Tyler Edwards
Reporting from Llanishen High School, Cardiff

Becca has just opened her results and did better than she expected, with a mix of Bs and Cs.

She's off to Cardiff and Vale College to study hairdressing.

“I find the subject [hairdressing] quite fun; I passed it and I’ve wanted to do it for quite a while,” the 16-year-old says.

How’s she celebrating tonight?

With a Chinese takeaway, including egg-fried rice.

Larissa Tairo
Reporting from Wright Robinson College, Gorton, Manchester

Image source, Larissa Tairo / BBC

It's proving to be a doubly-proud day for Martin Haworth this morning.

He's the head at Wright Robinson College in Gorton, Manchester, where he's been watching over his students getting their grades.

But he's also been nervously waiting for a phone call from his own daughter, Macey, who has just found out her GCSE results too.

He says she's landed 7s, 8s and 9s, including a 9 in drama, her favourite subject.

She wants to be a theatre actor and plans to go on to study drama at college.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

As Bethan and Chris have pointed out, there's a different story to tell depending on which of the three nations you're getting your GCSE results in.

This year the proportion of GCSEs marked at 4/C and above is:

• 67.4% in England, down from 67.8% in 2023
• 61.7% in Wales, down from 64.5%
• 82% in Northern Ireland, down from 86.6%

Some students in Wales and Northern Ireland – where the drop is steeper than in England - may feel disappointed, but the story here is bigger than one of individual performance.

There has been an effort to bring grades back down in line with pre-pandemic levels over recent years, ever since sharp rises in 2020 and 2021 when exams were cancelled and results were based on teachers’ assessments.

In England, the exams regulator aimed for that return to 2019 levels to happen last year (although they remained slightly higher). This year the pass rate is around the same.

But in Wales and Northern Ireland, it was always the plan that this year would be the moment grades fell back in line with pre-Covid levels.

At Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Llangynwyd School in Wales, Poppy says she is very happy with her results – she passed all her exams and got two As.

"I was really worried about English Language and Welsh – but I'm so happy with the results I got. I want to become a family liaison officer – so I'm going to stay on in sixth form and study psychology, criminology and health and social," she says, adding "I can't wait."

Madoc received five Bs, six Cs and an A.

"I'm so happy with my results – I was expecting just to pass and now I've got these," he says.

"It's so unexpected. I'm not sure what I want to do now, but I definitely know I want to stay in sixth form and education. I'm just so shocked."

Fraser also says he is very happy with his results – he received two Bs, six As and four A*s.

"I mean, I would've wanted a few more A*,but I'm really happy with what I got. I'll be staying on in sixth form and hopefully go onto study theatre after school,” he says.

“I didn't really sleep last night, and was really nervous this morning – I had to come here early to get them."

Chris Page
BBC News Ireland correspondent

And to look at Northern Ireland in isolation, 31% of GCSE entries have had an A or A* grade – roughly in line with the proportion before the pandemic.

Last year, the figure was 34.5%.

The drop in the proportion of top grades was expected – given the plan to get results back down to pre-Covid levels.

Bethan Lewis
BBC Wales Family & Education Correspondent

Let's look just at Wales, for a moment - and top grades, as expected, are down after the extra pandemic support measures came to an end this year.

But unlike last week’s A-level results, which were higher than in 2019, A* to C grades at GCSE are slightly down on the year before the pandemic.

Some of these grades include Year 10 assessments done under the more generous system last year.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

The GCSE pass rate across England, Wales and Northern Ireland has fallen for a third year running – with 67.6% of all grades at 4/C and above.

That pass rate is down from 68.2% last year.

So the overall pass rate has returned to levels last seen in 2019 - the last year exams were sat before Covid.

It’s far below what it was in 2020 and 2021, when exams were cancelled and results were based on teachers’ assessments.

Yes, but not much.

Only one change remained in place for exams this year.

In England those of you taking maths, physics, and combined-science exams were allowed to use formulae and equation sheets for the final year.

Exams were completely back to normal in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Overall, grades are expected to be similar to those in 2019.

It’s taken years for results to get back down to that level, after record grades during the pandemic when exams were cancelled.

England, Wales and Northern Ireland used slightly different timescales and strategies for getting grades back down though - so we expect to see this year’s grades drop more steeply in Wales and Northern Ireland than in England.

It doesn’t mean you’ve done less well than older siblings who got teacher-assessed grades or extra exam support in GCSEs a few years ago.

It’s all just part of the plan.

More now from schools minister Catherine McKinnell, who has also been speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

She says GCSE results are expected to be "roughly" in line with last year's results, when they fell back towards pre-pandemic levels.

That's good "in a sense" because it means they're back to "a sense of normality", she says.

But she notes there has been "an incredibly challenging journey" for those receiving their results today – they had just started secondary school when the pandemic hit.

They should be "incredibly proud" to receive their qualifications today, she says, adding the same goes for teachers and parents.

Bethan Lewis
BBC Wales Family & Education Correspondent

Spare a thought for the school leaders and other staff who have been busy building balloon arches and putting hundreds of results slips in envelopes, ahead of pupils collecting their results.

Chris Parry is head of Lewis School Pengam, in Caerphilly, and says he doesn’t sleep a lot at this time of year, worrying about results.

