Good morning and welcome to Ana’sclassroom A-level results blog.
According to the results published on today Thursday 18 August 2014, for 250,000 candidates in England, Northern Ireland and Wales the overall pass rate has risen for the 29th successive year.
This year, 8.2% of boys have achieved an A*, up from 7.9% last year, while girls’ performance has dipped from 8.3% to 8.2%.
There has been an increase in entries for maths, biology, chemistry and physics. Maths entries have risen dramatically, up 40.2% over five years. Entries for physics are up 19.6% over five years and chemistry up 19.4% over that period.
Foreign languages continued to decline. Entries for French are down 4.7% on last year and German down 6.9%. The number of entries for A-level Spanish and Chinese are up on last year.
Here is the story of Grace McKelvey, 18, who is going to Girton College, Cambridge, to study Spanish and Portuguese. She got A*s in French and Spanish and an A in history. She says she has always loved languages and she didn’t specifically target Oxbridge, but it happened to be the best course for her. “As part of the application process, I had four interviews and had to do an exam,” she says. “I had two interviews before Christmas and I was pooled, then Girton fished me out and I went for further interviews in January, where they were talking in Spanish. I thought the first set of interviews went better than second, but it was obviously the other way round.”
The A* grade was introduced last year, and is being used to discriminate between the best candidates at an increased number of universities this year. Oxford is demanding the grade for 15 of its courses, while students applying for some courses at Bristol, Exeter and Sussex have been asked for it.
It has been reported that David Willetts, the universities minister, has said that pupils who have taken “traditional” A-levels such as maths and foreign languages should take precedence in the race for university places.