The latest raft of GCSE and A Level results have been released by the Department for Education, with this year’s figures revealing several long-standing national divides.
At the same time, there have been some tweaks to the tables, especially at Key Stage 4 level. Whereas previously a school was judged by how many of its pupils achieved five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, the government’s latest measures seek to assess how well pupils progress as well as how well they perform in exams.
Progress 8, the new metric for GCSEs, measures a pupil’s performance at KS4 against that of pupils who achieved similar results at KS2. Attainment 8 measures the average grades achieved across the same eight subjects.
While these changes make it hard to compare the figures with previous years, there are still several things we can learn from them – including where in England performs the worst, how independent…