Girls are expected to pass one in four GCSEs with grades A and A* this week as results rise for the 22nd consecutive year.
Boys are expected to narrow girls’ lead at age 16 following a reduction in coursework at GCSE.
More than a fifth of exams overall will be awarded at least an A – nearly three times as many as in 1988, when GCSEs were first widely taken.
Assessment experts said questions had become increasingly ‘predictable’ and pupils and teachers knew what to expect.
They also suggested grade ‘inflation’ was partly responsible for relentless year-on-year improvements in results.
A Government White Paper due out in autumn is expected to outline plans for a major overhaul of the school curriculum including qualifications.
GCSE results for 750,000 pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, being posted in schools on Tuesday, are predicted to be the best in the exam’s 23-year history.
Pupils are expected to pass around 22 per cent of exams at grades A* or A, with girls topping last year’s 24.4 per cent.
Boys are expected to exceed last year’s 18.7 per cent A-grade pass rate.
In 1988, just 8.6 per cent of candidates scored As. The A* grade was introduced in 1994 for A-grade students with the highest marks.
At the same time, the percentage of GCSEs awarded A* to C grades is expected to rise to nearly seven in 10, exceeding last year’s 67.1 per cent.
This is more than 50 per cent up on two decades ago. In 1988, the figure was 42.5 per cent.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said suggested highly-tailored teaching and ‘built-in inflation’ were responsible were the consistent rises in results.
‘The questions themselves are becoming much more predictable; they are highly structured and teachers are increasingly familiar with them,’ he said.
There was a sense in which ‘examiners feel they are doing a good job if results nudge up a bit each year’, he said.
‘Exams just seem to have the same built-in inflation that our currency has,’ he said.
‘Although they will deny it, examiners seem quite happy if there is a little bit of inflation each year.’
However he raised concern about a decline in perfomance in English last year.
The proportion of pupils gaining at least a C in English dipped in 2009 from 62.9 per cent to 62.7 per cent.
The subject had benefited from significant investment through the last Government’s ‘national strategies’ for literacy and numeracy, he said.
Professor Smithers said the results for English and maths were ‘the best indication of what’s happening in the school system’.
He added: ‘It should be going up a bit faster given the investment in primary schools and National Strategies should be filtering through now.’
Teachers’ leaders demanded an overhaul of exams to ensure that youngsters leave school with the qualities employers are demanding.
Nansi Ellis, head of education policy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the UK’s exam system was ‘in disarray’.
‘It consistently fails the 40 per cent of young people who do not get five good GCSE passes and leave school feeling failures.
‘But even those who achieve a string of A s are not well served by GCSEs; they are taught to pass tests, rather than encouraged to learn skills and leave bored by endless testing.’
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