A-level results day 2016: Anxious wait over for students across Shropshire
Students are today returning to schools and colleges across Shropshire and Mid Wales to collect their A-level results.
Early results show a slight increase in the number of top grades being awarded, it has emerged.
Analysis of the entry levels for the traditionally top-scoring subjects, such as maths, indicates the percentage of students achieving an A or A* will increase.
The number of boys achieving the very top grade could pull further ahead of girls due to a rise in take-up of maths – typically a high-scoring subject.
Teachers were today passing exam results to students and were on hand to offer advice, amid those tears of joy and disappointment.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, has studied the national trends on A-levels for this year.
Last year, boys held a 0.9 per cent lead over girls at A* grade, although girls had a 0.4 per cent lead at A and A* grade combined – having out-performed boys every year since the millennium.
Entries to maths and further maths are up again, the former now replacing English as the subject with the highest intake – 85,980 entries compared with 78,800.
Since they award by far the most A* grades, this could lead to an increase in A* grades overall.
Prof Smithers said: "The grades have been narrowing since 2006.
"Boys tend to cluster in the subjects that give out a lot of the top grades, such as maths, Greek and Latin.
"Girls cluster in subjects like English that offer relatively few of the top grades, like English and psychology.
It could be that boys go further ahead this year due to the increase in people taking maths and further maths."
Last year, the proportion of A-levels scoring at least an A grade fell by 0.1 percentage points to 25.9 per cent.
Official figures for 2015 showed that 8.2 per cent of entrants received an A* grade, the same figure as the previous year.
The overall pass rate rose to 98.1 per cent in 2015, having fallen the previous year for the first time in three decades.
But it comes amid concern for the future of one of the staples of the A-levels programme.
The number of students opting for general studies courses has plummeted in recent years, having been a mainstay of the top 10 most popular courses between 1995 and 2015.
