The A-level results gap between state and private schools has fallen to its lowest level since 2022, The i Paper has found.
This year’s results show 76.5 per cent of state school entries were graded as at least a C, compared with 89.8 per cent of private school entries.
This is a 13.3 percentage point gap, down from 14.8 last year and lower again than in 2023, when it stood at 14.6 percentage points, The i Paper‘s analysis reveals.
Outside of 2020 to 2022, when grades were affected by changes to assessments caused by Covid-19, this is the lowest the attainment gap has been since comparable records began in 2019.
It comes after the Government introduced VAT of 20 per cent on private school fees in January and pledged to use the money to invest in state-funded education.
The Independent Schools Council said fees were 22 per cent higher in January than they had been the year before due to the VAT rise.
Both state and private school pupils received higher levels of grades of C or above, but the increase was higher for state schools, the data released by the regulator Ofqual shows.
The attainment gap also shrunk for the top grades, from 23.9 percentage points last year to 23.1.
There was a slight drop in private schools getting grades of A or A*, while in contrast, the levels rose at state schools.
Increased academic achievement among state school pupils drove the proportion of A-level entries awarded A or A* to its highest level on record outside of the pandemic-affected years.
A slightly lower proportion of private school pupils received the highest A* grades since last year, compared with an increase among state school pupils.
With 7.9 per cent of state school entries and 19.8 per cent of private school entries getting an A*, the attainment gap for higher marks is 11.9 percentage points. Last year it was 12.2 percentage points.
Sir Ian Bauckham, chief regulator of Ofqual, England’s exams regulator, said the standard of work required to achieve grades has “held constant” since 2023.
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He said any changes were because a “smaller, smarter cohort” of students had sat their A-level exams this year compared with previous years.
Sir Ian said: “Students this year have got the grades they deserve, and their grade will hold its value over time because it represents a stable standard of achievement.”
The pandemic fuelled an increase in top grades in 2020 and 2021, when results were based on teacher assessments rather than exams. In 2022, more lenient grading was used to account for the disruption caused by Covid-19.
A record number of students were accepted into their first-choice university, while boys outperformed girls in terms of top grades for the first time in seven years.
The proportion of boys’ entries awarded A or A* this year was 28.4 per cent, 0.2 percentage points higher than the equivalent figure for girls’ entries (28.2 per cent).
Last year, girls led boys by 0.4 percentage points (28.0 per cent for girls, 27.6 per cent for boys).
Across the regions of England, London saw the highest proportion of entries awarded grades of A or A* (32.1 per cent, up from 31.3 per cent in 2024) while north-east England had the lowest (22.9 per cent, down from 23.9 per cent in 2024).
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