Perhaps people are forgetting that what they start off doing isn’t the same as what they might actually sit.
One of the features of the very successful selective schools is that they adjust the curriculum as students go along, to maximise GPA (grade point average). So the majority might well start with 10 subjects….and that’s what parents are aware of. However, as the course progresses, some will drop a subject or even 2. The attitude is taken that it’s better to have fewer subjects (as long as there are still a good number…and 8 is perfectly acceptable, sepsecially sunce the new specifications with more content were added) at high grades than more with lower grades. So, better to have 9 subjects at all 8/9 grades than have 11 with a few 7s thrown in there.
An interesting thing is whether schools now promote this and actively encourage a bit of dropping if subjects, because it’s really in the subset interests of students or for school data and league table benefit. It’s probably a bit of both.
Lots of here are talking about what they did back in the day. It’s different now - there isn’t coursework and many subjects have 3 exams and all have at least 2. Students taking 10 subjects may well have 25 exams or more. The content has increased that needs to be revised. So whilst there is certainly benefit if breadth and GCSE level study is about breadth, you can take this too far. With 8 subjects, a student can have the breadth of languages, humanities, sciences, creative subjects and Eng and Maths. They can display breadth, but probably more important for the top students, than having 10/11/12 subjects, is actually having really top grades across the board.
In the very selective schools, able students who might get all 9s, might not be all pushed to take further maths GCSE, simply because that extra subject might take up a disporoportionate amount of work and reduce the overall GPA. Likewise, many students have a weaker subject that needs a lot of work. Schools take the view that if they drop that, lots of time is freed up to get higher grades in the rest and they will still have a brilliant range of subjects.
Indepenent schools are also not constrained by Ebacc measures. They don’t usually push a language as something that’s non-negotiable because they know that what matters for UCAS offers at top unis on top courses, is having the best GCSE profile and A Level predicted grades, to get offers, and that as long as someone has a decent amount of subjects with some academic ones, having a language and a humanity isn’t actually that important, unless those are what you want to study. Ebacc has no real meaning for individual students in terms of opening doors, and is purely something schools are judged on. So whilst a good broad education at GCSE is certainly good, and schools which previously were gaming the system with all kids of iffy subjects that were counted as ‘GCSE equivalent’ for league table purposes, needed to be stopped from doing this, a broad education can take a number of forms and doesn’t have to be really prescriptive to Ebacc levels. Independent schools have that flexibility, which state schools might not. One reason they might get better results in some cases, is that there might be more feeedom for even stronger candidates to drop their diff Inuktitut language part way through, or drop something else. Those schools have the staffing and resources to be able to timetable support sessions into the time freed up, which state schools might struggle to provide.
So, I’d say it’s difficult to give conclusive answers because in any one school, there will be students studying a wide range of numbers of GCSEs. In the past the higher the number, was seen as a badge of honour. That’s passed now, and as long as students have a good number (9 would probably be the norm) that’s p more than adequate to show their academic level.