Today's results have one significant headline. Media Studies is one of the few subjects showing a significant increase in entries in a year when the overall entries are down to the lowest figure since 2003.
There are some 6,000 less 16 year-olds according to the Joint Council for Qualifications. Add to this some students taking exams early and others shifting to vocational qualifications and this is given as the cause of decreases in some national curriculum subjects. Media Studies rose by 5.1% to 69,823 (1.1% of all entries). This quite an achievement for a non–NC subject. It represents a faster increase than seen in the A Level figures. Interestingly, ICT saw a significant decrease of 6.2%.
My main concern with the overall figures is the steep decline in French, German and Spanish which will have repercussions at A Level and therefore for media work in foreign language cinema post-16.
The results show A* grades for Media running at 3.7% (5.1% for girls only) and with 16.3% for Grade A, this means a rather higher percentage getting the top grades than for Media and Film at A Level.
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It's important to note though that the percentage of candidates gaining A grades in media/film (both at GCSE and at AS/A2) is significantly lower than for many other subjects. This fact should be used when challenging people who still insist that media is a soft subject and that students choose it in order to boost their A grades.
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