11 September 2026
The start of a new school year brings a familiar ritual. Staff gather in the hall, coffee in hand, while senior leaders present the latest examination outcomes. Departments compare performance against predictions. School leaders consider the implications for accountability. Everyone asks the same question: did we do enough?
Behind those conversations lies a bigger puzzle. If teaching has improved so much over the last thirty years, why do headline GCSE outcomes now seem stubbornly resistant to further gains?
The answer is more complicated than many headlines suggest.
A long-term success story that is often overlooked
It is easy to look at recent GCSE results and conclude that little has changed. Yet the long-term picture tells a different story.
In 1993, around 54% of GCSE entries achieved a grade C or above, the equivalent benchmark used before the move to numerical grades. By the late 2000s that figure had risen above 70%. By the mid-2010s it was around 76%.
That represents a substantial improvement in attainment over two decades.
Those gains did not happen by accident. Schools became better at curriculum planning. Teachers gained access to research-informed approaches. Data analysis improved. Intervention programmes became more targeted. In short, the education system became significantly more effective at helping students succeed.
The real question is not why results have failed to improve. It is why improvement has become so much harder.
Understanding the grade 4 benchmark
Part of the confusion comes from the status of grade 4 itself. Technically, grades 1 to 3 are not failures. They represent a level 1 qualification. Students only fail a GCSE if they receive an unclassified grade. However, the practical reality feels very different.
Grade 4 is defined as a standard pass and grade 5 as a strong pass. Most employers expect a grade 4 in English and maths. Many post-16 routes depend upon it. Students who do not achieve a grade 4 in English and maths must continue studying those subjects after age 16.
As a result, grades 1 to 3 occupy an uncomfortable position. They are passes in qualification terms yet often fail to unlock the opportunities that students need. That distinction matters. A student with a grade 3 has achieved something meaningful, but the consequences of falling short of grade 4 can still be significant.
The resit dilemma
Only a relatively small proportion of resit students go on to secure the grade 4 they missed at school. For many young people, the experience becomes a cycle of repeated attempts with little improvement in outcomes.
This creates a difficult question for educators. If a student has spent eleven years in compulsory education without reaching the benchmark, is simply repeating the same qualification the most effective solution?
There are no easy answers, but it is increasingly clear that the debate extends beyond examination performance alone.
No, GCSEs are not designed to make a third of students fail
One of the most persistent myths in education is that GCSE grading deliberately limits the number of students who can achieve a grade 4. Even the Secretary of State for Education didn’t appear to understand this in a recent BBC Four interview.
The misconception usually lies in comparable outcomes. Because national results remain relatively stable from year to year, many people assume that a fixed proportion of students are doomed to fail. That is not how the system works.
GCSEs are primarily criterion-referenced qualifications. Students are assessed against a standard. There is no official quota that reserves grades for a certain percentage of candidates. In theory, if every student demonstrated the knowledge and skills required for grade 4, every student could receive grade 4 or above.
Comparable outcomes only exist to maintain consistency between exam papers sat in different years, not to impose a pass cap. If student attainment genuinely improves across the country, national outcomes rise.
The fact that roughly one-third of students consistently fall below grade 4 reflects patterns of attainment, not an administrative limit on success.
Why further improvement becomes harder
A useful way to think about educational improvement is through the idea of diminishing returns. Moving from 54% achieving the benchmark to 64% represents a major gain. Moving from 64% to 74% is harder. Moving from 74% to 84% is harder still.
The students who benefit most readily from improvements in teaching have largely already benefited from them. The remaining gap increasingly consists of students facing substantial barriers that schools cannot solve. These barriers might include:
- Persistent absence
- Low literacy on entry to secondary school
- Special educational needs
- Mental health difficulties
- Housing instability
- Caring responsibilities
- Language barriers
- Economic disadvantage
Excellent teaching remains essential. It can reduce the impact of these challenges, but it cannot remove them entirely. As schools have become better at teaching, external pressures have become more significant factors in determining outcomes.
The tug-of-war facing schools
Perhaps the best way to understand recent results is as a tug-of-war. On one side, schools continue to improve. Teachers have stronger subject knowledge, better resources and better approaches. On the other side sit factors beyond the classroom. Rising disadvantage, attendance challenges, literacy gaps and increasing levels of need all pull in the opposite direction.
The result is a system where enormous effort often produces modest gains. This does not mean teaching has stopped improving. It simply means that teaching is no longer the main factor limiting attainment for a significant proportion of students.
That distinction is important. A flat headline figure can hide years of genuine improvement in classroom practice.
Rethinking what success looks like
The persistence of the grade 4 barrier raises an important question: are we measuring the right thing?
Educators agree that every young person should leave school literate and numerate. The debate centres on how that should be assessed, and how students can be supported with limited assets.
One possible approach would be to separate essential literacy and numeracy skills from the wider GCSE English and maths specifications. A baseline qualification could focus on the practical skills needed for everyday life and employment, with students given multiple opportunities to demonstrate competence.
GCSE English and GCSE Maths could then become optional academic qualifications for students, much like French and Physics now, for those who wish to pursue deeper study.
Whether that model is desirable remains open to debate. Yet it reflects a growing concern that a single threshold currently carries too much weight for too many young people.
Looking beyond the numbers
The annual discussion about GCSE results often focuses on percentages, league tables and accountability measures. Those figures matter, but they can also obscure a more important reality.
The rise from 54% to around 67% over the past three decades represents genuine progress. Schools have become better at helping students succeed. Teachers have become more effective. Educational research has improved classroom practice.
At the same time, the final stretch of improvement is proving far more difficult than the first. The challenge facing education today is not simply how to teach better lessons. It is how to support the students whose barriers to success sit largely outside the classroom. Until that question is addressed, the annual September presentation is likely to end with the same uncomfortable conclusion: teachers move the dial, but it cannot solve every problem.
Want to know more? Watch our latest video on ‘At the chalk face’ where Craig & Dave unpack the reality behind GCSE results, comparable outcomes, grade boundaries and the way schools are judged on performance data. They explore why grade boundaries change, whether standards really are rising, and why the idea that a fixed percentage of students must fail is a major misconception.
We also get personal, sharing Dave’s experience supporting his own son through GCSE maths and the lengths parents sometimes have to go to when the system isn’t working for every learner. Its a great watch and one not to miss!
Looking for resources to help make the new academic year easier? Explore our Craig’n’Dave Resource Centre for ready-to-use Computer Science teaching resources, or use Smart Revise to support effective revision and reduce workload.
