A Level results day: ICT has lowest pass rate in UK

The state of the UK's IT education continues to plummet, as 2016's A Level results reveal that ICT has the lowest pass rate of any A Level subject.

Just 10% of students who took the subject achieved an A* or A grade, compared to more than half of further maths students.

In addition to this, the number of students actually studying the subject has also declined significantly, with a drop of 3,300 in the number of students enrolled on an ICT A Level course.

While the government is planning to phase this course out in favour of the computing A Level, the pass rate for computing students also remains somewhat disappointing, with under 20% of students receiving an A or A* grade.

These results could prove to be a problem for the IT industry in the future, according to Rethink Group COO Andy Lord.

"The latest Government report in June suggested that we need more than 700,000 digitally and technologically equipped professionals in post by 2020 to sustain growth in IT and digital sectors in the UK," Lord said.

"How is that going to be achieved if ICT isn't invested in or performing as well as what academics would term as 'core' subjects?" he added.

As in the workforce, tech continues to suffer from a massive gender gap at the college and sixth-form level, with girls constituting just 9.8% of computing students in 2016, although, this is an increase of nearly 1% compared to last year.

Female students also make up a much more significant proportion of those taking the outgoing ICT course, with over a third of students being female.