Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

Let's have a look now at the top GCSE grades at different types of school in England.

Some 66.2% of entries from selective schools and 53% of entries from private schools got grades 7/As and above.

That's compared to 23.3% of comprehensive schools and 25.6% of academies.

The gap between private schools and these categories of state-funded school has narrowed compared to the past two years, but is wider than it was in 2019.

Data published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, external last week suggests there has been barely any change in the attainment gap between wealthy and disadvantaged pupils at GCSE for 20 years.

It also suggests that the average gap in per-pupil funding between state and private school pupils rose from £3,100 in 2009-10 to £6,500 in 2020-21.

But the "disadvantage gap" is about more than school spending – especially for students in this year group, who did so much home learning.

Family income will have influenced things like access to laptops and the internet, as well as the amount of physical space students had to study.

Steve Duffy
BBC Wales

Image source, Getty Images

As with England and Northern Ireland, top GCSE grades in Wales have dropped since 2021 but are still higher than pre-pandemic levels. Some headline figures for Wales include:

• 25.1% of grades were A and A* - down on last year but a 6.7 percentage point rise on 2019
• 68.6% of grades were A* to C grades, which was a 5.8 percentage point improvement on results before the Covid pandemic
• Girls outperformed boys at the top grades
• In maths, 18% of grades were at A* and A, a 5% increase on 2019

Wales is slightly behind England on the very top grades and also behind Northern Ireland. Welsh Education Minister Jeremy Miles said students should be proud of their achievements.

"I welcome these results as we transition back to exams this year - it's great to see what our learners have achieved," he added.

Image source, .

Shona Elliot
Reporting from Wigan

Madison was relieved to get her Performing Arts BTec results today - not just because she passed, but because not everyone expecting BTec results has received them at all.

The exam board, Pearson, has said 5,700 students are still "ineligible" to receive a result because of a lack of information submitted.

Madison, 16, who goes to the Deanery Church of England High School in Wigan, said: “I was worried it was going to happen to me. I was panicking even more about getting my results but then missing one."

“It added more pressure but it’s all worked out in the end. I’m just so glad I’ve got it now.”

Opposition parties have been weighing in on the regional differences highlighted in this morning's GCSE grades.

Labour says the Conservative government has "failed" children, while the Liberal Democrats claim the government "deserves an 'F' for letting down these pupils".

The government's schools minister said earlier that the divide had been getting smaller before the pandemic. He said it wasn't just up to the government to address current inequalities but also to individual schools.

These brave students in Luton agreed to open their results live on BBC News a bit earlier this morning.

Did they get what they were hoping for?

Fingers crossed...

Image source, Michael Cooper

There's been a fall in the proportion of top GCSE grades awarded in Northern Ireland compared to last year – but top marks are higher than 2019 - which is the last year of formal exams.

Grades A* and A were awarded to about 37% of GCSE students – which is higher than in England and Wales where just over a quarter of pupils have received top grades.

Girls also continued to outperform boys in Northern Ireland - around 42% of entries from girls received A* or A grades compared to 32% of boys.

You can read more on Northern Ireland’s results here.

The grading system for GCSEs in England changed from letters (A*-G) to numbers (9-1) four years ago.

Pupils need a 4 for a "standard pass" and 5 for a "strong pass".

Wales still has a letter-based GCSE grading structure.

In Northern Ireland, there is a nine-category grade scale from A* to G, including a C*.

If students in Northern Ireland or Wales have taken exams set by English boards, they will get their results in the 9-1 format.

The number scale isn’t directly equivalent to the letters, but the two scales do meet in certain places - read more here.

Schools Minister Will Quince has been talking about the delays to BTec results.

Quince says the exams regulator, Ofqual, is looking into it - and that Education Secretary James Cleverly has met with the awarding bodies "to ensure these issues are being addressed".

Quince points out the same thing happened in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

"We've got to everything we can to try and iron it out so it doesn't happen next year," he adds.

An exam board has apologised to everyone whose BTec Level 2 results are delayed today.

Last week, thousands of students were left waiting for their BTec Level 3 grades - which are roughly equivalent to A-levels. And this week, it's happened again with the Level 2 results, which are similar to GCSEs.

Exam board Pearson says as of last night, 5,700 students were still "ineligible" to receive a result because they did not have all the information needed to award a grade.

This number will keep going down as they resolve information with schools and colleges, the exam board says.

It advises anyone still waiting for results to speak to their school or college for advice.

We're hearing more about those regional disparities from the ground now at a school in Sunderland.

Thornhill Academy head teacher, Sue Hamilton, says it's often "easy and convenient" to compare schools' grades on their "headline figures" - which today are showing a significant North-South divide in GCSE grades.

But Hamilton says that misses out the important context of the differences between the communities they serve.

"A lot of our children are very disadvantaged and have been very disadvantaged throughout their school career," she says.

"Where we are now, some families are having to make a choice about feeding their children or themselves, they're making decisions about heating their homes. Those are things that are weighing massively on our families.

"When you look at that - and you add to that the fact we've had a pandemic - there's a lot of work that is needed to support those young people."

