The problem with compulsory GCSE resits

This morning, students up and down across the country will anxiously open up their GCSE results, with local papers publishing photos of glowing over-achievers and other heartwarming success stories. The national media will, in all likelihood, focus on the number of top grades, and how this fits into recent trends concerning grade inflation as exam boards try to re-stabilise results post-Covid. 

Yet this hyper-fixation on the number of 7s, 8s and 9s (the equivalent to an old-style A or A*) means we tend to overlook something much more important: the long tail of underachievement in England. We should be far less concerned by how many people do well at GCSE, and instead focus on the fact that, after twelve years of compulsory education, around 35 to 40 per cent of pupils still do not pass GCSE Maths or English.

This is a problem for lots of obvious reasons, but it has become a particular problem in recent years because the government has insisted that any pupil with a 3 or below in GCSE Maths or English Language must retake the subject until they pass.