Private schools saw the largest rise in the proportion of students achieving a full suite of grade 9s, new Ofqual data has revealed.

In 2021, 4.4 per cent of students at private schools taking 7 or more GCSEs achieved all grade 9s compared with 2.8 per cent in 2020 and 0.9 per cent in 2019 - a 3.5 percentage point rise on 2019.

GCSE and A level results 2021: What did teachers learn?

More on this year’s GCSE and A-level results: 

• A levels 2021: Results at a glance

• A levels 2021: The subjects with biggest rise in A/A*s

• GCSEs 2021: Results at a glance
• GCSE resits 2021: More students achieve grade 4
• GCSE results 2021: ‘No long-term teacher assessment’

Grammar schools similarly saw a 2.3pp rise on 2019, with 3.2 per cent of students achieving a clean sweep of top results while 2.1 per cent did so in 2020, compared with 0.9 per cent of students in 2019. 

Secondary comprehensives and moderns saw 0.6 per cent of their students achieve all top grades this year compared with 0.6 per cent last year and 0.1 per cent in 2019.

And academies - who saw the largest raw number of students achieving all top results, with 1,814 pupils scoring all grade 9s, saw a comparatively small rise in the proportion of students getting all top grades, with 0.6 per cent of their cohort achieving this in 2021 compared with 0.5 per cent in 2020 and 0.2 per cent in 2019.

Private schools and free schools saw the largest absolute increases in top GCSE grades in 2021 overall.

At grade 7/A and above, outcomes were higher than 2020 to the greatest extent in private schools, with a 4 percentage point rise, while free schools also had a rise in their proportion of top grades by 3.6pp.