GCSE Resit Exam Entry Choices – Setting Choices

This study is a 16 – 19 ​‘Setting Choices’ project that aims to test the impact of different resit enrolment choices on Maths/​English resit outcomes.

Setting leaders make choices about setting-wide practices and approaches that are intended to produce positive outcomes for students, such as how to organise the learning day or communicate with families. However, many setting-level practices have limited or no evidence for them, which means leaders must make decisions using other information. The aim of Setting Choices research is to produce causal evidence about the impact of different setting-level approaches and policies on outcomes of interest, with particular attention to impact on students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Setting Choices evaluations are divided into two phases: a scoping phase, and an impact evaluation phase. During the scoping phase, the research teams will refine their research questions, verify their assumptions, and explore the feasibility of their evaluation designs.

Supporting effective GCSE resits is an important goal for 16 – 19 settings. However, there is limited evidence on what helps students succeed in resits, and we know little about how different settings organise their resit programmes.

Data from the Joint Council for Qualifications shows that pass rates are higher in November compared to summer resits. However, it is not certain whether this is because the students entered in November are already closer to passing, or how widespread this and other approaches are across settings.

In June 2024, 15% of students who retook maths and 19.3% who retook English achieved a grade 4 or above. Around 37% of learners need to retake their exams more than once to pass. This is set in the wider context highlighted in a recent review by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) evidencing that there are several challenges in delivering GCSE resits, such as low student motivation and difficulties with teacher recruitment.

This project’s scoping phase will explore how settings decide when to enter students for resits — for example, whether they enter all students in November, all in the summer, or only those close to passing in November. By identifying clear patterns in these approaches, we will be able to evaluate their impact on student outcomes.

This project is currently at the scoping phase. The aim of this phase is to assess the feasibility of designing an impact evaluation that can produce causal evidence about the impact of different resit entry choices.

The scoping phase will:

• Identify and describe the different ways 16 – 19 settings decide when students take their GCSE resits, how common each approach is, and whether these approaches change over time.
• Understand why settings choose certain approaches, including whether they apply the same rule to all students or make exceptions based on individual needs.
• Build a clearer picture (a ​“theory of change”) of how each approach works by collecting more information on the steps that might lead to better student outcomes and factors that might influence these steps.
• Check whether it’s possible to carry out a full impact evaluation, or whether a different evaluation method would work better.