GCSE results live: gender gap smallest ever as pupils across England, Wales and Northern Ireland receive results

 Boys show improved results in major subjects while girls slip back in traditionally strong subjects such as English

Pamela Duncan

The class of 2025 had a lot to prove. The Covid pandemic disrupted their transition from primary to secondary; lockdowns meant they spent a chunk of second level learning online or in stop/start in-person schooling; and they missed the usual key stage 2 benchmark. All this combined meant no one knew quite what to expect today.

Well, we need not have doubted them. Not only did this year’s cohort do better than last year’s but they outperformed their 2019 peers (we don’t make comparisons with the 2020 and 2021 results because they were either teacher-assessed or 2022 which was exam-based but with mitigations in marking).

And this isn’t because they were marked softly: “results are a true reflection of the students’ ability, and there is no mitigation in place” due to the pandemic disruption,” Sir Ian Bauckham, Ofqual chief regulator said at this morning’s press briefing. “This year’s grade shows “a stable performance and the results look similar to those achieved in 2024”.

But dig deeper and you’ll see that Covid times do appear to have affected girls’ performance. The gender gap is the smallest it’s ever been. We’ll dig into that more deeply a bit later.

Pamela Duncan is data projects editor at the Guardian