Provisional Entries for Summer 2023
An annual report which presents provisional data on Entries for Summer 2023 GCSEs, AS, A levels and Skills Challenge Certificate for Wales.
Key Points
In 2020 and 2021, summer exams were cancelled due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and grades were determined by centres. In summer 2023, there are no changes to assessments, but advance information has been provided to learners and a different grading approach will be used. Entry figures in this release will have been affected by these different approaches to awarding grades, as well as by other disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Further information can be found in the background notes.
GCSEs
- 307,920 GCSE entries were made for summer 2023. This is down by 3.3% compared to GCSE entries for summer 2022.
- When compared to 2019, the number of entries in 2023 increased by 0.7%.
- Year 11 learners are the most likely to enter for GCSEs in the summer series, accounting for 89.5% of total entries.
- The number of Year 11 entries decreased by 0.4% this summer compared to summer 2022.
- Year 10 entries made up 6.4% of all GCSE entries this summer. There were 19,825 entries from Year 10 learners in summer 2023. This is a decrease of 32.2% compared to last summer, when there were 29,230.
- Year 12 or above entries decreased by 0.1% this summer, making up 3.9% of total GCSE entries.
AS level
- There were 42,080 AS level entries in summer 2023 in Wales, 5.3% more than in summer 2022 and 1.0% more than in 2019.
- There were 36,255 entries from Year 12 learners, accounting for 86.2% of all entries, more than the proportion in 2019 when 76.5% of entries were from Year 12 learners.
- AS entries from Year 12 learners in 2023 are lower than 2022 but higher than 2019.
- There were almost 2.5 times as many entries from Year 13 learners this summer compared to 2022. The number of Year 13 entries has decreased by 41.1% this summer compared to summer 2019.
A level
- There were 33,140 A level entries for summer 2023, 8.7% fewer than in summer 2022.
- There was a decrease of 2,945 entries for Year 13 learners. Year 13 learners accounted for 92.2% of all A level entries this summer.
- Year 14 and above entries have dropped by 9.3% between summer 2023 and summer 2022.
There are a number of factors that can influence why entries for year groups might change over time, for example changes to:
- Population size;
- Entry behavior e.g. when learners are entered for their GCSEs;
- The number of qualifications of each type being taken on average;
- The types of qualifications being taken in post-16.
As this release is based on counts of entries at qualification level it is not possible for us to quantify the impact of such factors. We have commented on factors influencing changes in entries only where we are confident that these factors are likely to be associated with a change.
Contact
Statistician
Tel: 01633 373 250
Email: statistics@qualifications.wales
Press
Tel: 01633 373 222
Email: media@qualifications.wales