Education Minister Paul Givan: ‘Northern Ireland's GCSE results are still best in UK’
Education Minister Paul Givan has noted that Northern Ireland continues to outperform the rest of the UK in GCSE results.
The percentage of top grades awarded in NI has increased marginally this year, with some 31.7% of entries achieving A and A* grades compared with 31.6% in 2025. The percentage was 30.5% in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
Female students continue to outperform males. The percentage of females achieving grades A and A* was 36.2% – up from 36.1% in 2025 – while for males it was 26.8%, down from 26.9% last year.
Highlighting the grades across NI, Mr Givan said: “We have 31.7% have got an A* to A grade, and that is a very marginal increase, only 0.1%, so it shows a consistency in terms of those who receive the top grades and similarly, at 82.7% having got A* to C grade, and that again is a 0.1% increase.
“In comparison to England and Wales, it is around 16% higher than England and 20% higher than Wales; that shows that Northern Ireland continues to outperform the rest of the United Kingdom.”
He noted there is still a gap of nearly 10% between girls outperforming boys at the top A/A* grade. It is concerning, he said, although boys have narrowed the gap.
“Whenever we look at the ticket rates between A* to C, that gap is reduced from 4.6% last year to now 4.2%.”
He wants to investigate why there is this "persistent gap” between girls and boys and find out if it impacts the number of boys who then go on to enter into A-levels or BTech qualifications.
There are more girls who continue in further education, “and we need more men, particularly, to do that,” he added.