Student in England earned record-high top grades in this year's A-level exams.
This improvement was largely driven by young men achieving strongest results this year.
As per the recent reports revealed by The Guardian, out of over 1.1 million A-level entries in England, 28.2% earned an A or A* and 9.4% achieved the top A* grade.
Both figures are higher than in 2024 when 27.6% of entries received A or A* and 9.3% got A*.
Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 28.3% of A-level entries earned an A or A*, up to 0.5 points last year.
Wales was the only country to see a decline in top grades, falling from 29.9% to 29.5%.
The percentage of top A-level grades in England this year is the highest since the A* grade was introduced in 2010.
Ian Bauckham, Ofqual’s chief regulator responsible for overseeing England’s results, said, “Standards have been maintained for another year, with grades determined by students’ performance in exams using exam boards’ strict marking and grading processes."
It is usually observed that girls outperform boys in numbers but this time the trend has reversed and in England boys slightly outperformed girls in top A-level grades with 28.4% of boys earning A or A* compared to 28% of girls.
Boys tended to choose subjects like maths, physics and economics, where they usually achieve higher grades.
Maths was the most taken A-level this year with over 112,000 entries though only 37% of these were from girls.
Meanwhile, subjects like economic have become more popular than traditional subjects.
Even though, overall A-level results improved, there are differences across regions as students in the West Midlands and north-east England received lower grades compared to the previous year.
Also, the north-east is still the only region where average grades are below levels seen before COVID-19 pandemic.
