Brighton Girls School is celebrating bucking a national A-level trend that has seen pupils across the country increasingly opting for science-based subjects as its students receive their grades today.
More and more A-level students in England have dropped humanities and arts subjects in favour of a narrower range of science-based subjects.
The trend follows the last government’s changes to A levels, made a decade ago, according to a report by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) published this week.
But Brighton Girls head Rosie McColl revealed on A-level results day that 60 per cent of her Year 13s had taken a spread of subjects from across the arts, sciences and humanities.
She said: “We can see from the NFER report that the changes that were made by the last government have really resulted in more students at 16 deciding to plump for STEM only.
“We feel that this is narrowing their career choices at such an early age when educational exploration is still really important.
“More than half of this year’s cohort at Brighton Girls picked a wide spread of subjects and many were surprised by how their favourite subjects swung from one to another as the A-level syllabuses unfolded.
“STEM subjects are still hugely popular here but the girls often are keen to mix them with humanities or arts subjects.”
She said that the school achieved an impressive set of results for 2024, with a 100 per cent pass rate and 44 per cent of all grades awarded being A* or A.
Ms McColl added: “I have nothing but praise for this year’s A-level students. Not only are they hard-working and smart but they also were really community-spirited.
“This was the group that conceived and launched our first Women in Politics Day, an event that looks set to run for years to come.
“It was also from within this group that our first student pantomime was devised and directed.
“They are talented hockey players, thespians, dancers, artists, budding politicians, philosophers and psychologists. They have been great fun, they have inspired us daily and they have simply been a joy to be around.”
The independent school, formerly known as Brighton and Hove High School for Girls, said that this year’s destinations include the universities of Oxford, East Anglia, Exeter, Sussex and Amsterdam.
Students are due to study subjects such as classics, dance, European studies, history, politics, philosophy and economics, biomedical science, chemistry and psychology.
The benefits of privilege
Then maybe it’s time for the State raises it’s game to the level of these young ladies. My congratulations to them all and to my granddaughter who got the results she wanted for a Police apprenticeship.