Nothing more in the press, as far as I can see, about the maths A-Level story. In fact searching for that story on google gives my blog entry fairly high in the results. Anyway, I had a look to see what the figures are like for 2005.

There is a slight rise in numbers for 2005:

But nothing significant to the long-term trend:

Maths continues to drift down as a percentage of all A-levels:

But a sharp rise in the number of A grades takes these to almost 40% of candidates:

(All figures for 2001 onwards taken from the JCQ press releases.)

The government's view:

The results show more young people both taking and succeeding in the traditional subjects. …

The 2005 AS and A level results show: … increasing numbers of students taking Mathematics, English and the Science…

So that's alright then - maths is up compared to last year. It's down, of course, relative to 2 years ago; and relative to 3 years ago; and 4 years ago, … in fact it's up by 0.2% compared to 1 year ago, but 40% down relative to 16 years ago. Hurray for New Labour's education progress!

(Previous discussion.)