Humanities v STEM subject results at A level

Good question- The students in these stats are UK resident ( ignores kids living abroad but doing a levels in international schools) and many are likely to be at least second generation immigrants so I don’t think it’s a language issue so much as the fact that culturally ( and I’m aware I’m generalising but having lived in HK for 15 years I think it’s a fair generalisation) Asian students tend to aspire to careers that require or prefer STEM subjects ( medicine, technology, finance) and also just value them more so if they are aiming for a career that is somewhat A level subject ambivalent they’re still likely to go sciences over humanities.

When DD started in her further maths class her teacher said if you manage to stay the course you will very likely get an Astar. 50% dropped out. All but one remaining got Astar (but most of those including DD are off to do maths at uni).

Interesting about the Chinese students - do they skew towards STEM because they have English as a second language which would make humanities harder? DD1 went to a specialist music school where they took in a lot of Chinese students. They pretty well all did music maths and either FM or Physics. A lot of them arrived in the UK with limited English so History or English lit would have been really difficult for them.

Also students with Asian heritage outperform everyone else at A level ( eg % of ethnically Chinese students who get 3 As or better is 27% vs 16% on average) and those students skew towards STEM subjects. I don’t know how this boils down into numbers but it’s likely to be a contributory factor.

I’ve just done what I should have done earlier and tried to find out about the methodology …
…exam boards use a system called “comparable outcomes”. This means they look at how the cohort for each subject performed previously (e.g., at GCSE) and try to make sure the grade distribution is broadly in line with what those students might be expected to achieve.

so, the higher numbers of top grades in STEM subjects is related to high proportions of students who have done well at gcse taking these subjects.

A far higher % of people doing STEM seem to get A/A stars than those doing Humanities, are we honestly saying that they're cleverer/more academic? If we accept that they aren't, surely equal quantities of STEM and Humanity students should get the higher grades?

It seems entirely plausible to me that overall the brightest students may opt to do more stem than arts subjects. Those who are planning ahead with a degree and maybe a career in mind - all of the would-be doctors, vets, scientists, engineers, computer scientists, ‘numerate degree then finance’ types.

In the thread about not doing a level maths with less than a gcse grade 7, there’s a table showing attained a level grade vs gcse, which also includes the numbers in each category. The distribution is very skewed to the upper end - the vast majority taking maths (not even talking about FM here) are objectively ‘clever’. . It would be interesting if similar statistics were available for other subjects.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5146609-yearly-warning-not-to-take-a-level-maths-with-less-than-a-7-at-gcse?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

When I was at school decades ago we were always told that the jump in approach (rather than difficulty) from O to A level was bigger in humanities as the whole technique of an essay flipped from recounting the facts to deploying the facts to argue a case and its contra indications. No idea if this is true but I remember being very surprised when my head of year said this as she was also the head of maths....

A subject like history can be very subjective and gives a lot of scope for differences of opinion even with a mark scheme. One of my friends degree transcript shows that one marker gave her a grade that was borderline 2:1/ first and another 2:2/third for the same paper. The moderation sided with the first mark - she was relieved......

How many pupils studied English and Humanities compared to STEM?

OP, what you need is this:

analytics.ofqual.gov.uk/apps/Alevel/Outcomes/

It's an interactive charting tool thingy that will show you the distribution of A Level grades by subject.

For ease I attach screenshots of maths and English Lit. You will see that this year just over 40% of 18yo got A or higher in maths and I think 25%-ish got A or above for English Lit. You can also infer that more people failed maths than English Literature.

It's logical really - maths has virtually no grey areas and is therefore harder to pass because you absolutely have to know it, you can't guess. But it is easier to get a high grade because if you know it you know it, and you will only be losing marks for silly mistakes or not showing your workings.

English Literature, apart from remembering the quotes and the plots, is mainly grey areas, interpretation and opinion. Therefore it is easier to pass because almost everyone has an opinion and can guess but hard to have the maturity at 18 to have very sophisticated insights.

Unfortunately in life though, I reckon that people won't care what the subjects are, they'll just judge the 3 A star person to be cleverer than the BBB one. I can see why employers do their own testing when recruiting.

