Find out what's happened to the overall pass rate and how subject, school and sex are affecting success
Get the data here
Get the data here
A girl looks at her A-level exam results - we look at the data to work out what she might see on the page. Photograph: Darren Staples/Reuters
The overall pass rate has stayed about the same, with 98.1% of students getting A*-E grades. But what else do we know about the results of the 850,752 exams taken in 2013?
Grades compared across subjects
Each year, the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) collects together the results from the UK's largest exam boards. Although the pass rate has stayed the same, the proportion of students getting the top marks has fallen by 0.3%.
That varies considerably between subjects - and in many cases, the grade breakdown contradicts popular assumptions about which subjects are 'easy'. Only 1.3% of Media Studies students got an A*, compared to 28% of those taking an A-level in Mathematics Further.
This year compared to previous ones
This year, 26.3% of students got A* or A grades in their A-levels - down 0.3% from 2012. That's the second year of decline after decades of extremely steady growth - the graph below shows just how consistent, and dramatic that rise has been.
Analysts such as Alan Smithers from the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham put this down to the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual)'s 'comparable outcomes' policy.
The first year of the A-level was 1951, when just 103,803 students took the exam. Since then, the number of students in the UK sitting this type of qualification has increased to more than 8x that number. The slight decline since 2011 may be related to the recent decline in the number ofuniversity applications in the UK.
The pass rate has also steadily grown since the qualification was introduced.
Gender gap
Only 37% of all 18 year olds take A levels - and of all this year's entrants, 54% were girls.
Boys and girls choose different subjects at A-level - and they perform differently too. The English classroom is overwhelmingly dominated by girls who make up 72% of all entrants. Psychology, Sociology, Art and Design as well as Biology are also more popular among girls as subject choices. But traditional subjects such as Mathematics and Economics are more popular among boys as well as tech-related choices such as ICT and computing. 79% of all pupils studying physics were boys.
Once on the course, success rates also differ. On the whole, the probability of getting an A* was relatively equal between the genders (boys were 0.5% more likely to get the top grade) but that gap broadened considerably for different subjects. There were 3.3% more boys than girls with an A* in maths, while girls were almost 10% ahead of boys for A*s in Irish.
Subject choices compared
Modern foreign languages continue to decline in popularity. The number of students taking Spanish may have edged up since 2012 by 4.1% but French has fallen by 9.9% and German by 11.1%.
While subjects like Media Studies have witnessed a 9.5% decline in the number of entrants, Economics has witnessed a surge in popularity.
There's lots of data here including regional trends, and results for AS levels and Advanced Extension Awards. Tell us which bits you'd like to see us dissect by posting a comment below.
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