The proportion of A-level entries awarded an A grade or higher has risen to an all-time high after exams were cancelled for the second year in a row due to COVID-19. In total, more than two in five (44.8 percent) of UK entries were awarded an A or A* grade this summer, up by 6.3 percentage points on last year when 38.5 percent achieved the top grades. In 2019, when exams were last run before the pandemic, just 25.5 percent of entries achieved an A or above. Hundreds of thousands of students have been given grades determined by teachers, rather than exams, with pupils only assessed on what they have been taught during the pandemic. Girls performed better than boys at the top grades, and female maths students overtook boys for the first time in the number of A* grades achieved, figures for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland show. Overall, …