The unis know this too - hence the high grade requirements these days for many STEM subjects and the typical top uni history offer being around AAA - ABB. This includes Oxford with AAA required for history (although in practice most will have higher, of course).

It's definitely all the reasons everyone else has given but I think it's worth echoing a PP that where people look at the A stars and As what they don't see or acknowledge is those hums subjects are clustering at A to C (haven't checked but I believe B is the most commonly awarded grade in history, English Lit and sociology , for example) where there will be far more outright fails in maths, physics and so on. It's virtually unheard of to fail English lit, sociology, drama and so on and Es are rare.

I posted this on a different thread but it may be relevant here.

It seems that commonly students find the jump from gcse to a level hard - sometimes insurmountable - for maths, physics and chemistry. I don’t think I’ve heard other subjects mentioned as often as suffering from this. Some kids who are bright in other ways somehow just don’t seem to get the concepts, whereas to others it may be a lot more obvious.
So another factor may be what is the attrition rate - if they’re allowed to start more than 3 subjects, which is most likely to be dropped? Which ones more often result in students having to change tack and redo a year? I don’t know the answers to this, but it might be interesting if there were stats available.

I also think it depends on what exam board the school uses OP. I've posted on various threads about my DD getting a D in Edexcel Psychology A level when predicted A/A star. Looking into it, the grade boundary for A star Edexcel is 59.6%, for AQA it's 77% which I assume shows that the Edexcel papers must be far harder - if Edexcel required 77% like AQA presumably they'd give out hardly any A stars!

A far higher % of people doing STEM seem to get A/A stars than those doing Humanities, are we honestly saying that they're cleverer/more academic? If we accept that they aren't, surely equal quantities of STEM and Humanity students should get the higher grades?

The more I read about exam boards/grade boundaries etc. the more cynical I am about the system. It's a shame that they have such influence over a student's future.

Try and gauge progress made from GCSE to A Level. Loads more kids want to do STEM than humanities so STEM more likely to be higher attainers in the first place.
Don't know about STEM but I know humanities A Levels are hard - my best tip would be to get some tutoring from an A Level examiner in the subject prior to the exam.

There are multiple reasons for this.
Others have mentioned that STEM subjects are more content based, are more consistent from year to year, and have less subjective assessment criteria; it's easier for schools (and students) to know what needs to be learned and exactly how to put it down on paper to get full marks. It's also easier to test to identify what content a student is weak in and fill in gaps quickly in later years. There's also some self-selection happening; schools do often have more firm requirements for continuing study in STEM subjects and students are less likely to do STEM subjects as backups or "I don't know what I want to do" subjects.

Two other things are at play IMO:

1. Individual schools can absolutely have stronger and weaker departments. This isn't so much about funds (not having money for a fancy new lab isn't a detriment to an English department) but it's just because schools are like any other organization where sometimes one department has stronger leadership that attracts and retains stronger employees and they function better as a group.
2. Technology. We have students doing essays and other prep with chatGPT, rapidly weakening research skills, shortening attention spans, a dependency on predictive text and spell-check, and less use of formal spoken and written communication in daily life. Reading comprehension, information synthesis and writing skills are eroding and this is likely to get worse before we can correct course - if we ever do.

Entry requirements are generally lower for A level humanities subjects. In our schools, you can do English, history etc with grade 5 gcse. You can't do maths or stem subjects with a grade 5.
So humanities subjects probably have a larger number of students with lower attainment at GCSE, than stem subjects do.

STEM has also been talked up a lot in recent years. People emphasise how hard it is. This can lead to self selection I think.

In general I would say it's more common to get a high grade for STEM subjects but also more common to get a low grade, whereas humanities subjects tend to be more in the middle. It's just the nature of the subject. In maths, if you get everything right you'll get 100% and if you get everything wrong you'll get 0%, whereas in English or history it's almost impossible to write a "perfect" essay or to write one worth nothing at all. So the grades cluster in the middle.

Having just watched DS and pals get results in A levels, it seems to me school struggled in predicting the humanities accurately and it has more variance "on the day". The STEM subjects you are right if you are right. For example DS consistently got Astar in history but didnt in the exams, nothing massively "wrong" with his answers but examiner marked him bottom end of the range for each question.