CCEA releases GCSE Results 2020

The information below represents the provisional CCEA GCSE Results for this year.

CCEA GCSE entries have increased by 0.2% this year, from 140,734 to 141,039 entries. There has been a slight decrease in entries at age 15 (-0.1%) and at age 16 (-0.7%), however a 0.8% increase for 17 year olds.

This year outcomes increased across all grades. 37.1% of students achieved grade A* to A, a 5.7 percentage point increase on last year. The proportion of students receiving A* to C grades increased by 7.6 percentage points to 89.4%. There was also an increase in the A* - G pass rate of 0.9 percentage points to 99.7%.

Both male and female outcomes increased across all grades this year. At the A* grade, there was a 2.9 percentage points increase for males and 5.5 percentage points increase for females.

There has been an increase in GCSE English Language and Mathematics outcomes. In GCSE English there was an increase of 6.3 percentage points across A*- C Grades, with 87.2% of students achieving these grades. GCSE Mathematics saw a 6.9 percentage point increase at A* - C Grades, from 72.3% in 2019 to 79.2% in 2020.

There was a slight decrease in entries for STEM subjects, with a 0.7 percentage point decrease to 41.4%.

Overall, the proportional entry for Languages decreased by 0.1 percentage points, largely driven by a decrease in students studying French.  However, Spanish and German entries increased this year.

NOTES TO EDITORS

The data below represents the provisional GCSE results for CCEA Awarding Organisation qualifications only.

Northern Ireland has an open market for GCSE qualifications. CCEA Awarding Organisation has a 98% market share of GCSE qualifications.

The GCSE grades issued were based on the centre assessment grades provided by schools and colleges.

Table 1 CCEA GCSE entries and provisional results by year:

	2020	2019
Entries	141,039	140,734
%A*	12.4	8.1
%A* - C	89.4	81.7
%A* - G	99.7	98.8

Table 2: CCEA GCSE Gender comparisons

	NI 2020		NI 2019
	Male	Female	Male	Female
%A*	8.8	15.7	5.9	10.2
%A* - C	87.1	91.5	77.8	85.4
%A* - G	99.6	99.7	98.5	99

Table 3: CCEA GCSE English Language provisional results

CCEA GCSE English Language	2019	2020	Difference
A* %	4.4	6.9	2.5
A* - A %	23.0	28.3	5.3
A* - C* %	64.3	70.3	6.0
A* - C %	80.9	87.2	6.3
A* - G %	99.3	99.6	0.3

Table 4: CCEA GCSE Mathematics provisional results

CCEA GCSE Maths	2019	2020	Difference
A* %	5.9	8.4	2.5
A* - A %	26.2	30.0	3.8
A* - C* %	58.3	60.6	2.3
A* - C %	72.3	79.2	6.9
A* - G %	96.7	99.4	2.7

Table 5: CCEA GCSE Results by Centre (school / college type)

2020 (2019)	Grammar	Secondary
A* %	19.6 (13.3)	3.9 (2.1)
A* - A %	53.9 (47.8)	17.7 (12.4)
A* - C* %	90.3 (85.8)	56 (47)
A* - C %	97.6 (94.1)	80.1 (67.7)
A* - G %	100 (99.8)	99.5 (97.8)