The Information and Communications Technology A-Level saw the worst percentage of A or A* grades this year.
Only 10 per cent of students who took that exam scored an A or higher, compared with the 55 per cent who took Maths.
Andy Lord, chief operating officer of the Rethink Group – a global recruitment firm working heavily in the IT sector – said the news was a blow to the UK’s hopes of plugging the tech skills gap.
“As encouraging as it is to see young people flourish academically year on year, it concerns me as a recruitment professional to see ICT perform poorly in the context of other subjects,” he said.
“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.
“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?
“I think we need to see more investment and encouragement to make this happen.
“We need more sustainable relationships between education leaders and the digital sector to work together to ensure we’re arming today’s young people with the right skills and opportunities.”
We recently reported how Computing graduates are topping the jobless rankings.
ICT is being phased out in favour of the Computing A-Level.
However the number of students who achieved an A or A* in that subject was also low at less than 20 per cent.
The gender gap was evident in Computing, with just 9.8 per cent of students being female.
More than a third of those studying ICT were female.
A recent BusinessCloud roundtable heard that the education system in the UK is “broken” when it comes to tech.