Girls outperforming boys at school is something we had almost begun to take for granted.
Yet while it still holds true throughout primary and secondary education, 2025 is the year the tables turned when it comes to A-levels.
This year, 28.4 per cent of male candidates received an A* or A score, compared to 28.2 per cent for their female counterparts.
This is the first time boys have taken the lead since 2018, and only for the third time in modern grading history.
What or who could explain this unexpected reversal of academic fortunes?
Experts were quick to suggest the success was down to boys’ subject choices: they tend to favour STEM fields where the right-or-wrong answers allow exam-takers to get closer to full marks than in the humanities or arts.
While their soaring popularity is undoubtedly real – with male entrants for further maths up 7.6 per cent on last year and economics up 5.7 per cent – the subjects driving the overall gain are far broader.
Boys improved year-on-year in the share of top grades in 25 out of the 41 subjects on offer, according to the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ). Girls did so in only 16.
Amongst courses available in all UK nations, boys’ performance increased the most in art and design (up 2.8 points), modern languages (up 2.8 points) and drama (up 2.3 points).
But the impact of the most subscribed subjects, even if small, cannot be ignored.
Maths was the most popular once again for both genders, accounting for 12.7 per cent of papers handed in this summer.
While boys’ equation-solving skills held firm – their A*/A share rising 0.1 points – the girls lost a full percentage point.
Factoring in the number of candidates sitting each exam to obtain their weighted contribution to the overall change reveals chemistry had the biggest influence.
Boys’ share of top grades in chemistry, their fourth most popular subject, rose 1.2 points from 34.3 to 35.5 per cent.
The roughly 28,000 boys producing that result alone dragged their sex’s all-round result up by 8.3 per cent.
Their newfound prowess in art and design came second (a 7.3 per cent boost), followed by business studies (6.7 per cent).
Another hint comes from the headline result split by age.
Adding an extra decimal shows the headline difference between the genders across all UK candidates came to 0.26 points (so actually 0.3 when rounding).
But looking at the grade distribution for 18-year-old candidates alone, this space shrinks to 0.12 points.
Exam-sitters of this age made up the vast majority of candidates – 807,420 out of the total 882,509, or around 91.5 per cent.
This suggests that among the 75,000-odd entries in other age groups, such as pupils taking their A-levels early aged 16 or 17 or people who resat them after the age of 18, the male contingent excelled.
National figures, meanwhile, suggest English boys deserve particular acclaim.
They improved the most of either gender in all three nations, up 1 point from 27.4 to 28.4 per cent.
As England makes up the lion’s share of all UK candidates – over 9 in 10 of the roughly 400,000 boys that sat exams this year – they had a profound effect. For their part, English girls fought back with a gain of just 0.2 points.
Boys also made headway across the Irish Sea (up 0.7 points), where girls saw a modest decline (down 0.3 points).
However, as stressed by the official examination board, the swing in favour of boys is quite marginal.
The JCQ said fluctuations from one year to the next were inevitable, and that this slim disparity was well within their expected margins.
Further down the grading curve, boys are not outperforming girls at all. The latter actually fared better in avoiding the lowest possible grades: 79.6 per cent of them got a C or above, compared to 76 per cent of boys.
A total of 12,151 male candidates received a U (ungraded), compared with 10,252 for their female counterparts.
Regional disparities
Pupils in England were again outshone by their counterparts elsewhere, with 28.2 per cent of entries awarded an A* or A this summer – rising to 29.5 per cent in Wales and 30.4 per cent in Northern Ireland.
But this masks stark differences between the English regions, where the proportion of top grades increased everywhere except the North East and the West Midlands, where they declined one percentage point and 0.6 percentage points respectively.
Pupils in the East Midlands saw the highest jump in A*s and As to 23.8 per cent – up from 22.5 last year. But London remained by far the strongest region, with 32.1 per cent of A-level entries scooping the top two grades.
Rutland tops the counties
At an even more granular level, Rutland’s reign atop the county charts continued for a seventh year in a row, according to separate data published by Ofqual since 2019.
Some 41.2 per cent of candidates in the rural East Midlands shire clinched top marks in 2025, the only area where more than two-fifths of pupils were able to boast as much.
Greater Manchester, however, proved the setting for the greatest uplift in grades, rising two points since 2024 from 26.1 to 28.1 per cent A*/As.
Overall, just over two-thirds of English counties (68.1 per cent) saw a rise or flatline in top grades.
Grammar schools catch up to independents
The attainment gap between private schools and the state sector narrowed slightly this year after selective schools posted their best ever results outside of the pandemic.
Grammar schools and other selective institutions saw 43.7 per of their A-level entries receive A*s and As – up one percentage point compared to 2024.
Meanwhile, the share of top grades in the independent sector slipped by 0.1 percentage points to remain broadly stable at 48.5 per cent.
The results come at a crucial moment for private schools as they try to prove their worth, after the Government’s VAT policy forced most to raise fees by around a fifth from Jan 1.
The narrowed gap between grammar schools and private schools this year will likely toughen competition in the state sector, as fee-paying parents consider their options.
Struggles in STEM subjects
Maths, psychology and biology remained the most popular A-level subjects this year, alone accounting for just under 30 per cent of all exams sat. Of the three, however, only maths saw an increase in entries.
Excluding digital technology, only on offer in Northern Ireland, art and design subjects clocked the highest increase in top grades, rising 3.5 per cent this year, tailed by modern languages other than French, Spanish or German, media studies and English language.
The increase follows some concerns that students may be using AI tools such as ChatGPT for coursework-heavy subjects.
By contrast, several core STEM (Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics) subjects experienced slight falls, with maths down 0.3 percentage points this year, chemistry down 0.1 points, and further maths down 0.2 points.