GCSE grade inflation is finally over

Today’s GSCE results show essentially unchanged performance compared with last year, with 21.7 per cent of pupils achieving grade 7 or above (compared with 21.6 per cent in 2023) and 67.4 per cent achieving grade 4 or above (compared with 67.8 per cent last year). This is still slightly up on 2019, but the Covid bounce in grades which occurred in 2020 and 2021, when exams were not actually sat and pupils were awarded grades based on teachers’ predictions instead, seems to be over. In 2020, 75.9 per cent of candidates achieved grade 4 and above, rising even further to 76.9 per cent in 2021. The pandemic effect lasted into 2022, when 73.7 per cent achieved grade 4 or above, but had been all but eliminated by last year.

But that still leaves a cohort of students – many of whom are now at university – who look on paper to be particularly able and intelligent but whose inflated grades conceal a truth: they missed a vital part of their education.