A-level top grades rise for third year in a row

Hundreds of thousands of students across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland received their A-level results on Thursday, August 13, 2026, with a record number of 18-year-olds expected to secure their first-choice university places. The results day marks a significant milestone for a cohort that was in Year 7 when schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proportion of A-level entries awarded top grades rose for the third consecutive year, with 28.5% achieving an A or A grade. This represents a 0.2 percentage point increase from 2025 and is the highest proportion outside the pandemic-affected years of 2020-2022. The overall pass rate for grades A to E remained steady at 97.5%. The total number of A-level entries surpassed 900,000 for the first time, driven by an increase in the 18-year-old population.

Sir Ian Bauckham, head of the exams regulator Ofqual, attributed the rise in top grades largely to the popularity and high achievement in mathematics. Maths was the most popular subject for the 13th consecutive year, accounting for 12.7% of all UK entries. "It's largely driven by those changes in maths, growing popularity at maths and the high achievements that we're seeing...