On Thursday (22 August), students will receive results for GCSEs and level 1/level 2 vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs). Students should be proud of their achievements as they receive their results. The qualifications they have gained provide trustworthy evidence of their achievements and will enable them to move forward in their education or training.
Results day wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of all those involved throughout the academic year and the assessment series itself – teachers, exams officers, invigilators, markers and moderators, and of course, students themselves.
Here are a few reminders about results on Thursday.
Grading
Marking and grading have taken place as normal this summer. As in any year, students’ exams have been marked anonymously by expert examiners. Non-exam assessments have been marked by teachers and checked by exam board moderators, or marked by expert examiners.
Where students have taken exams, grade boundaries are set once marking is nearly complete. Senior examiners consider the quality of students' answers, how difficult the exam paper is, and evidence about the cohort of students taking the qualification to recommend grade boundaries.
Grade boundaries are set to make sure the standard of work needed for each grade remains stable and to reflect any differences in the difficulty of the assessments. This means that grade boundaries will typically vary year on year. For VTQs, some assessments are not marked and are graded directly, using pre-set criteria.
GCSE French, German and computer science
As part of Ofqual’s role to ensure that standards are set and maintained appropriately, we carefully consider evidence to inform our approach. This summer we have required awarding organisations to make some adjustments to grading standards in 3 GCSE subjects – computer science, French and German.
These adjustments will have a small impact on results in these subjects. As the changes are small, and only relate to 3 subjects, we still expect overall GCSE results to be similar to summer 2023.
Tech Awards
Tech Awards are taken alongside GCSEs, and include subjects such as health and social care, sport studies and IT.
Tech Awards have been strengthened, with the first students completing the new versions of the qualifications in 2024. The rules for these qualifications have changed, so most of these qualifications are different from previous versions in several ways. For example, students must now take the external assessment at the end of their course, and the approach to marking and grading many internal assessments has changed. Many awarding organisations have taken the opportunity to update and refresh the content of their qualifications, and some are using a different grading scale too. The number of Tech Award qualifications available has also significantly decreased this year, although the number of entries overall remains high.
Taken together, the changes to Tech Awards mean that it will not be meaningful to compare overall outcomes with previous years. We have asked awarding organisations to take into account that teachers and students may be less familiar with the new assessments when setting grade boundaries for new Tech Awards. However, it is important that these new qualifications are robust, and that students have demonstrated the skills, knowledge and understanding appropriate for each grade. This approach has been used for other new qualifications previously.
National Reference Test
The results from the National Reference Test (NRT) 2024 will be published on Thursday. The tests are designed to provide evidence on the performance of 16-year-old students in English language and maths and were introduced to provide additional evidence to support the awarding of GCSEs in these subjects.
The first live NRT, taken in 2017, was benchmarked against the first awards of the reformed GCSEs in English language and maths, and subsequent tests compare the performance of students with those in previous years.
Results are reported at 3 grade boundaries – grade 7, grade 5 and grade 4. Results are reported as expected percentages of students achieving those grades (and above) based on changes in performance on the NRT.
Interested in exploring results information?
Ofqual publishes a range of interactive visualisations so users can explore results information depending on their own interests and needs. Our interactive visualisations will be updated on results day. They include information such as outcomes by county for GCSE, and outcomes for VTQs that are included in the Department for Education’s performance tables.
Support for students on results day
Finally, we would like to wish everyone receiving their results on Thursday all the best for the next stage of their education or training. If students have any queries about their results they should speak to their school or college in the first instance. They can also call the National Careers Service on 0800 100 900 to chat to a career’s adviser for help or advice.
Rachel Taylor
Associate Director Standards & Technical Issues, Ofqual