GCE A Level Results
The A level provisional results for Wales show an improvement overall with 8.7% of grades awarded at A*, the best outcome in Wales since this grade was introduced, in 2010, 0.4 percentage point higher than the previous best figure in 2017.
The proportion of results awarded A* – A grades this year is 26.3%, which is 1.3 percentage points higher than the figure for 2017. There are also improvements of 1.9 and 1 percentage points in results at grades B and C.
Wales achieved the best results for A*, 0.7 percentage points higher than the UK. The proportion of candidates awarded A* – A was in line with the UK, 26.4%.
The total number of A level examination entries in Wales this year was 32,445, a reduction of 2.6% relative to 2017 continuing the decreasing A level entries since the summer of 2015, in line with the reduction in size of the 18-year old population. The percentage of students achieving A* – E grades is 97.4%, a small decrease when compared with 2017 (97.7%), but consistent in the range of the last decade (97.1% to 97.7%).
In Wales, males continue to outperform females at both grades A and A*, whilst at other grades females continued to outperform males, with 98.0% of subject entries by females this year gaining A*- E grades, compared to 96.7% of entries by males. The gap continues to be widest at grade C, with females 5.4 percentage points ahead of males.
At grades A* – A, the performance of males was marginally better than that of females, with 26.6% of males’ results and 26.0% of females’ results being at grades A* – A, improving by 1.5 and 1.1 percentage points respectively from 2017. Performance of male candidates at A* was again, marginally better than females, a 1.3 percentage point difference (9.4% for males and 8.1% for females).
Advanced Subsidiary (AS) Results
There were 42,915 subject entries for AS in Wales this year, a decrease of 7.0% compared with 46,127 last year, being the third consecutive annual reduction in entries, which can be explained to an extent by the reduction in the size of the 17 year old age group.
20.4% of all grades awarded were A in Wales this year, an improvement of 1.3 percentage points on the figure for 2017. The percentage of candidates achieving A – E grades also shows an improvement; 90.0% this year, compared to 88.9% last year. This follows a trend of continued improved outcomes shown at AS.
21.0% of all grades achieved by females were an A, 91.9% were A – E. The equivalent figures for males were 19.6% at A grade and 87.7% at grades A – E. As with A levels, the gap was widest at grade C, with females 7.5 percentage points ahead of males.
