Official Statistics

Annual qualifications market report: academic year 2015 to 2016

The report provides an overview of the qualifications market and provides a single reference point about participants in the market.

From:
Ofqual
Published
20 July 2017

Applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales

Documents

Annual Qualifications Market Report 2015-16

Ref: Ofqual/17/6242

PDF, 1.11 MB, 48 pages

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Data - GCSE AS and A level Qualification Certificates 2015-16

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 126 KB

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Pre-release access list

MS Word Document, 12.5 KB

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Details

Main findings

  1. Just under 15 million certificates were awarded in 2015 to 2016, 7% fewer than in 2014 to 2015.
  2. The fall was driven largely by a fall in the number of Level 1, Level 2 and Level 1/2 qualifications awarded.
  3. The number of awarding organisations recognised by Ofqual was 156 - this is 7 fewer than a year earlier.
  4. The number of available qualifications increased by 3% compared to 2014/15 to just over 36,000, of which about 14,550 had an award made.
  5. Twenty awarding organisations accounted for 90% of all certificates awarded during the academic year - AQA awarded nearly one-quarter (23%) of all certificates closely followed by Pearson.
  6. More certificates were awarded in the science and mathematics sector subject area than any other in 2015/16 (21% of all certificates awarded).
  7. For GCSE, AS and A level more certificates were awarded in the science and mathematics sector subject area (38%) than any other area in 2015/16 while for qualifications other than GCSE, AS and A level, more certificates were awarded in the preparation for life and work sector subject area (28%) than in any other area.

User feedback

We welcome your feedback on our publications. We are currently refershing this publication for the next release. Should you have any comments on how to improve it to meet your needs please contact us as statistics@ofqual.gov.uk.

Published 20 July 2017