Education Secretary David Blunkett is calling on local authorities to look again at programmes tackling boys' underachievement. The number of teenagers getting at least five A to C grades has risen every year since 1989. Last year, the figure was 47.8 per cent. Girls scored more than half of all top GCSE passes in 1999 for the third year in a row. About 40,000 examiners and moderators have marked around 20 million separate scripts and pieces of coursework this year.
Pupils take an average of eight or nine GCSEs.
More than 600,000 students sit each of the two most popular subjects, maths and English. Most students take English, maths and science. There are more than 50 different subjects to choose from, including combined GCSEs in which candidates can do a course in related subjects such as IT and business studies. Entries for information technology rose by 8 per cent from last year, mirroring a growing interest in computing at all levels of education. The number of pupils opting for a Short Course in French fell by 21.9 per cent, while entries for history dropped by 21.4 per cent.