Key statistics in this year’s GCSE results

– The proportion of entries receiving the top grades (A/7 or above) has risen to 20.5%, up 0.5 percentage points on last year and back to the level of 2016. This is the first year-on-year rise for A/7 entries since 2011.

– 66.9% of entries received a C/4 grade or above, an increase of 0.6 percentage points on 2017 and back to the level of 2016. It’s the first year-on-year rise for C/4 entries since 2015.

– Just 732 16-year-olds in England taking at least seven reformed GCSEs achieved a grade 9 in all of their 9-to-1 graded subjects.

– The gap between girls and boys getting grade C/4 or above has narrowed since last year. 71.4% of girls got C/4 or higher, compared with 62.3% of boys, a gap of 9.1 percentage points. Last year the gap was 9.5 points.

– The gap between girls and boys getting grade A/7 or above has also narrowed since last year. 23.7% of girls got A/7 or higher, compared with 17.2% of boys, a gap of 6.5 percentage points. Last year the gap was 7.3 points. This is the smallest gap since 2010 and the first time it has narrowed since 2007.

– The most popular subject this year was Science: Double Award with 801,080 entries, followed by Mathematics (747,169) and English (733,085). The least popular subject was Manufacturing with 143 entries.

– The overall pass rate – the proportion of entries getting G/1 or above – was 98.3%. This is down slightly on 2017, when the figure was 98.4%. It is also the lowest overall pass rate since 2007.

– In total there were 5,470,076 entries for the exams, up 12,750 on last year (a rise of 0.2%).