More than two in five people think it was easier for students to get top grades at GCSE and A level this year, polling reveals.

In a survey of 2,000 people carried out by Nortstat, published today, 43 per cent of respondents said they felt it was easier for students to achieve high grades in 2021 compared with other years.

However, almost a third believed this year’s grades were harder for students to achieve, mainly because of the disruption caused to their education by the Covid pandemic.

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School leaders have urged people to ignore talk of grade inflation and said that it is “invidious” to compare this year’s grades with previous results.

The new polling gauges public reaction to this year’s results, which were awarded to students based on teacher-assessed grades after the government cancelled exams because of the Covid crisis.

GCSEs and A levels 2021: Was it easier to get top grades this year?

Nearly one in five of those polled - 18 per cent - said they thought it was “much easier” to get top grades.

But in total, 28 per cent said they felt it was harder than usual.

Of those respondents who said it was easier, 78 per cent said they thought the fact that students did not have the pressure of exams made it easier to score top grades, while 49 per cent said the fact that students did not have the pressure of external marking made a difference.

But of those who thought it was harder than usual in 2021, 73 per cent said this was because students’ education had been disrupted by the pandemic, while 63 per cent said the pandemic had added more stress than usual.

A record proportion of top grades were achieved this year, with 19.1 per cent of A-level entries awarded the top grade of an A*, compared with 14.3 per cent last year.

Reacting to the new poll, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, said: “This summer’s exam students should be proud of what they have achieved in such challenging circumstances. School and college staff have gone above and beyond in order to make the system fair and robust this year.

“Students have shown great resilience and determination and for each one, their grades are a true reflection of a huge amount of work in the most challenging of circumstances.

“As in any other year, these grades will be a passport to the next phase of education, training or employment. School and college staff must also be congratulated for their remarkable efforts in implementing the processes for awarding grades this year - it has been an intense and highly pressured summer term for them.

“This year’s grades are based on students’ actual work, assessed by their teachers, moderated and quality assured. There are no algorithms this year, just human effort and human expert judgement.

“Our advice is to ignore the chat about grade inflation. The grades awarded in this year are a holistic judgement based on work which students have produced. These evidence-based decisions are very different from the normal way grades are awarded through exams.

“Students should be confident that they have received the grades they deserve and that reflect the standard of achievement they have demonstrated.”

And Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is invidious to compare grades awarded this year with grades awarded in previous years under a completely different form of assessment because they simply aren’t directly comparable.

“This is a situation which was forced by the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic, and teachers worked incredibly hard to provide pupils with grades that are robust and fair and allow them to progress to the next stage of their lives.

“It is important to recognise the considerable achievements of this year’s cohort of pupils following the huge educational disruption that has taken place over the past 18 months. They certainly haven’t had an easy time.”