If you’ve been anywhere near a Drama teacher’s social media feed the last couple of days, you’ll know it’s not pretty. Instagram stories and Facebook groups are awash with exhausted posts from teachers swapping horror stories of grades torn down by moderation, and wondering why they bother putting in hundreds of unpaid hours if the system’s going to kneecap them and their students anyway.
It’s August, the results are in and months of devising, script-polishing, and coaxing teenagers into expressing emotion without looking like they’re in pain - has just been sent back from the exam board with a metaphorical red cross through the lot.
So, what’s wrong? Let’s start with the grade boundaries.
These make Kafka look like an optimist. This year, an A in OCR A-Level Drama and Theatre meant scoring 254 out of 300 - that’s 85%. An A* needed 268 (89%). By comparison, in AQA A-Level Biology, an A started at around 63%, and Physics around 64%. Other exam boards are available. It doesn’t mean STEM subjects are easier by any stretch of the imagination, but it does underline how unforgiving Drama’s thresholds have become. Anecdotally I have had students tell me they love Drama but it is just too hard to get the grades...
I taught Drama for twenty years from England to Spain to Hong Kong. In that time, I had moments of sheer joy as I saw the shyest become leaders, the lost find focus, and the sceptics discover that theatre is not prancing about and showing off but a deep dive into history, politics and psychology - into other worlds. I cried in their performances even though I had been with them all the way through - there really is something magical when student performances come to life.
And yet, here we are: A-Level entries in Drama and Theatre have dropped - again - this year. GCSE numbers are down too. Arts funding keeps shrinking, practical work is squeezed in favour of essays, and according to Campaign for the Arts, arts subject have fallen by around 31% since 2010 and this year Drama fell the hardest. It doesn't bode well.
Of course we need doctors, engineers, and data analysts. But even those professions talk about the value of soft skills like collaboration, creativity, and communication - the very things Drama has been quietly instilling for decades. The tragedy is that when Drama teachers call it education, others seem to hear extracurricular fun. And moderating down the work of teachers with years of expertise is not only exhausting and demoralising - it tells students that the quality of their work is as much about chance as it is about effort. It tells the teachers to start looking for other jobs.
The state of Drama in schools isn’t just a staffing or timetabling crisis. It’s an act of self-sabotage. You cannot strip the arts from education and expect to keep producing innovative, emotionally intelligent, socially literate citizens.
You just can’t.
Works Cited
Campaign for the Arts. Exam Results Show Further Collapse in Arts Enrolment, Deepening a 15-Year Decline. 15 Aug. 2024, www.campaignforthearts.org/news/exam-results-show-further-collapse-in-arts-enrolment-deepening-a-15-year-decline/
OCR AS and A Level Grade Boundaries – June 2025. OCR, June 2025, www.ocr.org.uk/Images/739509-as-and-a-level-grade-boundaries-june-2025.pdf
Grade Boundaries. AQA, June 2025, www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/results-days/grade-boundaries
Hemming, Sarah. “Number of A-Level Drama Students Plummets by 52% in 15 Years, Report Shows.” The Stage, 14 Aug. 2025, www.thestage.co.uk/news/number-of-a-level-drama-students-plummets-by-52-in-15-years-report
Hemming, Sarah. “English and Drama Suffer Further Drop in A-Level Entries.” The Stage, 14 Aug. 2025, www.thestage.co.uk/news/english-and-drama-suffer-further-drop-in-a-level-entries
Brown, Mark. “Decline of Drama at School Prompts UK Training Drive for Backstage Work.” The Guardian, 13 Apr. 2025, www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/apr/13/decline-of-drama-at-school-prompts-uk-training-drive-for-backstage-work
