Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, 2020 has not been an orthodox year for students taking their GCSEs and A-Levels. To many students’ disappointment, the exams were cancelled and grades were awarded based on a mixture of mock results and teacher assessment. Due to this, it was always inevitable that some students would feel hard-done-by and will feel like the result they were given wasn’t what they would have achieved had they actually been able to take the exam. I extend my warmest sympathies to those of you in that position – it must be difficult. However these results, as strange as the circumstances may be, are still genuine GCSE results and all students should be proud of the results they were awarded.
Overall, 734,301 candidates entered for GCSE mathematics in 2020. The results were in general fairly similar to 2019, if not slightly better.
Metatutor’s results were mixed when compared to last year.
In one respect, our highest-achieving students did even better than last year, with 24% of our students achieving a Level 7 or higher, which is almost double last year (13%). That also equates to 60% of our higher tier students receiving a Level 7 or higher, which is phenomenal. In 2019, 29% achieved this. We also outperformed the general UK population for every grade 4 or higher except for the top two grades, which is very pleasing.
But our overall pass rate fell from 88% in 2019 to 76% in 2020, which is disappointing. However, I think this is a side-effect of the exams being cancelled. We had numerous students with whom we were only able to have a handful of sessions before lockdown came in March – if we could have had 3 more months of tuition with the student, I am sure the results would have been better. So in a way, this year’s lower pass rates just shows the value of having more sessions with our tutors. However, you are still 9% more likely to pass if you go with Metatutor than if you don’t!
All of our A-Level students also passed their exams.
The average grade achieved by our students was 4.88, which is up from last year (4.81) and is still considerably higher than the UK average grade (4.54).
The below table shows the percentage of students that achieved each grade or above, for our students and the UK as a whole over the last two years. All UK data used can be found here.
