But there was a drop in the number of English entries being awarded at least a C, and the number of pupils taking a foreign language continued its steady decline.
Overall, 21.6% of grades were awarded an A* or A, an increase of 0.9 percentage points on last year.
More than 67.1% of entries were at grades A*-C, up from 65.7% last summer, an increase of 1.4 percentage points.
The overall pass rate at A*-G was rose to 98.6% from 98.4% last year.
The rises came despite the number of entries dipping again this year - there were more than 5.46 million entries this year, compared with 5.66 million in 2008.
The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which published the national GCSE results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland today, said the fall was in line with the reduction in the number of 16 year olds.
English results fell this year, 62.7% of entries were awarded at least a C grade, down 0.2% from 62.9% in 2008.
But the proportion of maths entries scoring A*-C rose 0.9% to 57.2%, from 56.3% last year.
There was an increase in the number of pupils taking separate exams in biology, chemistry and physics, while the number taking a single science GCSE have fallen.
Languages
Modern languages were again casualties, as the numbers of pupils taking French or German slumped for the seventh year.
This year there were 188,688 entries for GCSE French, down from 202,136 in 2008, a 6.6% drop, while German entries fell to 73,469 from 76,802 last year, a drop of 4.2%.
Entries to GCSE Spanish remain steady, with 67,070, compared with 67,108 last summer.
The slump follows the Government's controversial decision to make modern foreign language optional after the age of 14.
Entries to information and communication technology (ICT) also suffered a drop again this year, down 14.1% this year.
JCQ director Jim Sinclair said: "This is a day of celebration for students and their teachers. There has been good performance overall across most subjects including mathematics and languages. It is also reassuring to see increased entry to the separate sciences.
"The core subjects of English, mathematics and science continue to dominate and account for almost half of the full course entry."
Across the UK, about 750,000 candidates were waking up to their results, and will use their grades to decide whether they stay on at school to do A-levels or another course, or quit education to find work. Tweet
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Now, let's put all this into some sort of perspective, the GCSE was brought in to replace the 'O' Level and make it easier to pass, ok, by all means make it a little easier but come on guys, what does it say about the quality of education, about how easy it now is to pass this GCSE. What exactly is the GCSE now worth when I have just read in the Metro that an 8 year old has just passed it with a grade 'A'.
It is a well known fact that degrees are ten a penny and anyone can get one so they aren't worth the paper they are printed on either. Now with the use of calculators to do the thinking and reckoning up for them, who can miss a super grade 'A'.
Are you all going to jump up and down and say " oh aren't we clever, wow, what a super brain I have", when the next we here is that an unborn baby has passed a GCSE at 'A' grade?
As with everything else relating to education, things are always made easier and that makes any achievement more and more worthless. This also begs the question that if GCSE's and 'A' levels are that easy to get, what does it say about the quality of educatioon in universities who say these are a minimum requirement.
Regards and have a nice day
The fall in entries for information technology is disappointing, but may be so only if the qualification indicates a respectable fluency in programming beyond the spreadsheet-formula fare. I hope that those who didn't choose the ICT GCSE route saw that Scratch, Alice, Java, Perl, VB6 and the rest are better for them. I see little evidence that technology-specialist schools are supporting programming. Meanwhile, the online community is rich but impossibly diverse if one seeks progress without guidance.
I am getting a bit fed up of people assuming that GCSE's are easy and anybody gets an A.
I got 10 GCSE's this year all A grade and the amount of effort I put in to them to get these grades was shocking.
I would leave for school at 8, stay after school until 5 to complete coursework to come home and do even more coursework or revision in a different subject until 7 or 8 in the evening, which is a long day considering I would do the same thing the next day and the day after that.
This wasn't easy and towards the end of year 11 I would only stop revision for a few hours a day, which looking back was a bit too much.
However, I got A grades and I am very proud of them, even prouder as I know I put every effort into getting them. Hearing people put them down and say they are easy annoys me as how many of these people have actually sat GCSE's? Therefore who are they to say they are "easy"?
Maybe kids are being taught better, or are putting more hours in revising to get the grades, why do look at the achievement in a negative light and say the tests must be getting easier if more people are getting good grades? surely more kids getting better grades is a positive thing.
How very bitter you are Dustyuk! I wouldn't feel to fed up Ell93, opinions like these offer no substance and often come from bitter, cynical old dears reminiscing about back in their day when times where hard. Like you say most have probably not had any experience of studying profusely for 2 years solid to gain such good grades in GCSE's. I suggest Dustyuk that you go back to school, try to achieve 11 GCES's at Grade A and then feel free to comment on whether they are easy or not!
For those of you who think exams are getting easier.. think again!