“We're just as nervous as the pupils are and their parents are because we want to see them do well,” he says.

It could be a particularly significant day for this school - founded in 1729 and the last single-sex state boys school in Wales.

There are plans to merge with the local girls school which could mean it’s the very last results day.

“A bit of an end of an era," says Parry.

Nicky Schiller
Reporting from Wright Robinson College, Gorton, Manchester

I'm here at Wright Robinson College in Gorton where at 08:00 the students gathered around their headteacher, clutching those all-important brown envelopes as they counted down from 10 before opening them.

From the smiles I saw most of the students seemed to have got the grades they wanted.

There were hugs and a few fist bumps for their friends before they started taking some selfies.

Smiles too from the teaching staff who have guided them through not only their exams, but Covid and the aftermath of the pandemic.

A big balloon arch with the words "Congratulations Class of 2024" sums up the feeling here this morning.

We've got our first tears of the morning at Wright Robinson College in Gorton, Manchester, where students have been ripping open their results in the last few moments.

It's sure to be an emotional day for so many of you, so just remember there will be plenty of people around to support you, whatever the outcome.

Image source, Larissa Tairo / BBC

Image source, Larissa Tairo / BBC

Image source, Larissa Tairo / BBC

Image source, Larissa Tairo / BBC

We've been hearing quite a bit already about the disadvantage gap, and the schools minister has been on BBC Breakfast this morning talking about how the government wants to deal with it.

Catherine McKinnell says she's "incredibly concerned" about the fact that students in some parts of the country, like London and south-east England, are likely to get more passes and top grades than those elsewhere, for example in the North East.

She says the government wants to "unleash opportunity" for all parts of the country by hiring more teachers (funded by adding VAT to private school fees), bringing in free breakfast clubs and improving mental health support in schools.

You’ll be hearing us talk a lot about GCSE students in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland today - but not Scotland.

That’s because 15- and 16-year-olds in Scotland study for National 5 qualifications rather than GCSEs.

Students in Scotland got their results on 6 August.

Many go on to study Highers and Advanced Highers, which are roughly equivalent to A-levels and level 3 BTec courses.

• Here's more on this year’s results day in Scotland

Every year, senior examiners decide the minimum marks needed for each grade.

This is normally made public on exam day. In England, you should be able to see grade boundaries on the exam boards’ websites at or just after 08:00. Here are the links:

• AQA GCSE grade boundaries , external
• Pearson GCSE grade boundaries , external
• Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR) GCSE grade boundaries, external

In Wales, the main exam board WJEC, will publish grade boundaries here, external at 09:30.

And in Northern Ireland, broad subject grade boundaries are already available on the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment (CCEA) website.

Grade boundaries for specific papers will be available after 09:00 here, external.

Individual results are now being released to students by schools and colleges.

Later this morning we’ll bring you the overall picture of results across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Stay with us and we’ll keep you updated throughout the day.

Lots of you will now be on your way to school or college, poised to tear those results open in just a few minutes’ time.

Stick with us to see those first envelope-opening moments from our reporters at schools and colleges across the country.

Best of luck.

The head teacher at Framingham Earl High School, near Norwich, tells BBC Radio 4's Today programme she believes the data will show a growing disadvantage gap.

Becky Arnold says from what she is seeing "is similar to last year" and the results are "moving back to those pre-pandemic levels".

"Unfortunately there is that growing disadvantage gap that we predicted would be likely," she says, linking it to issues such as persistent absence and the complexity of need in some cases, saying services for those pupils are "really under pressure"

She says she believes that when people drill down into the data over the coming months it's likely to show children with high levels of persistent absence will have lower grades than they were predicted at the end of primary school.

In some cases such pupils' grades may be "non-existent because they might not have been able to get into school", she says.

A reminder, we won't know how the national picture looks until later this morning.

Branwen Jeffreys
Education editor

In many ways, GCSEs give us the best picture of what has happened to teenagers during the Covid pandemic when the gap widened between the wealthiest and most disadvantaged.

That’s because unlike A-levels, or the many vocational subjects, almost every teenager takes maths and English GCSE.

These are also crucial passports to college courses, in England if you get below a grade 4 pass you will have to resit until you pass or reach age 19.

If you look at last year’s maths GCSE results, in Surrey 80% of grades were 4 or above, in Cornwall and County Durham just below 70%.

The education secretary in England, Bridget Phillipson, has promised to narrow the disadvantage gap.

Today we’ll get a real measure of the size of that challenge. It’s important to look at passes and not just at top grades.

And we are seeing across the UK, the return to pre-Covid standards with Northern Ireland and Wales completing that journey of bringing grades back in line with 2019.

So a bump down there is expected, as we saw in England last year.

Kristian Johnson
BBC News

Image source, Anna Champneys

Getting results can be stressful - but it’s never too late to go back into education, no matter what your results are.

Anna Champneys admits there was “no grand plan” when she left school at 16 without any GCSEs.

She left before sitting any exams, after years of struggling with the “regimented” classroom structure and missing several deadlines.

But, fast-forward almost 30 years, Anna now has a PhD and teaches more than 100 university students.

“If I could speak to young Anna, I would just be reassuring and say, 'don't worry'," she says.

• Read Anna’s full story here