Best Schools - GCSE results 2019: Pass rates and top grades edge upwards

There has been a slight increase in the GCSE pass rate and the percentage of top grades this year, despite concerns about the difficulty of exams.

The pass rate edged up to 67.3% in England, Wales and Northern Ireland - up 0.4 percentage points on last year.

The percentage of papers given a top grade (7 or A and above) rose 0.3 percentage points to 20.8% on 2018.

The rise comes as head teachers in England warned toughened GCSEs were demoralising some candidates.

More than 700,000 teenagers are receiving their GCSE results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, after a string of reforms to the exams system.

A new numerical grading system and tougher exams have been introduced in England, while elsewhere many GCSEs are still graded A* to G.

In England, 837 candidates got a clean sweep of 9s - the very top grade - in all their subjects.

GCSE results 2019: Perfect 9s up 14% as girls dominate

The number of students achieving straight grade 9s in their GCSEs has increased by 14.3 per cent this year.

A total of 837 pupils who took seven or more GCSEs achieved the top grade in all of their subjects, compared to 732 last year, and two thirds were girls.

According to today’s results, 4.5 per cent of all GCSE entries in England achieved a grade 9, with 5.2 per cent of female entries achieving this grade compared with 3.7 per cent of boy

Grade 9 is the highest GCSE score of the new 9-1 grading system introduced in England in 2017. This year it has been awarded in an additional 25 subjects.

It is higher than the legacy A* grade, and is only awarded to the top 20 per cent of those achieving grade 7/A and above.

According to figures released today, of the 837 students who achieved straight grade 9s this year, 556 – 66.4 per cent – were girls, and 281 – 33.6 per cent – were boys.

That means a higher proportion of clean sweep successes were girls this year – in 2018, the figure was 62 per cent.