The Independent Schools Council is a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation representing 1,270 independent schools educating more than 500,000 children. It exists to promote choice, diversity and excellence in education, developing talent at all levels of ability and from all backgrounds.

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57% of ISC pupils awarded the top A* and A grades at GCSE

2 September 2005

Commenting, ISC General Secretary Jonathan Shephard said, "These are outstanding results, the best ever. Many congratulations are due to pupils and teachers alike on a fantastic performance.

"The GCSE is a valuable test for the broad range of pupils. We do, however, continue to have concerns about the usefulness of some coursework and the GCSE's capacity to stretch pupils at all levels of ability.

"A greater and more immediate worry, though, is the increasing drift away from modern languages nationally. This should send alarm bells ringing not just at the DfES, but at the DTI and the Treasury as well.

"Because the independent sector values modern languages, in 97% of ISC schools it is compulsory to study a modern foreign language at least to GCSE level. That is the case in only 30% of maintained schools. Some say French is globally in decline but it is lazy - and plain wrong - to assume that everyone in Europe can understand English if we shout loudly enough. This year there was even a small fall nationally in the number of entries at GCSE for Spanish, an increasingly important language, as well as dramatic falls in entries for French and German. This is potentially damaging for the UK's future economic competitiveness."

Provisional GCSE results for 38,821 candidates from 567 schools, released by ISC, show significant improvements over 2004, especially in the number of top grades achieved.

Candidates in ISC schools took an average of 9.4 subjects each, and:

More than one entry in four (26%) received the A* grade, up from 24.9% last year (national average 5.9%, up from 5.5% in 2004).
56.9% of all exam entries were graded A* or A, up from 55.5% in 2004. (Nationally 18.2% of entries were graded A* or A, compared with 17.2% in 2004).
19 out of 20 entries (95.1%) achieved grades A* to C, up from 94.8% in 2004. (Nationally, 60.8% were graded A* to C, compared with 58.8% last year).
In 222 schools (39.2% of the total), every pupil achieved five or more A*-C grades. In a further 152 schools (a further 26.8% of the total), 95% or more of pupils achieved the standard.

The ISC list of GCSE results, now in its twelfth year of publication, includes the number of candidates and grades achieved at each school. As in 2004, points totals are included for each school, based on the tariff A*=8, A=7, B=6, C=5, D=4, E=3, F=2, G=1.

For ISC schools as a whole, the figures show that candidates achieved an average total of 61.1 points - roughly equivalent to a nine-subject result of 2 x A*, 4 x A, 3 x B - and an average subject entry result of 6.6.

Note: All figures are for England and Wales only. ISC received only a small number of returns from Scottish and Northern Ireland schools making comparisons in those countries inapplicable. The ‘national' figures have been adjusted to exclude Scotland and Northern Ireland.