Leadership

Subject Choice Trends In Post-16 Education In England

Students are increasingly narrowing the range of subjects they are taking at AS/A-level. Increasing proportions of students are electing to only study subjects that sit within the same major subject group.

This independent report, commissioned by The British Academy, examines the data on how students have chosen to combine different subjects over last two decades and how student characteristics relate to subject choice.

The objective of the study was to better understand how patterns of choice and subject combinations at Level 3 have changed over the past twenty years, and to explore the impact of the narrowing of the post-16 curriculum as a result of the virtual elimination of AS levels in Year 12.

The report also explores how wider contextual changes have affected the subjects that students choose to study in order to build a better understanding of the drivers of post-16 education choices.

Key policy changes appear to have impacted on student subject choice, particularly with respect to Humanities subjects. The most substantive change to the post-16 landscape in recent years have been reforms to AS- and A-level qualifications that were introduced from September 2015.

A particularly notable aspect of this reform for studying subject choice was the decoupling of AS- and A-level qualifications, which meant that AS results would no longer count towards an A-level qualification as they had in previous years. This contributed to a rapid reduction in qualification entries with the average number of Level 3 qualifications per student dropping from 5 in 2015 to 3 in 2019.

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