Ever a person of habit, I decided to look at the numbers for maths A-level, as I have done in the previous 2 years.

There is a rise in numbers for 2006:

The government press release highlights this as the big success of the year, and declares that the trend has been reversed. Indeed this is true, as far as it goes: maths has risen as a percentage of A-levels back to the level of 2 years ago.

Of course, there is a lot of ground to cover before the damage of the previous trend is fully unwound:

The rise in the number of A grades has taken this to an almost absurd 43.5% of candidates. The number of A grades is up 20% in 5 years, against the decline in numbers taking the exam. One has to wonder if making the exam easier is doing more to encourage people to take the exam than any of the other measures taken.

Maths now has the highest percentage of A grades of any subject except for… further maths, and Irish (going by the available figures). Out of the major subjects (which I'm calling those with more than 10,000 entrants), the next highest A-rate is French at 36.2%. How long will they let maths continue to give such relatively high grades, I wonder.

(All figures for 2001 onwards taken from the JCQ press releases.)

(Previous discussion.)