I went to private school and came out with 4 A*s and 6 As at GCSE and worked very hard for them since year 7 (3rd form for the O level people here). Most people at my school came out with 10 or 11 A*s and we all had the same level of education.
Then I left and went to a standard college. I was predicted to get 4 As at A level.. how they were wrong! I worked just as hard as I did at high school and came out with A, C, D. Even after gaining an A* at GCSE I got a U in AS maths (I re-sat this and passed after a lot more hard work)... explain this?
I think at the end of the day, exams are not getting easier, the standards have not changed, it is all down the children getting smarting, and the level of education/teaching improving!
Before you make this claims, why don't you try the exams for yourself.. you can download them from the AQA, Edexcel or OCR websites along with the mark schemes....
hi,
Unlike SallyAlly, I have not insulted anyone, I have just given my opinion of which I have a right to state as have any of you. However, no matter how insulting your comment, I have noticed that you have all ignored the essence of my comment, that about what is a GCSE worth and how difficult it is if an 8 year old can pass it with flying colours.
The use of calculators in exams to do the thinking for them, where does using your own brain to reckon up come into it? This does imply that education is sorely lacking somewhere along the line if a student / pupil cannot reckon up on thier own. Does the use of a calculator in lessons and exams to do thier maths not say that they cannot do it.
Regards
Dustyuk
Your questions about the use of calculators are interesting, D. It is possible to deal with problems in trigonometry, for example, without a calculator: for easy cases Pythagoras' theorem is enough. Taylor expansions and the calculus background to understand them will allow an answer to anything in GCSE trigonometry but there is no training in the use of those tools at GCSE. I am a supporter of desert-island-stick-in-the-sand approaches to mathematics, but dispensing with calculators will oblige examiners to change the style of questions and teachers to give students better tools. All too much of an effort, I sense, when calculators offer speed and convenience to students well-trained in impatience at the expense of insight. Their teachers, too, are of a generation taught in those ways.
Ant, year 7 is/was first form - not third form.
Well Dustyuk, what a sad individual you are. If anyone is set a test the object is to pass it! You do not have the authority or information to qualify your statement. Maybe an 8 year old passed but would you? And whilst you speak of education, you may learn to spell their correctly as you wouldn't want to teach bad spelling to children.Maybe the 8 yr old could set you a test!
I'm afraid Dustyuk you have done exactly that, your opinion insults everyone who has taken a GCSE this year. Perhaps the use of calculators only serve to prove the increase in the level of difficulty of GCSE's. The student is being tested for their understanding of the theory, enabling them to combat any mathematical problem in the future. Imagine if all students were taught to complete problems without the use of a calculator, in a business environment this would be insane when dealing with complex problems. Then where would they stand? I presume you would want spreadsheets, calculators and any other technological advanced enablers banished. I also find it interesting that your argument is focused entirely on the use of calculators, what about every other subject? How are you suggesting those have been made easier? As for the comment about 8 year olds who have been able to pass GCSE's I suggest you do some research and you will find that in fact similar cases can be found as far back as when O Levels where being taken!
Dustyuk, at GCSE there are two papers, one is calculator and the other is non-calculator. These two different exam papers test different areas of maths, as Graham points out.. for trig. etc. What it the problem of using a calculator to do these sorts of calculations.. students still need to learn the rules and know how the calculation works in order to even be able to the use the calculator.. it saves time and I'm sure the top mathematicians would rather use a calculator, there is no need to learn the full extent of trig. etc and to remember the exact numbers in order to carry out these calculations. I think you need to look more closely at the papers before you start going on about the use of calculators being lazy. The second (non -calculator) paper, is based much more on algebra and equations, therefore a calculator is not needed.
If you still think that a calculator is not needed, try the calculator paper (you can find past papers on the AQA website, it is paper 2), and then see what you think! Thanks!
And Graham, sorry, I get confused, we called it 3rd form, my parents call it 1st year.. apologies!
Antonia, your comments are free of my entrenched cynicism - but I am disappointed to perceive so little curiosity among calculator users about how the calculator uses CORDIC alogorithms to handle trigonometry [it's just complex numbers]. The mathematics is so rich that to those who study it there's joy enough without the celebration we see when the examination results appear. For me, cerebration is better than celebration. I don't like honours. I get my pleasure from knowing, and arriving at what I know by a path I tread for myself. So for me and D there are reasons why we don't approve of calculators - but they're different reasons, I think.
my school got the best results in our area and we are now rated one of the most leading edge schools in the whole of England, im so proud, i achieved:
English- a*
maths-b
biology-a*
chemistry-a*
physics-a
music-a
religious education-a*
citizenship-a*
food technology-a*
spanish-a*
portugueese-a*