A Level results day 2024: How did this year's cohort do overall, and what were the most popular subjects?

• The total number of top A* grades awarded for A Levels this year has risen a little.
• The overall pass rate has fallen, but regulators say this is in line with normal fluctuations.
• Some subjects like maths and physics have seen a big spike in popularity this year.
• Male students took out more A* grades, but female students got more As and A*s combined.

Secondary school students rejoice; for better or for worse, their A Level grades are now here - marking the end of their secondary education for many.

Thursday, 15 August is A Level results day for students across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, with more than 1.2 million level 3 qualifications being handed out. Thousands of students will already be heading to their schools or colleges to pick up their results envelopes, where they can either open them with school support staff on hand for any disappointing results, or take them home to open with their families.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) has confirmed that the amount of A Levels taken overall has risen in 2024, and while the number of top grades has gone up, the overall pass rate had fallen a little.

This year’s cohort of A Level candidates has had to deal with a lot. They sat their GCSE exams in 2022, the first year that exams returned after the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted schooling, while many have also had to contend with disruption from the RAAC concrete scandal.

But how did they do this time around? Here’s what you need to know:

A Level results for 2024 at a glance

The total number of A Level entries is slightly up this year, at 886,514 - an increase of 2.2% on last year. A total of 82,081 top grades - or A* - were handed out this year, or 9.3% of all results awarded. This marks a tiny increase of just 0.4% on last year, but is 1.6% higher than in 2019 - the last year of exams before the pandemic’s disruption.

More than 246 thousand As and A* grades were awarded overall, also up 0.6% on last year. But when all passing grades are considered, A* down to E, the overall pass rate for 2024 has fallen slightly - a tiny 0.1%. This means the amount of papers passed has fallen from 97.3% to 97.2%.

Ofqual says A level outcomes this year are broadly similar to those in 2023, and that every year there are small fluctuations in results. This can be due to changes in the cohort of students sitting their exams, as well as changes in course choices over time.

In England, most students took three A Level subjects, about 67%. About 17% took two, while a little over 10% only took one. The amount of students taking five or more was just 0.1% - or 185 students total.

Overall, most students who sat their A Level exams this summer were 18, although there has been a 5% increase in the number of students 17 and under sitting them in 2024, and an increase of nearly 15% in older students 19 and over sitting them too.

Other level 3 qualification results are also being handed out today, including AS Levels, Vocational Technical Qualifications (VTQs), and T Levels, the latter for the third time ever. Some 250 thousand VTQs will be awarded today, nearly 22,100 of them with top marks. Meanwhile, 7,280 T Levels were sat this year, more than twice as many as last year, with an 88.7% pass rate.

By gender

Overall, female students made up 54.1% of 2024’s A Level entries. Males received more A*s overall, with 9.5% of all grades awarded to male students receiving the highly-sought after top mark, compared to 9.1% for female students.

But when it comes to A* and A grades combined, female students did slightly better. JCQ says 28% of all grades awarded to female students were A or above, compared to 27.6% for males.

In England alone, of the 4,135 students to meet the government’s ‘gold standard’ of three A* grades this year, 57% of them were female, while 43% were male.

By region

Ofqual - the government’s qualifications regulator - has released some figures on the proportions of top A and A* grades awarded from total entries by region across England this year. Greater London students have taken out the top spot, with 31.3% of papers sat awarded an A. The South East was a close second, with 30.8% As.

The rest of England’s regions ‘A rates’, in order, are: the East of England at 27.5%; the South West at 26.9%; the North West at 25.5%; the West Midlands at 24.8%; Yorkshire at 24.6%; the North East at 23.9%; and the East Midlands at 22.5%.

In Northern Ireland, the CCEA says that its A* to A grade rate was 30.3% this year.

Most popular subjects

According to JCQ, this year’s top 10 most popular subjects were:

1. Mathematics (sat by 107,427 students)
2. Psychology (sat by 78,556)
3. Biology (sat by 74,367)
4. Chemistry (sat by 62,583)
5. History (sat by 47,298)
6. Business Studies (sat by 44,961)
7. Sociology (sat by 44,359)
8. Art and design (sat by 43,668)
9. Physics (sat by 43,114)
10. Economics (sat by 40,451)

This year, the maths A level saw a whopping 19.9% increase in entries, from 15 thousand last year to more than 18 thousand. Psychology entries fell by 2.4% in 2024, although the subject clung onto its second place spot, while history entries also fell by about 2.2%.

There has also been a huge increase in the number of students taking physics this year, of more than 12%. Economics also saw a modest 3.3% rise, but the sudden popularity of physics still knocked it down into 10th place.

The government has issued some advice for parents and carers supporting students as they receive their exam results on A Level results day. This can often be a tense and emotionally fraught time, especially if things don’t go as expected. You can check this advice out online here.