New-style GCSEs help identify the best but may not benefit the rest

Students at Brighton College celebrate their GCSE results.The most obvious difference between this year’s GCSE results and previous years’ is the new grading system measuring attainment in some subjects on a scale from 9 at best to 1 at the bottom.Hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money has been spent trying to explain it to parents, students and employers who this year have to grapple with a mixture of results from the two grading structures as the changes are rolled out gra