There has been a slight rise in the number of students achieving a C grade or better across GCSE subjects with hundred of thousands of youngsters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland receiving their results today.

The number of pupils receiving and A*-C has gone up by 0.7 percentage points, compared to last year, with 68.8 per cent of entries securing top results.

However, there has been a marked fall in English GCSE grades this summer, with the number of A*-C grades down by 1.9 percentage points to 61.7 per cent.

This has been attributed to the significant changes the subject has undergone recently. This includes the removal of speaking and listening from overall grading and the heavy weighting the written exam now carries (60 per cent).

In general, across the UK, the number of students achieving an A* is down by 0.1 percentage points to 6.7 per cent and the proportion getting A* and A remains steady at 21.3 per cent.

Hardly surprising, today’s results revealed that girls are still outperforming boys when it comes to GCSE grades C and above.

Statistics show that 73.1 per cent of girls’ entries achieved A*-C grades, whereas boys achieved 64.3 per cent. While there is still a substantial divide, the gap is closing with each passing year.

Commenting on results Michael Turner, director general of the Joint Council for Qualifications, said that although figures are relative stable, he expected more schools and colleges to see “volatility in their results”.

“The extent of this volatility will depend on how much change from their usual practices they experienced and how they adapted,” he continued.

“Entry patterns are very different this year. We have seen a dramatic decline in the number of entries from 15 year-olds, which is largely due to a change in the school accountability measure, where a candidate’s first entry counts in performance tables, and the move to end of year exams in England.”