Wales GCSE results for Year 7 pupils during Covid lockdown

Pupils in Wales who had only been at school for six months before the first Covid lockdown are preparing to receive their GCSE results.

Christina, 16, who attends Pencoed Comprehensive School near Bridgend, said it was a “key moment to miss”.

Additional supports for students and more generous grading were scrapped this year as the system returned to normal after the pandemic.

Fewer high grades are expected, following a similar trend to A-level results, which have fallen closer to pre-Covid levels.

Qualifications Wales said this year’s results represented a “return to normal assessment and grading arrangements” after additional measures were put in place from 2020 to 2023.

The university said that in the run-up to results a statistical “safety net” would be deployed to support subjects whose performance was well below pre-pandemic levels, but confirmed this had not been necessary.

Students will also receive the results of their Welsh Baccalaureate, BTec and other qualifications on Thursday.

Christina said the disruptions due to Covid have not only made it harder to make friends, but have also affected her and her classmates’ attitudes towards studying.

“We were supposed to continue our studies and revise, but to my knowledge, no one in grades 7 and 8 did that,” she said.

“It’s only a year or two, but it’s a key period to miss.

“I missed so much, I tried to work hard, too hard, to make up for what I missed.”

Christina already has three GCSEs under her belt and will collect her results on Thursday knowing she has a scholarship to study at international school, Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan, from September.

Chris Parry, headteacher of Lewis School in Pengam, Caerphilly, and chairman of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Cymru, said the results were a “key indicator of the health of the (education) system”, although year-on-year comparisons were difficult.

He said it was important for the system to return to normal, but schools and students still faced Covid-related challenges, including low attendance.

“I think at some point we were going to have to get back to where we were in 2019 and it’s the good thing we did that this year,” he said.

“I think it’s important to point out that these students still have a lot of time left and there are still challenges within the system.”

Millie, 16, from Rhondda Cynon Taf, said she was “definitely nervous” but was trying to stay as positive as possible ahead of her GCSE results.

She said she expected mixed grades on Thursday after ups and downs during exams, including having to leave the room when she fell ill while doing an English assignment.

Taking exams with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) was difficult because of the change in routine, so she said “it’s not the work that worries me the most, it’s how I handled my exams.”

She plans to go to sixth form to take A-level exams and perhaps some resits, but said she was proud of her results, “because I did my best”.

There were almost 323,000 GCSE registrations this summer.

In Wales, grades range from A* to G – in England they are numbered from 9 to 1.

Major changes will be made to GCSEs in Wales from September 2025 after reforms aimed at aligning the qualifications with the Welsh curriculum, which began to be taught in all schools from September 2023.

The move to abandon separate qualifications in chemistry, physics and biology in favour of a dual science GCSE has proved controversial.

Qualifications Wales announced earlier this year that the new science GCSE would be taught from September 2026, rather than September 2025 as originally planned.