By Gary Eason BBC News Online education editor

How GNVQs are keeping up standards

Their success is sustaining the improvement in schools' results.

Vocational GNVQs are proving more popular in many specialist schools - and in secondary moderns - than in non-specialist comprehensives.

Conversely the proportion of teenagers getting the better grades in academic subjects fell this year, for the first time since GCSEs began.

In the annual publications of exam results standards have been rising steadily.

This has prompted allegations from some quarters of "dumbing down" - people say GCSEs must be getting easier if more and more students are getting the better grades, A* down to C, used in government targets.

The government, qualifications authorities and exam boards say students are doing better because they are working harder and are better taught.

Equivalents

Since 1997, the results of 15 year olds' exam performance have included GNVQs as well as GCSEs.

An intermediate GNVQ at any grade - pass, merit or distinction - is worth the equivalent of four GCSEs at grades A* to C.

In 1997, 45% achieved the better GCSE grades. When GNVQ equivalents were added to the mix, it was 45.1% - a tiny difference.

At that time, very few students took full GNVQs - they were indeed intended for post-16 study.

In 1999, for example, only 695 qualifications were obtained across the country.

That gap of 0.1 percentage point has risen since, approximately doubling each year to reach 1.4 points in 2002 and 2.9 this year.

GCSE results stumble

The numbers of GNVQs being taken have also ballooned, to 14,341 last year.

Top GCSE grades fell this year for the first time

The provisional results for this year show the "headline" percentage of those getting good GCSE/GNVQ grades combined was 52.6%.

The GCSE-only figure - revealed last week by BBC News Online - was 49.7%.

That was down from 50.2% last year - the first time performance in the better GCSE grades has declined since the qualification was introduced in 1988.

This year's breakdown for 15 year olds in England taking intermediate GNVQs is not yet available - but across the UK the numbers increased by 42% to 94,017.

% GCSE/GNVQ SPLIT, 2002 Sports colleges 97.1 / 2.9 Technology colleges 95.5 / 4.5 Language colleges 98.1 / 1.9 Arts colleges 96.6 / 3.4 Specialist comprehensives 96.3 / 3.7 Non-specialist comprehensives 97.6 / 2.4 Grammar schools 99.9 / 0.1 Secondary moderns 96.7 / 3.3 Source: Hansard

Analysis of the element that GNVQs contributed to schools' exam results point scores in 2002 shows their popularity varies in different types of school.

For example, in grammar schools they accounted for 0.1% (prior to last year there had been none).

In secondary moderns they were 3.3%.

In language colleges they made up 1.9%.

In specialist technology colleges they accounted for 4.5% - after a fourfold increase in four years.

Across all specialists they made up 3.7% while in non-specialist comprehensives they were 2.4%.

The data for 2003 are not yet available.