Humanities v STEM subject results at A level

[Almostdonenow]

My dc's school's A level results look great at first glance - approx 50% A/A star in STEM subjects and a couple of other random subjects, but every year in Humanities subjects (particularly English & History) the A/A star grades are around 10%, with a fair few students missing their predicted grades by a long way.
Is this a common disparity? Do schools put more funds into STEM subjects? Maybe the coursework has a detrimental effect on revision? Or perhaps the teachers are too stretched?
When this has been queried with teachers previously, the stock answer is "well they're really hard subjects" but aren't STEM subjects hard too?! Or are a lower percentage of Humanities subjects awarded an A/A star and this is normal for most schools?!
For context, this is a 'good' state school in a 'leafy' area!

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.