There has been much chatter this week about GCSE results, which not only serves as a means by which to make me feel old (16 years ago people, 16 YEARS!) but it has also been a fabulous opportunity to dive in to the data. News outlets predictably report on the performance gap between girls & boys and the increase/decrease in the uptake of particular subjects…some things never change! I personally wanted to get my hands on the data so that I could whack it in to Tableau and play with it myself (thus also learning how to use Tableau too – double bonus!)
I obtained all of my data from a comprehensive Guardian article and wrangled it a bit get it in to the format that I needed (BIG shout out for the fabulous Tableau add-on for reshaping data in Excel!)
GCSE Subject Breakdown
Subjects taken by all candidates in 2013 – interactive graphic allows you to filter by gender and year.
Percentage of grades by gender
Split by gender and grade – you can see that girls’ entries achieve higher grades than boys’. As widely reported, 8.3% of entries from girls achieved an A* compared to 5.3% of entries from boys. The interactive graphic allows you to filter by year.
Change in the percentage of entries achieving each grade
This graphic demonstrates that the percentage of entries achieving top grades has fallen between 2012 and 2013. The interactive graphic allows you to filter by gender.
Results per subject
For each subject, we have a breakdown of the percentage of entries achieving each grade – for example 16.6% of Chemistry entries achieved an A* compared to 9.8% of French entries. The interactive graphic allows you to filter by gender.
This was a fantastic opportunity to for me to brush up on my Tableau skills and play with interesting and insightful data. Happy to hear comments on how I can improve my work or further areas I can explore.