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A-level passes rise for 29th year
18 August 2011 Last updated at 04:39 ET
The BBC’s Colette Hume joined some students as they found out how they had done
A-level passes have risen for the 29th year in a row as teenagers face an intense battle for university places.
The overall pass rate is up slightly, but for the first time in 15 years there has been no increase in the total proportion getting A or A* grades.
Just over 27% of entries scored these grades, with a small rise in the proportion awarded A*.
The Ucas Track web, through which applicants track university offers, has been taken down amid high traffic.
The Track system was facing a four-fold increase in demand compared with last year, the admissions body said.
Ucas said full services would “resume shortly”.
Hundreds of thousands of teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are getting the results of their A and AS levels.
From 2012, many UK students will face up to a maximum of £9,000 a year in tuition fees, compared with the present level of just over £3,000 a year.
Fees are set to rise from the present level of just over £3,000 a year to a maximum of £9,000 at some universities.
Science rise
Overall, the A-levels pass rate rose slightly from 97.6% to 97.8%.
The results show boys have closed the gap with girls at the very top grade of A*.
And they show that more teenagers are opting to do science and maths.
Entries for maths (and further maths) rose by 7.4%, while there were also increases for biology (7.2%), chemistry (9.2%) and physics (6.1%).
But fewer teenagers are opting to take traditional modern languages at A-level – a trend which has been seen for many years.
Entries for French and German fell again – this year by 4.7% and 6.9% respectively.
From 2012, many UK students will face a maximum of £9,000 a year in tuition fees – compared with the present level of just over £3,000 a year.
From 2012, universities in England and Wales will be able to raise their fees to up to £9,000, although Welsh students studying in Wales will have the increase subsidised.
Scottish students studying in Scotland pay no fees, but Scottish universities can charge up to £9,000 for students from where in the UK.
Northern Ireland’s ministers have said there will be no major rise in fees in its universities in 2012.
Places pressure
With applications at record levels and a drop in the number of teenagers taking a gap year, universities have been raising their entry requirements.
The government says 15 of England’s universities now want applicants to have at least one A* grade.
The new top grade was brought in last year, together with changes designed to make the A-level more challenging to bright students.
This year A* was awarded to 8.2% of entries – up from 8.1% last year.
But the proportion of entries getting either an A* or an A stayed unchanged at 27%.
So far, there have been just over 673,000 applications for undergraduate places in the UK.
Last year, there were places for 487,000 people.
As teenagers began getting their grades, Ucas said 384,649 people had already been accepted on to university courses for this year and a total of 185,000 were eligible for clearing – the process where students who did not get the grades they needed can apply for places which have not been filled.
Last year, 47,000 found places through clearing.
Applications to UK universities are at a record high, after several years of steady increase.
Last year, they rose by 12%. This year applications rose by 1.3%.
At the same time, the number of candidates taking a gap year – deferring for 12 months – has fallen by 40% to 30,000.
Changes ahead
Education Secretary Michael Gove has ordered a review of A-levels to see how they compare with exam systems in other countries.
He has also said he wants more emphasis on a final exam which stretches candidates’ capacity for original thought.
Recent changes to the A-level – brought in with the A* grade – involved the introduction of questions designed to stretch the brightest students and the cutting of the number of modules or sections of an A-level from six to four.
About 160,000 teenagers in Scotland got the results of their Highers and Advanced Highers earlier this month.
The pass rate for the Higher was 75.2%, an increase of 0.5% on the previous year, while the figure for Advanced Highers was 79.3%, up 1.8%.
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