My thoughts on GCSE results day 2023

By Andrew Taylor
Published 25 August 2023

Our Head of Maths, Andrew Taylor, reflects on this year's GCSE Maths results and papers.

There has been a lot in the news about a return to pre-pandemic grading and that could be interpreted as an expectation that grade boundaries would be close to those seen back in 2019. As always, the picture is more complex, and I want to look at the factors that have influenced the grade boundaries of AQA GCSE Maths this summer.

There are several elements that have affected boundaries this summer, some apply to all subjects, and others are specific to GCSE Maths. I’ll try to summarise them…

A return to pre-pandemic standards

This means that the proportion of learners achieving each grade nationally would return to something close to 2019. In GCSE Maths, this would mean about 70% of 16-year-olds achieving grade 4 and above whereas in the last three years, that percentage has been somewhat higher. This would lead to higher grade boundaries than 2022, probably around 10 or 12 marks at grades 4 and 7 for GCSE Maths.

The lack of advance information as issued in 2022

Last year, this had a significant effect on student performance in certain questions, especially on the Higher Tier and towards the higher demand questions. We’d expect similar candidates to score fewer marks this year without advance information which would have the effect of lowering grade boundaries, though we don’t know by how much.

Accessible GCSE Maths papers

We’ve taken active steps to make all our GCSE Maths papers more accessible for this year for the future, whilst remaining within guidance. We wanted all students to have a more positive exam experience and further opportunity to show what they know, understand and can do.

Thus, we’d hope that all students would find it easier to access questions and score marks in our papers this year and in future years. Students are likely to have had a greater opportunity to demonstrate their mathematical skills and we have seen an improvement in student performance throughout the papers. But of course, our overall results have to be in line with the national standards so this will lead to higher grade boundaries across the tiers and across the grade range.

Grade boundaries

Our expectation was that grade boundaries would be up from last year but less so at the upper end of the Higher Tier because of the advance information effect.

Please see below the actual boundaries as percentages compared to 2022.

The general direction of change was as expected. At the upper end of the Higher Tier, the boundaries are almost unchanged. This is no surprise as this is the area where we feel advance information had the most impact last year and also where the changes to accessibility made the least difference, as these are students who had relatively few issues accessing the maths in our questions.

In the middle of the attainment range, across both tiers, the changes are more substantial. As mentioned above, about half the increase can be linked to the national return to pre-pandemic grading standards; the rest is due to the work we’ve done to make our papers more accessible. Students can access more questions and show what they have learned, plus our approach to marking means we are rewarding worthy maths throughout the papers.

In my blog last year, I asked the question ‘what are ideal grade boundaries?’ and suggested we were moving in the right direction. This year, we are awarding the highest grades at a high proportion of the marks, which means we are grading with strong evidence of what students can do. We’re using a wide range of the available marks, which enhances grade reliability and, even at the lowest grades, students can show some positive achievement. So, we’ve done what we promised and must now continue to do the same, consistently and reliably, through each exam series.

Congratulations

Finally, congratulations to all the students getting their results over the past week or so, and heartfelt thanks to all their teachers for their incredible efforts in helping them to get the results they deserve.