It has come to the time of year where millions of Year 11s up and down the country are preparing to take their GCSEs, a series of standardised national exams. But what are these GCSEs and why are they important?

Well, GCSEs are exams taken as part of a two-year course, often in Year 10 and 11, consisting of subjects ranging from Food and Nutrition, to Maths, to Photography. Students will sit these exams between 6th May and 21st June, where they will be taking often over 20 exams! After sitting these, students’ papers will be marked, and they can only hope for the best grades until results day, on the 22nd August. Now, these grades are important, as they often determine a student’s scope of choice for their A-Level subjects, and students’ acceptance to colleges, apprenticeships or universities are often dependant on these results.

The grades in GCSEs are no longer lettered (A, B, C etc), but range from 1-9. Grades U (ungraded), 1, 2, and 3 are all fails and are equivalent to grades D, E, F and G. However, if students receive a grade 4, this is a standard pass and equates roughly to a C, with a grade 5 being a high pass. A student getting a grade 6 would be receiving a B, while grades 7, 8, and 9 are the top grades. These translate onto the old grades as A and A*. Last year, only 4.9% of entries received grade 9s, while a grade 5 was the most commonly received, at 16.6% of all entries.

A noticeable trend in GCSE results across the country show that on average females do better than males in their exams, making up 62% of the students receiving grade 9s, while only 38% that earned grade 9s were male. Many people believe this to be about the different ways in which the brains are formed for those of different genders; psychologists have discovered that when puberty hits, girls brains develop much faster than boys, causing them to develop in maturity. This means that, on average, females tend to be more disciplined in terms of schoolwork, and are more competent with certain cognitive tasks. However, in recent years, the gap in GCSE results between males and females has begun to shrink, and although girls still outperformed boys in 2023, more effort has been put into the education system to close this gap and help every student to excel, so who knows what will happen this year, in the 2024 exams?

Good luck, Year 11!