This week’s A-level results will be seen as a sign that the school system is taking another step closer to normality following the Covid pandemic.
But schools and trust leaders have paid tribute to the resilience of this year’s exam cohort, for overcoming disruption in their education through lockdowns, mental health challenges and teacher shortages.
The A-level results released on Thursday revealed an increase in top grades awarded, but continued concerns around the regional gaps in attainment.
School leaders told Tes that the story behind these headline figures is the success of a resilient group of young people who have faced a series of obstacles and challenges in their school journey through to receiving their grades yesterday.
Leaders praise ‘extraordinarily resilient cohort’
Robin Bevan, headteacher at Southend High School for Boys, said that the cohort receiving their A-level results had seen a “big chunk of disruptions during their adolescent years”.
This year’s cohort was in Year 9 when the pandemic forced a move to remote learning for most, with lockdowns continuing in Year 10, followed by social distancing, bubbles and isolation.
In light of this, Mr Bevan says the current Year 13s have shown themselves to be “an extraordinarily resilient cohort”.
Oliver Wright, headteacher at Upton Court Grammar in South East England, noted that this year’s cohort had seen widespread disruption to their learning and a “ten-fold” rise in mental health needs.
Students achieving their A-level grades have been growing up in a society where there are widespread concerns about mental health pressures on young people.
Patrick Cozier, headteacher at Highgate Wood Secondary, in London, said his school had seen demand for mental health provision going “through the roof”, with “more special arrangements put in place” during the exam period.
Since the pandemic, leaders have warned of “inconsistent recovery” of pupils’ mental health, with poor wellbeing also blamed for contributing to lower pupil attendance.
Caroline Barlow, headteacher at Heathfield Community School in East Sussex, attributes a “really strong” set of results this year to “early subject intervention” and “additional pastoral support” that the school has implemented post-pandemic.
Impact of supply crisis
Leaders have also highlighted the impact of the teacher supply crisis on results.
Speaking about the regional disparities present again this year, Tom Rees - CEO of Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT) - said he welcomed the new Labour government’s focus on present challenges around specialist teacher supply.
“The difference between kids getting top grades, and not, is having subject specialist teachers.”
Sir Ian Bauckham, chief regulator at Ofqual, toldTes earlier this year that gaps in attainment could be further aggravated by teacher supply challenges.
Keziah Featherstone, executive headteacher at Q3 Academy Tipton in West Midlands told Tes her school lost its physics teacher this Christmas, and it has taken six rounds of job advertising to fill the role.
If the school had not managed to replace that member of staff, they would have “had to end the course” for future cohorts, she said.
Teachers ‘struggling to predict grades accurately’
Despite a positive set of headline results, Ms Featherstone said that more teachers are “struggling post-Covid to accurately predict grades”, which has an impact on pupil expectations.
She added that said grades had been harder to predict as “grade boundaries have been quite fluid” and “possibly more harsh this year than expected”.
Antonia Spinks, CEO of the Pioneer Education Trust, also said it had been a struggle for schools this year as they did not know how the grades would look.
However, her trust has seen an increase in the number of students who have got lower grades than expected but have still been offered their first choice of university. ;
Ucas said 82 per cent of all applicants had gained a place at their first-choice university or college this year - up from 79 per cent in 2023.
On results day, heads were pointing to a trend of universities accepting students who had not achieved the grades their offer was based on.
Philip Briton, head of foundation at Bolton School - an independent school in Greater Manchester - said on X (formerly known as Twitter) that “there are signs...that the pre-2019 world of offer high and accept low is back”, warning the trend “puts pressure in pressure on predicted grades and causes angst to pupils”.
And Neil Strowger, CEO of Bohunt Education Trust in the South East, told Tes that he had been pleasantly surprised to see students who had not quite achieved their offered grades being accepted to their first-choice universities.
He said it was amazing that students had achieved these outcomes given the challenges they have faced, adding “without that support from teachers and others that they [students] have had, they would not have achieved as strongly”.
‘Big reforms required’ to close disadvantage gaps
There were once again concerns that today’s results showed regional divides and gaps in attainment between private and state schools widen in terms of the proportion of top grades being achieved.
Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said that the results “once again reveal the deep academic divides that scar our education system”.
And he said that “big reforms will be required for Labour to fulfil its aim of dismantling barriers to opportunities”.
Earlier this week, education secretary Bridget Phillipson has vowed to tackle attainment gaps and accused the last government of leaving a legacy of educational disparities.
Helen Frost-Briggs, headteacher of the Ripley Academy in the East Midlands - the region in England with the lowest proportion of top grades this year - said that students at her school were “deeply impacted by Covid” with the “ramifications” being obvious once schools reopened fully.
On tackling disadvantage and regional gaps, Mr Bevan criticised what he described as the “farce” of the last government’s levelling-up agenda. He called for a “considerably more radical” agenda on social and economic policy.
Mr Rees said addressing gaps in attainment will mean “we need to look at the regional disparity in teacher supply and retention”.
He said that the sector should “continue to be concerned by regional disparities,” not just in results but also in terms of pupil funding, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision and local authority capacity.
He added: “But I also think if we want to answer the question about regional disparity you have to look at inequalities around health, investment and industry disparity. In many ways, the disparity in pupil outcomes are another symptom of an unequal society.”
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