10 Jan 2022
Thousands of Cambridge International students around the world are celebrating today, after receiving their November 2021 exam series results.
Despite another very demanding year, more than 100,000 Cambridge students overcame the challenges of the pandemic to gain their qualifications today. As a result, each will be able to progress with their next educational steps.
Globally, more than 178,000 entries, from 118 countries, were made for Cambridge International AS & A Levels in the November 2021 series.
Once again, the extraordinary efforts and ongoing support of our schools, their teachers and the families of our students, have helped to ensure our students could achieve their qualifications.
Christine Özden, Chief Executive, Cambridge International said:
'Many congratulations to all of our Cambridge International AS & A Level students around the world, on their exam results today. It has been another incredibly demanding year for us all, but, despite this, you have all worked incredibly hard to achieve your qualifications. You should all be incredibly proud of what you have accomplished.
'I would like to thank all the families of our students, as well as our schools and their dedicated teachers, who have supported the students so well throughout a difficult time, enabling them to continue their studies and sit for their examinations. Together, you have helped to ensure Cambridge students can progress with their education and move on with their lives.'
Our priorities throughout the pandemic have been to keep students and school staff safe and to enable as many students as possible to progress with their education. We offered two routes to grades in the November 2021 series - exams, or where exams could not safely take place, school assessment.
In the November 2021 series we ran exams in most countries including Pakistan and Zimbabwe. We engaged with education authorities, governments, local authorities and schools to develop robust guidance to ensure exams could run safely. The vast majority of students worldwide (94%) took exams.
Where exams could not take place safely, we offered a school assessment approach using students’ work. About 6% of students received school-assessed grades (SAGs) in the November 2021 series.
We invested significant extra resource to provide both exams and school-assessed grades and put a range of measures and new systems in place. These included creating new IT systems to manage school-assessed grades; putting support in place for schools and teachers to help them run our school-assessment process; offering exemptions from some assessments that were hard to run during the pandemic and adaptations to enable students to take assessments differently.
The most popular Cambridge International A Level subjects in the November 2021 series were Maths, Physics and Chemistry.