Around 300,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland collected their A level results today. Biology continues to be the third most popular subject behind only mathematics and english.

There were 63,275 entries in A level biology compared to 64,070 last year; a fall of just 0.01%. Of all A levels taken this year, 7.4% were in biology, compared to 7.7% in 2014.

Biology students continued to achieve highly with 71.9% achieving a grade A*-C compared to 72% in 2014.

The proportion of female candidates rose slightly again; 60.5% of the biology candidates were female compared to 59% in 2014 and 58% in 2013. Female candidates outperformed male candidates by just over 2% at A*-C (72.8% of female candidates achieved A*-C compared to 70.5% of male candidates).

Sarah Cox MRSB, schools and education policy manager at the Royal Society of Biology said:
“We are delighted to see that biology continues to be one of the most popular A levels. The students have demonstrated their excellence in biology with 27.5% of candidates achieving an A or A* and over 50% achieving a B or above. We encourage all students to continue studying biology at A level, it is an exciting subject which supports students progressing to a vast array of careers and opportunities within higher education.”