What does 97% pass rate mean?

[GlowWorm13]

I am currently looking at upper schools for my dd who is in Year 8. There are two choices in my town, both of which are generally considered good schools. Today, I’ve been looking more carefully at the GCSE information for both schools and one school has an unvalidated percentage breakdown of those kids achieving grade 4 and above, and also of grade 5 and above.

The other school (which is an academy) has no information on the website yet that I can see. I googled to see if I could get any idea at all and AI overview gave me the grade 5 and above percentages for English and maths. However, for the three sciences it just said “97% pass rate”.

I don’t know anything about how secondary grades work these days so does that mean a pass rate is anything graded 1 and above? Or 4 and above? 5 and above?

Thanks in advance.

It would mean 97% of their students achieve between a grade 9 and a grade 4

That’s great! Thank you!

I would be wary of any assumptions.

My local paper has today published that a local special school has an 100% pass rate. It doesn't say so, but I suspect they mean grade 1 or above.

You can check the official results for state schools on the Gov.uk website:

https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/

It means from grade 1 to 9. All of those are pass grades. 3% did not get a grade 1

It means from 1-9. They’re all pass grades.

For a non selective school, I think logic would expect that 97% would not get a grade 4+ in science given that 30% or so will not reach that level for English / Maths.

ah okay, DS’s school considers a pass anything above a 4 so obviously different elsewhere

4+ is a Level 2 pass
1-3 s a Level 1 pass.

These are official definitions

DD is in year 10 now and we had an assembly at the end of year 9, where we were told anything above a 1 is a pass. 4 is a level 2 pass, but they no longer say those who haven't achieved a c equivalent have failed.

yes as others say – a grade 4 is a L2 pass (that's everywhere!) and a grade 1-2-3 is a L1 pass. it still has value (whatever some posters on MN may say – not anyone here I hasten to add) as it can lead to further qualifications and can act as a stepping-stone to a L2 pass.

I find it beyond unlikely that any non-selective state school had 97% of students taking science (which everyone pretty much takes) gaining a 4+. Music or art, maybe. Science or maths, nope.

I would personally be a bit wary of the AI breakdown of a specific school's results (if that's what you found @GlowWorm13) if the school's website has no detail. Try looking on gov.uk.

Unfortunately there is no other info that I can find on the other school on their website and I don’t believe the validated results are available for the 2025 GCSE’s for either school until later this year, which may or may not be available before the deadline for applying for an upper school place. The only clue at all relating to the other school’s results is what AI said, but the detail isn’t there as to what a 97% pass rate means so it’s hard to
compare schools in any detail when the info is only available for one of them.

Thank you. I’ve had a look at both schools and it appears it’s swings and roundabouts based on the information I can find. There’s not much difference between them at all, other than that one is an academy and part of a trust, and the other isn’t.

If you know what demographic your DD fits in, you can break down the results into High, middle and low achievers.

Also you can see what subjects are on offer, and how many do various subjects.

AI is known to "hallucinate" (i.e. make up info to fit the expected pattern) when the source info isn't available, so given you can't find that 97% figure from official sources, I'd take it with a pinch of salt.