GCSEs 2025: What grades you can get - grade boundaries and marking explained as exam season nears

• The 2024/25 school year’s summer exam season is almost here
• Exams are now graded using a numerical system, with six passing grades available
• This year’s grade boundaries for each subject will come out on results day, but will likely be similar to 2024
• Each exam board has a slightly different process for marking and setting its grade boundaries

Secondary school pupils sitting their GCSEs this year now have mere weeks to go until their exams, where many will strive to get the highest grades they can.

The 2024/25 summer exam season is just around the corner, with GCSEs beginning the week of May 5, and running through to June 20. Candidates will then face a tense two-month wait until they find out how they did, with GCSE results day falling on Thursday, August 21 this year.

More than 5 million pupils across England will be able to go and collect their results from their school that morning, either opening them then and there, or taking them home to share the experience with their loved ones. The grades a young person gets on their GCSE can be important, playing a part in earning a spot at a competitive sixth form college, or even helping determine what A Levels they are able to study towards in the new school year.

For a few years now, all GCSEs subjects have been graded with a new, numerical system . But which of these grades actually equal a pass? And how can students and their families find out what the grade boundaries are for 2025? Here’s what you need to know:

What grades can you get on your GCSEs, and what do they mean?

GCSEs used to be graded using a letter system, just like the A Level exams many students sit during the sixth form. But that has been slowly changing over the past few years, and now all final results come in the form of a number grade.

The new numerical scale runs from 9 to 1. Nine is the highest grade and loosely equivalent to the old A*, while one is the lowest. Fewer students are typically awarded 9s than the old A* top mark, as the new grading system works out to be more detailed so as to better reflect the breadth of the student’s knowledge, according to Ofqual.

Any grade above 4 is considered a pass, so come results day, if you see a number higher than that by any given subject on your results sheet then congratulations - you have achieved that GCSE. The new grading system does not exactly correlate with letter grades from the old one, but a 4 is considered a ‘standard pass’ equivalent to the old C grade, a 5 is considered a ‘strong pass’, while a score of 7 or up roughly aligns with getting an A grade.

It is worth noting that if you don’t receive at least a passing grade of 4 in their Maths and English exams, then you will need to continue studying those subjects until you either pass a resit exam, or turn 18.

How to find out what the 2025 grade boundaries are

Grade boundaries, which are the exact amount of marks needed to achieve each individual number grade, are set by each individual exam board, so they can vary slightly. In England, your exam board will usually be AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel, WJEC or CCEA.

They are decided on by a panel of experts after all of the papers for a particular subject have been graded. This means the board is able to take into account how difficult students found the exam when setting the boundaries, in order to keep grades consistent across different years.

A full list of the 2025 grade boundaries will also be released by each exam board on results day, meaning you won’t know until you already have your results. To find out exactly what they were, you should check in on your exam board’s website. Most have a dedicated webpage they keep up to date with the most recent grade boundaries, in spreadsheet form. AQA’s, for example, can be found here.

However, these are generally pretty similar in most subjects year-on-year, so it is possible to get some idea of what they might look like by looking at the 2024 grade boundaries. As an example, To get a top grade of 9 in the higher tier maths GCSE last year, candidates needed to score about 91% of all possible marks on AQA’s exam. For OCR, they needed about 82%, while for Pearson Edexcel they needed about 82%.

To get a 7 (equivalent to an A) they needed about 68% for AQA; just 48% for OCR; and about 58% for Pearson Edexcel. But to achieve the lowest passing grade, a 4, they needed 25% for AQA; 14% for OCR; and 17.5% for Pearson.

In the 2024 English language exam, students needed about 76% of possible marks to score a 9 at AQA, 81% at OCR, and 82.5% at Pearson. To get a 7, they needed 64% of marks at AQA, 68% at OCR, and 71% at Pearson - while to scrape by with a 4, they need about 46% at AQA and OCR, and 52% at Pearson.

How was my exam marked?

Ofqual, the government’s qualifications regulator, says that once GCSE exams finish, they are securely packed up and sent off to whichever exam board the school or college uses for marking.

As such, how exactly your exam paper is marked can vary somewhat depending on the board responsible for marking it. It may be looked over by one person or several, uploaded online and marked digitally, or sent to them in person. If your exam involves a performance or other type of assessment, this may even be graded by your teacher - with their grades sent on to the exam board.

All grading still needs to be in line with Ofqual’s official standards, and will be quality checked. AQA, for example, has its markers attend standardisation meetings so they fully understand the mark scheme and where to award marks before the grading period begins.

The board also has its highly experienced senior examiners review samples of marking by each examiner throughout. If any examiner are found not to be marking correctly, they can't continue - and their scripts will be given to another examiner.

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