results for the top A* and A grades (wherein the inflation occurred) comparing this year with 2021 and with the pre-Covid years 2019 and 2010. The percentage of pupils, of either sex, gaining A* or A grades this year (2023) is larger than in 2019, but only to a reasonable degree. Admittedly, the percentage being awarded A* is larger than in any previous year (barring 2020-22), for both sexes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A larger percentage of boys than girls were awarded the top A* grade, as they were in 2019, though this has varied over the years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, substantially more girls than boys take A Levels and this has been the case for several decades. Consequently, in terms of actual numbers, there are considerably more girls being awarded A* and A grades in all years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table 2 illustrates the gender-bias effect of the nonsense years, showing the excess of A* and A awards to girls over those to boys. In “sensible” years this has been around 20,000 to 26,000, whereas in peak-nonsense (2021) it reached 57,504. This implies that, in 2021, perhaps around 34,000 excess A* or A awards were made to girls over those to boys purely as a result of the bias introduced by using teachers’ assessments. Similar but smaller excess awards of top grades to girls would have occurred in 2020 and 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Year<\/td>Sex<\/td>percentage of same sex<\/td>number<\/td><\/tr>
A*<\/td>A<\/td>A*<\/td>A<\/td><\/tr>
2023<\/td>girls<\/td>8.8<\/td>18.7<\/td>41514<\/td>88217<\/td><\/tr>
boys<\/td>9.1<\/td>17.8<\/td>36028<\/td>70472<\/td><\/tr>
2021<\/td>girls<\/td>19.7<\/td>27.2<\/td>89582<\/td>123687<\/td><\/tr>
boys<\/td>18.4<\/td>23.7<\/td>68078<\/td>87687<\/td><\/tr>
2019<\/td>girls<\/td>7.5<\/td>18.0<\/td>33028<\/td>79268<\/td><\/tr>
boys<\/td>8.2<\/td>17.2<\/td>29571<\/td>62027<\/td><\/tr>
2010<\/td>girls<\/td>8.3<\/td>19.6<\/td>38204<\/td>90217<\/td><\/tr>
boys<\/td>7.9<\/td>18.2<\/td>31098<\/td>71643<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
Table 1: Top A* and A grades awarded by sex, various years compared<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Year<\/td>A*<\/td>A<\/td>A*+A<\/td><\/tr>
2023<\/td>5486<\/td>17745<\/td>23231<\/td><\/tr>
2021<\/td>21504<\/td>36000<\/td>57504<\/td><\/tr>
2019<\/td>3457<\/td>17241<\/td>20698<\/td><\/tr>
2010<\/td>7106<\/td>18574<\/td>25681<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
Table 2: Excess of girls over boys awarded A* and A grades<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You will, no doubt, have heard in the media that 2023 has marked a return to sanity in regard to A Levels, reversing the preposterous grade inflation in 2020, 2021 and 2022 which came about due to basing awards on teachers’ assessments, unmoderated. Last year, 2022, the policy to take a “half-way position” was adopted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4438,"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4435\/revisions\/4438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empathygap.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}