A-level results: students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland await grades – latest news
Students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland await A-level results
Good morning and welcome to our blog covering A-level results day, as thousands of students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland await news of their grades.
The results come as elite universities were expected to make up the shortfall of foreign students by being more flexible in terms of admissions.
It means more students will get their first-choice courses, with universities having accepted more A-level pupils achieving the equivalent of BBB than A*AA.
Universities are more likely to accept British undergraduates with lower grades, the Times (paywall) reported, after a 10% fall in foreign students – largely down to tighter visa rules, Brexit, economic instability in key markets and growing competition from universities overseas.
Fifty-five universities collected £557m less from international students in 2024-25 than two years before, it was reported.
For those who do not achieve their required grades for their conditional offers, or receive no offers at all, clearing is available.
Students who have changed their mind about what or where they wish to study, and those who have applied outside the normal application window, can also use clearing.
Here are the times to keep an eye on this morning:
-
8am – Ucas figures released on numbers accepted on to degree courses
-
9.30am – A-level results published, alongside data from the Department for Education on T-level results
Stay tuned throughout the morning for all the results and reaction.
Key events
The education secretary has said she will not oversee a “two-tier system” in education and ensure youngsters have good options to pursue technical and vocational routes and university.
Asked earlier in the week if there was a danger of an anti-university rhetoric being spun and putting young people off pursuing higher education, Lucy Powell told PA:
I’m absolutely clear I’m not going to be overseeing some kind of two-tier system in education.
This is about having high standards across the piece, high aspirations, high expectations.
Jo Saxton, head of Ucas, said boosting technical routes should not come “at the expense of higher education”.
She told a Higher Education Policy Institute webinar on Tuesday: “I find kicking higher education incredibly frustrating.
“I find it frustrating because of the best part of a decade that I spent leading schools in disadvantaged areas where going to university literally changed lives of whole families, and I look at this from the perspective of being mindful that still only around a third of UK school and college leavers are progressing into higher education.
“So, of course it’s right that the prime minister and secretary of state are committed to parity but I still think that there are lots and lots and lots of young people the best place for whom would be in a university.
“I absolutely support anything politicians want to do to support parity. It just shouldn’t be at the expense of higher education, which was good enough for them after all.”
The options available to school leavers came under the spotlight last month when Andy Burnham announced that technical subjects will be available to 14-year-old pupils from September 2028 in the latest of a long line of attempts to get parity of esteem between vocational and academic education.
The prime minister also pledged in a speech during his bid for the Labour leadership that the “days of a school system configured entirely around the university route will be brought to an end”.
Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, said she hopes the rhetoric around universities will not negatively affect the decisions students make after they get their results today.
She told the Press Association:
I have been looking at the Ucas application data and wondering whether we’d start to see this public rhetoric feed through into individual student decision-making.
I think it’s particularly important that we look at what happens amongst students who come from the least-advantaged backgrounds.
She said students who might be the first in their family to go to university could more likely be put off from going if “all you can hear is people talking it down”.
“I think if that’s what we start to see we should call it out,” Ms Stern added.
Asked for her message to students this admissions round, she said:
Make the right decision for you. Don’t let politicians make your decision for you.
Students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland await A-level results
Good morning and welcome to our blog covering A-level results day, as thousands of students across England, Wales and Northern Ireland await news of their grades.
The results come as elite universities were expected to make up the shortfall of foreign students by being more flexible in terms of admissions.
It means more students will get their first-choice courses, with universities having accepted more A-level pupils achieving the equivalent of BBB than A*AA.
Universities are more likely to accept British undergraduates with lower grades, the Times (paywall) reported, after a 10% fall in foreign students – largely down to tighter visa rules, Brexit, economic instability in key markets and growing competition from universities overseas.
Fifty-five universities collected £557m less from international students in 2024-25 than two years before, it was reported.
For those who do not achieve their required grades for their conditional offers, or receive no offers at all, clearing is available.
Students who have changed their mind about what or where they wish to study, and those who have applied outside the normal application window, can also use clearing.
Here are the times to keep an eye on this morning:
-
8am – Ucas figures released on numbers accepted on to degree courses
-
9.30am – A-level results published, alongside data from the Department for Education on T-level results
Stay tuned throughout the morning for all the results and reaction.
