Why percentages getting each grade differ between A level subjects, including French, German and Spanish

 

Thanks to David Blow, ALL Fellow,  for sharing this pdf document explaining why percentages getting each grade differ between A level subjects, including French, German and Spanish.  The explanation draws on Transition Matrices  relating to the A Levels taken in 2025. 

This information is published alongside the official DfE figures, so the 2026 information will be available late Autumn / early Spring.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xFt_uKwnaGyRPsuhqrPF29bIGMWW72qe/view?usp=sharing

Page 1 of the 4 page document is pasted below:

DfE 16-18 Transition Matrices 2025

https://department-for-education.shinyapps.io/ks5-transition-matrices/

 The DfE transition matrices (TMs) tell you for the starting average GCSE prior-attainment band of students how many nationally gained each grade.   For example, in French, for an average GCSE score between 8 and 9, there were 1,689 candidates, of whom 466 obtained a grade A*, 769 obtained a grade A, etc. Note the left-hand column of candidates with unknown prior GCSE attainment, which is excluded from “prior” attainment columns on the right.

 The TMs for French, German and Spanish are shown below, first as numbers of candidates, and then as percentages getting each AL grade for a given GCSE prior attainment.

 Comparison of subjects

Different prior attainment

 

GCSE prior	Unknown prior	<1	1-<2	2-<3	3-<4	4-<5	5-<6	6-<7	7-<8	8-<9	9>=	All
French	3%	0%	0%	0%	0%	4%	12%	23%	26%	27%	4%	100%
German	5%	0%	0%	0%	1%	4%	9%	20%	26%	30%	5%	100%
Spanish	3%	0%	0%	0%	1%	6%	18%	25%	24%	20%	3%	100%

 We can see that, for GCSE prior attainment 6 and below, French has 16% and German 14% whereas Spanish has 25%.  This indicates an intake for Spanish skewed towards lower prior attainment. 

Similarly, for GCSE prior attainment of 8 and above, French has 31%, German 35%, Spanish has 23%, showing that Spanish has fewer candidates with high prior attainment.

 AL grades similar for each GCSE prior attainment

Looking at the percentages getting each AL grade for a given GCSE prior attainment band, it is clear that the percentages are very similar across the three languages. For example, for GCSE prior attainment between 8 and 9,  the percentage getting A* is 28, 29 and 27 in Fr., Gn and Sp. respectively

 

	Fr	Gn	Sp
	8-<9	8-<9	8-<9
A*	28	29	27
A	46	47	46
B	21	19	24
C	5	5	3
D	1	0	0
E	0	0	0
U	0	0	0
	8-<9	8-<9	8-<9
	100	100	100

 See pdf document for full article and graphs.

 

Please join ALL!

ALL is extremely grateful to the volunteers who carry out this work freely on behalf of all language teachers. There is, of course, a cost to the Association in running these services - coordinating activities, managing website content, organising events and webinars - and this is funded by member subscriptions.

 Many colleagues benefit from ALL’s analysis, advocacy and resources without realising that these are produced by volunteers who themselves pay to be members. In an era when people increasingly expect everything “for free”, it is worth remembering the value of belonging to a professional organisation that works year‑round to support language education nationally.

I encourage those who are not yet members, but who benefit from our work, to join us - whether as individual members (giving you voting rights and personal copies of our publications) or as group members. Join here: https://www.all-languages.org.uk/join/become-a-member/