The proportion of top grades is best outside the pandemic but results in Wales and Northern Ireland fall compared with last year

Sixth-formers in England are enjoying a bumper crop of top A-level results, surpassing previous pre-pandemic highs in the proportion of A* and A grades awarded, thanks in part to strong performances in maths and sciences.

In maths, which had more than 100,000 A-level candidates nationally for the first time, a record 42% of 18-year-olds in England got A* or As, while a third of entrants got the highest grades in physics and chemistry.

But there was a different picture in Wales and Northern Ireland, where the proportions of top grades awarded fell compared with last year, in a return to pre-pandemic grade boundaries, although results in Northern Ireland remained better than those in England.

In England alone, 9.3% of entries gained A* grades, while 27.6% got A and A*s. Other than in 2020, 2021 and 2022, when awards were distorted by Covid, this year's results are higher than any year since the A* grade was introduced in 2010.

Ian Baukham, the head of Ofqual, England's exam regulator, said that grading standards had been maintained since last year, and described the outcomes as "broadly similar" to 2023.

In Northern Ireland 30.3% of entrants got A or A*, down by seven percentage points compared with 2023, while in Wales the proportion fell from 34% to 27.6%. But both remained higher than the equivalent in 2019.

Lynne Neagle, the education secretary for Wales, said: "This year, for the first time since the pandemic, A-level and AS Levels exams and assessments took place with the same arrangements as pre-pandemic.

"The results are what we hoped to see and are broadly similar to pre-pandemic outcomes.