As more than half-a-million students across the country received their A-Level exam marks yesterday, the latest set of results have revealed a third successive rise in the number of entrants to Religious Education Studies.

|PIC1|Overall, across the country an increase of 7.98 per cent was seen. But even more astonishingly there were 43 per cent more A-Level entrants enrolling for Religious Studies this year than just three years before.

In addition, it was revealed that there has also been a 7.25 per cent increase in the number of entrants for the AS level of Religious Studies compared to one year ago.

The Church of England’s Chief Education Officer, Canon John Hall said, “We will not build a cohesive society unless we foster understanding of people's spiritual motivations and needs.

“Studying A-level Religious Studies can make a real contribution to that. The challenging and interesting questions it asks increase our understanding of the different faiths in Britain and the world today.

“By choosing Religious Studies, A-level students grasp the importance of this way of enquiring into the world we live in.”

A-level results published on Thursday show that more exams were passed than ever before - with more achieving grade As.

|TOP|The pass rate for A-levels is creeping closer to the 100% mark, increasing by 1.1 percentage points to 95.4% this year.

However, a number of head teachers have said the rate is being fuelled by pupils' switching from maths and science to supposedly easier subjects such as psychology and media studies, report the BBC.

But these claims were rejected by the School Standards Minister, David Miliband, who said the results reflected the hard work of children and their teachers.

The A-level figures released for the main exam boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland by the Joint Council for General Qualifications do in fact show a general trend away from subjects such as maths, modern languages and science, and an increased interest towards subjects such as psychology and media studies. |AD|

John Dunford, the general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, said according to the BBC, that children were choosing subjects they thought were easier.

“The rise in interest in psychology is a consequence of what people are perceiving, that maths and physics are harder and they can get better grades in psychology,” he said.

“It is easy to show that psychology is an easier A-level than maths. It is incredibly worrying because maths and modern languages are subjects that the country needs.”

Other reasons he suggested for the rising pass rate were that weaker students dropped subjects if they did not do well in them at AS-level, and that children were working harder.

The proportion of entries getting grade As is up 0.9 percentage points from 20.7% to 21.6%

In 1970, the figure was 8.9%.