Shona Elliott
Reporting from Wigan

Ibrahim, another of the students we've been following this morning at the Deanery Church of England High School in Wigan, is heading off on holiday after receiving top grades today.

While the hard-working student is already thinking about his AS Levels, mum Howayda plans to make sure he enjoys a well-deserved break before he starts studying again.

“He will spend all day today with friends and then tomorrow we will go to Dublin to give him a nice holiday so he can start the next year motivated,” she says.

Howayda's also looking forward to relaxing on holiday now the worry of expecting exam results is finally over.

“I am so happy today but yesterday I did not sleep the whole night," she says.

"Home-schooling was a bad time for all of us, studying online is not like going to school. It was a horrible time for us all but today I am so happy and so proud.”

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

More on those regional differences now.

In a joint open letter,, external the Northern Powerhouse think tank, Schools North East and the education charity SHINE warn that parts of the country like the North East that were already behind the South have been set back further by the “disproportionate learning loss” when schools and classes closed for different periods in the pandemic.

Parts of the North, for example, spent longer stretches under stricter Covid rules under England’s tier system in 2020.

Labour has accused the Conservative government of leaving a “legacy of unequal outcomes that are holding back kids and holding back communities”.

The Department for Education in England says it has “set out a range of measures to help level up education” alongside its £5bn Covid catch-up fund, which includes cash for tutoring.

That fund is just a third of what was originally recommended.

And it’s clear this divide is not a problem that will end with Boris Johnson’s time in Downing Street.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

There are significant differences in the percentage of top grades across the country.

In London, 32.6% were marked at grades 7/A and above, compared to just 22.4% in the north east of England and in Yorkshire and the Humber.

The percentage-point gap here - between the regions with the highest and lowest proportions of top grades - is more or less the same as it was in 2021. But it is wider than it was in 2020 and 2019.

Business leaders have called on the government to address what they say is a deepening education divide between the North and the South, by giving schools more resources and funding. More on that shortly.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

Girls have outperformed boys every year since GCSEs were introduced in the late 1980s, and this summer is no different.

30% of girls got the top grades - 7/As and above – compared with 22.6% of boys.

The gender gap in these top grades has narrowed by 1.6 percentage points since last year.

That gap at grades 4/Cs and above has also narrowed - although very marginally.

Derek Skipper has did his last maths exam in 1946 - and today he's finally got his maths GCSE exam, which the 92-year-old shared with BBC Breakfast.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

At GCSE, the proportion of top grades - 7/As and above - is 26.3%.

Again, it’s lower than last year (28.9%) but higher than it was in 2019 (20.8%).

It could mean we see more appeals than last year, as some top students will be surprised by their lower marks.

The percentage of top grades isn’t the same across the board.

It varies depending on where you live in the UK – partly because of variations in Covid lockdowns and how they affected different communities and schools.

More now from the school we've been at in Wigan this morning as students open their results.

Many have been surprised with their grades, delighted to have achieved better results than they thought they would.

Deputy head Leanne Turner said her students had "outperformed anything we could have hoped for... they've got the results that they deserve with all that effort that they've put into it".

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

The fall in the pass rate this morning matters because in England, where most GCSE students live, they need to pass GCSE maths and English with grade 4 or above in order to move on to further study, and do their A-levels or T-levels.

If they don’t get this, they should still be able to move on to whatever course they choose to next - but they will have to resit their GCSE while they do it.

So today’s results mean there will be more students who will need to resit than there have been in the past two years.

These grade 4 passes could be about to become more important, too, for those in England who want to eventually study at university.

The Department for Education has floated the idea of minimum grade requirements in order to get student loans. Getting at least a grade 4 in English and maths at GCSE (or equivalent) is one option it’s considering.

Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent

The pass rate for this year's GCSEs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has fallen since 2021, but remains higher than 2019.

Overall, 73.2% of GCSEs were marked at grades 4/C and above this year - down from 77.1% last year, when grades were decided by teachers.

It is still significantly higher than in 2019, the last year exams were sat before Covid, when it was 67.3%.

The fall since last year is not because this year group is any less capable. It’s the result of a system-wide change.

That might not be much comfort to students who were hoping their grades would be higher this year, but they should bear in mind that there will be many others in the same boat.

England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, has called 2022 a “transition” year, with grades being brought down from the highs of the past two years to be more in-line with pre-pandemic results.

But they were still designed to be higher than 2019, out of “fairness” to students in this year group, who have experienced so much disruption to their education because of Covid.

Image source, Getty Images

We've just heard more from schools minister Will Quince.

Asked by the BBC about increases in regional inequality in education, he says “there has always been regional disparity”, but adds the pandemic has made this worse.

“Every year up until the pandemic, we did see that the attainment gap reduce, but the pandemic has had an impact, we know it has,” says Quince.

He adds that disparity isn’t just regional, but also affects areas like coastal towns.

It’s up to both the government - with its levelling up agenda - and schools to address these inequalities, he tells the Today programme, adding that investment in early years education is key.