This report looks at the provision of GCSE subjects in England in 2023. Provision in a subject is defined as the number or percentage of schools with at least one student taking the subject. It could be argued that this may not cover all the 'provision', since schools might offer to provide a subject but none of their students wants to study it.…

The main aim of this research was to investigate the impact of reducing the number of components on overall performance in GCSE subjects. In particular, researchers were interested in how the grade achieved by candidates on a reduced number of components compares to their grade on the full qualification. This research mainly looked at GCSEs with…

Core maths (CM) qualifications were introduced into the post-16 curriculum in England in 2014, with first assessments in 2016. They are a suite of qualifications aimed at students who achieve a grade 4 (originally a grade C) or higher at GCSE Maths but do not go on to take AS or A level Maths. This group comprised around 40% of all students in…

This Statistics Report is the first in a new series produced by the Research Division at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, using publicly available school performance data from the Department for Education (DfE). This report is focused on the uptake of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) (and IGCSE/International GCSE)…

This Statistics Report is the second in a new series produced by the Research Division at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, using publicly available school performance data from the Department for Education (DfE). This report is focused on the uptake of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) subjects in England in 2019. The…

This report looks at the provision of GCSE subjects in England in 2021. Provision in a GCSE subject is defined as the number or percentage of schools with at least one student taking the subject. This may not cover all of the actual 'provision' since schools might offer to provide a subject, but none of their students wants to study it. This…

This report is focused on the uptake of A level subjects in England in 2022. Uptake in an A level subject is defined as the number or percentage of students at the end of Key Stage 5 (who have entered for at least one AS or A level) taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE)…

This report looks at the provision of A level subjects in England in 2022. Provision in a subject is defined as the number or percentage of schools with at least one student taking the subject. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE) "Find and compare schools in England" service.…

This report looks at the provision of GCSE subjects in England in 2022. This report was produced using publicly available data from the Department for Education's (DfE) "Find and compare schools in England" service. The dataset consisted of Key Stage 4 (KS4) results in all subjects provided by each school in England. Other school…

This Statistics Report is the third in a new series produced by the Research Division at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, using publicly available school performance data from the Department for Education (DfE). The aim of the new series is to provide a continuation of the Statistics Reports that were previously produced using National…

This Statistics Report is the fourth in a new series produced by the Research Division at Cambridge University Press and Assessment, using publicly available school performance data from the Department for Education (DfE). The aim of the new series is to provide a continuation of the Statistics Reports that were previously produced using National…

The aim of this research was to determine the standard that was effectively applied to General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSE) and A levels in June 2020 by the decision to accept the maximum of the centre-assessed grade and the calculated grade. The data for this analysis came from the results tables for GCSEs and A levels in 2019 and…

This research, conducted in 2017, examines the amount of time students spend on building their skills and employability in pre-16 and post-16 education. It covers: (1) qualification hours; (2) non qualification hours; (3) homework and self-study; (4) activities outside of education; and (5) a typical week. Qualification hours are defined as the…

This report investigates the progression of students from General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) to A level; that is, the proportion of students who go on to take an A level in the same (or related) subject. Progression rates are presented by GCSE grade, and student gender. In addition, the report looks at the relationship between GCSE…

This report looks at the uptake of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) (and IGCSE/International GCSE) subjects in England in 2017. The data for these analyses was taken from the National Pupil Database (NPD). This is a database held by the Department for Education, consisting of results for all students in all subjects in schools and…