More than half a million students received their GCSE results this morning in a year when England attempted to reduce pandemic grade inflation.

In Wales and Northern Ireland, the proportion of students attaining top grades has fallen from last year but remains around three to four percentage points above 2019.

Students getting their results - follow latest

It comes as data from this year's cohort shows significant changes in subjects taken at GCSE level.

The number of students taking Chinese has doubled since 2019 while those studying Russian as a GSCE subject has increased by almost 53% in the same period.

While French remains the most popular language to study at GCSE level, Spanish rose in popularity by 11.3% from 2022 with nearly 126,000 students taking the subject. It comes as this year's A-Level results saw the lowest number of pupils studying foreign languages since 2010.

Meanwhile, pupils appear to be taking Rishi Sunak's lead on the "crack down" on Mickey Mouse degrees - choosing to study more science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects.

The number of students taking statistics has increased by 20.4% on 2022, business studies by 14.8%, computing by 11.6% and engineering by 8.1%.

The most popular subject was science double award - a total of 935,436 were entered to sit the exam, up 3.5% from last year.

Maths remains the second most popular subject, with 821,322 entries, up 4.9% on 2022.

But history also saw a rise in students sitting the exam - up 6.5% from 292,199 to 311,146.

Irish, performing arts and music all saw a significant year-on-year drop in students entered to sit the GCSE exam by 18.2%, 16.6% and 12.5% respectively.

Boys have narrowed the gender attainment gap slightly, with 19.1% achieving top grades - at least a 7 - compared with 24.9% for girls. The 5.8 percentage point gap is the narrowest lead since 2009 - down from 7.4% last year and 6.5% in 2019.

England has brought GCSE grades down to almost 2019 levels, with the share receiving 7 or above now at 22%, compared with 21% in 2019.

It was the only nation in which exam boards were instructed to aim for a full reduction in pandemic grade inflation, with Wales and Northern Ireland instead opting to give exam boards until next year to bring grades down to pre-2020 levels.

In Wales, the share receiving top grades - A* and A - is still three percentage points above 2019 levels, while in Northern Ireland it is four percentage points above.

The regional attainment gap in England remains - the rise in top grades is highest in London (2.7 percentage points) and the East (1.4 percentage points).

There was no change in the share of top grades in the North West with a rise of just 0.2 percentage points in Yorkshire and the Humber and the East Midlands.

Meanwhile, the share of failed GCSEs is at its highest since 2007 in England at 2%. In Wales it is the highest since 2018 while the proportion of fail grades in Northern Ireland is less than half the 2019 level.

More than a fifth (22%) of GCSE entries were awarded the top grades this year, down by 4.3 percentage points on last year when 26.3% of entries achieved the top grades.

Overall, there were around 203,000 fewer top grades compared with last year, but there were 142,000 more top grades awarded this year than in 2019.

The proportion of entries getting at least a 4 - equivalent to a C grade and considered a "standard pass" - has fallen from 73.2% in 2022 to 68.2% this year, a drop of five percentage points but higher than 67.3% in 2019.

The figures, published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), cover GCSE entries from students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

According to figures from Ofqual, the number of 16-year-old students in England who received a 9 in all their subjects has nearly halved from last year.

Some 1,160 16-year-olds in England taking at least seven GCSEs achieved a grade 9 in all their subjects, compared with 2,193 last year and 837 in 2019.

In England, the proportion of top grades at independent schools dropped slightly on both 2019 and 2022.

In comparison, top grades achieved by students in state secondaries was slightly up (0.8%) on 2019.

However, the gap between school types remains wide.

Just 19.1% of grades at state secondaries were 7 or above compared with 46.6% at independent schools.

Selective schools remained the highest achievers with 59.3% of grades being 7 or above.

The pandemic led to an increase in top grades in 2020 and 2021, with results based on teacher assessments instead of exams.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said: "An enormous amount of hard work has gone into these qualifications in often difficult circumstances and the young people receiving their results today deserve great credit for what they have achieved."

He warned that the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis has had a "disproportionate impact" on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"It is likely that the outcomes for many of these young people will be affected by these factors and this may also impact on the results of schools which serve disadvantaged communities," Mr Barton said.

"The government has failed to grasp the gravity of this issue. It did not invest sufficiently in education recovery from the pandemic - causing its own recovery commissioner to resign in protest - and it has failed to address the high level of child poverty in the UK.

"We are concerned that this will lead to a widening of the attainment gap between rich and poor."