GCSE results 2015 live: Pupils across Britain receive results

Last year proportion of students achieving at least a C grade rose to 68.8%

Student in a GCSE examination: they will receive their results today (PA)

• Pupils across England, Wales and Scotland have received their results today

• A* grades fall for fourth year in a row

• GCSE students likely to gain £593 on average for string of straight A* grades

• What to expect and how to prepare for your grades

• Is the GCSE struggling for relevance?

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Hundreds of thousands of school pupils across England, Wales and Scotland will find out their GCSE results on Thursday morning.

Students are expected to have improved across the board, with analysts predicting that seven out of ten GCSEs awarded will be at the C grade or above.

It follows from last year, when 68.8 per cent of entries achieved a C grade or higher – a 0.7 per cent increase on 2013.

Despite this, head teachers’ leader Brian Lightman warned the BBC that he expected there to be some “volubility” in results, amid news that some schools had funnelled pupils into international GCSEs.

Elsewhere, it has been claimed that in some schools mathematics has been taught by tutors with only a GCSE in the subject themselves due to an acute shortage of professional maths teachers.

Experts told The Times there was a critical shortfall of an estimated 5,500 maths teachers across England, causing head teachers to take drastic action before their students return next month.