GCSE marking system: Each of the 9-1 grades explained as pupils tackle 2025 exams

• There are still a few more weeks to go in this year’s GCSE exam season
• The grading system used for GCSEs has been updated over the last few years
• Students getting their results in August can get a total of 10 possible grades
• Grade boundaries, which can show how close they were to another grade, will also be released for each subject

Modern GCSEs are graded on a larger and more nuanced scale than in years past, to give parents and pupils alike a good idea of just how well they’ve mastered each subject.

The 2024/25 school year’s summer exam season is now in full swing, with candidates’ GCSE assessments running until June 25. For many of them, their core exams are still to come - including their second English Language paper; their second and third mathematics papers; and the final parts of their biology, chemistry, and physics exams.

They then face a lengthy wait until results day, which falls on Thursday, August 21 for pupils taking their GCSEs this year. But for parents, the grades their children get on the big day may look a little different than when they sat their own GCSEs - after the qualification’s marking system was recently upgraded.

So what are the grades your child will be able to receive, and how do they line up with the old letter grades? And finally, how will you or your child know how many points they need to score to achieve each grade?

Here’s what you need to know about GCSE grades in 2025:

How the 9-1 grading system works - and what each number means

GCSEs used to be graded using a letter system - and in some parts of the UK, and for A Level qualifications - they still are. But that has been slowly changing over the past few years, and now final results come in the form of a number grade, with the scale running from 9 to 1.

The new grades don’t exactly line up with the old ones. Nine, for example, is loosely equivalent to the old A*, although fewer students are typically awarded 9s than the former top mark, as Ofqual says the new grading system is more detailed - to better reflect the breadth of the student’s knowledge.

Here are all of the possible GCSE grades, as well as what each one of them means (and which of the old letter grades they most closely line up with), according to Ofqual:

• 9 - The new top grade, similar to the old A*
• 8 - Loosely equivalent to a low A* or high A
• 7 - Equivalent to an A grade
• 6 - Equivalent to a high B grade
• 5 - Considered a ‘strong pass’, this roughly lines up with a low B or high C
• 4 - Considered a ‘standard pass’, this lines up with the old C grade
• 3 - This falls between the old D and E grades
• 2 - This falls between the old E and F grades
• 1 - This falls between the old F and G grades
• U - U means ‘ungraded’, signifying that the student did not achieve enough marks for a number grade

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What will the grade boundaries be this year?

Grade boundaries are the exact amount of marks needed to achieve each individual number grade, which can be useful to know if you’d like to find out how close your child was to a higher mark. These are set by each individual exam board, whether it be AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel, WJEC or CCEA.

Unfortunately, pupils won’t know the exact number of marks they need for each grade this year until results day. This is because they are set by a panel of experts after all of the papers for a particular subject have been graded. They take into account how difficult students found the exam than year when setting them, keeping grades consistent across different years.

Although they might end up differing a little by exam board or other factors, grade boundaries are typically pretty consistent year-on-year. This means you can get some idea of what they might look like by looking at the 2024 grade boundaries.

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 needed about 46% at AQA and OCR, and 52% at Pearson.

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