Introduction
Today thousands of young people in England are receiving their results in GCSEs and level 1 and 2 technical qualifications. As ever we will be publishing an initial analysis of the results that we will be adding to through the day.
As was the case last year, we are in a period of relative stability in GCSEs themselves. There have been no fundamental changes to qualifications, students have taken exams as expected, and there have been no significant changes to course content or assessment arrangements. As a result, we are likely to see an overall grade distribution that isn’t too dissimilar to what we have seen since results returned from the pandemic era peak.
But as ever, there will still be things that are worth looking out for. As highlighted in our recent annual report, while girls continue to outperform boys, the gap between them has been narrowing in recent years, and today’s results will show whether that trend continues; data from Ofqual should also allow us to see the latest picture in terms of geographic disparities with results at local authority level; and the results from the National Reference Test will give us the best indicator of how results compare to the pre-pandemic period.
We’ll be adding to this page from 9.30am and as new analysis becomes available. Note that unless stated otherwise, our results refer to pupils aged 16 in England.
Overall results: little change from headline results in 2025
Overall, amongst 16-year-olds in England, 70.7 per cent of all awards were at grade 4 or above, a small increase of 0.2 percentage points from 2025 (from 70.5 per cent to 70.7 per cent). At the higher end of the distribution there was no real change in the proportion of entries awarded grade 7 above – 23.1 per cent this year compared with 23.0 per cent last year. (Note that some comparisons between years or between groups presented here may differ from headline results due to rounding).
Figure 1: The proportion of grades awarded at 4 or above or 7 or above is similar to last year.
However there has been a small increase in the proportion of entries award a grade 5, a so called “strong pass”, up from 55.0 per cent last year to 55.5 per cent this year.
Figure 2: The overall grade distribution follows a similar pattern to last year with a small increase at grade 5
Subject entries: ongoing shift from single sciences to double award
There has been an increase in the overall number of entries, reflecting an increase in the age 16 population in England – which is most clear in an increase in English and mathematics entries in particular. The largest increase was seen in business studies – an increase in entries of over 10,000 – and there was also a relatively large increase in entries to statistics (up 2,670 this year, an increase of around 11 per cent).
The number of entries in double award science also increased at a faster rate than the overall population increase – up 9,000 this year. At the same time we can see ongoing falls in biology, chemistry, and physics (though not as striking as last year). The government has previously announced an entitlement for all students to be offered triple sciences in response to last year’s Curriculum and Assessment review.
Figure 3: the number of entries per subject over time
The biggest falls though were in French and computing. Last year, Spanish overtook French as the most popular modern foreign language, and that gap has widened this year (driven by a fall in entries in French of nearly 7,000).
Figure 4: change in subject entries between 2025 and 2026
Results in individual subjects
Almost all subjects have similar grade distributions to last year. The largest increases at grade 4 or above amongst larger GCSE subjects (those with at least 10,000 entries) were in citizenship studies (up 1.6 percentage points), Spanish (up 1.3 percentage points) and computing (up 1.2 percentage points). The largest falls were in English literature (down 0.6 percentage points), business studies (down 0.3 percentage points) and physical education (down 0.3 percentage points).
At the grade 7 boundary the largest increase was in Spanish (up 1.9 percentage points). There was also an increase in chemistry (up 1 per centage point) and physics (up 0.9 percentage points). This may in part be driven by the shift in subject entries (it is plausible that pupils who did not do individual sciences when they may have done in a previous year may have been less likely to achieve the higher grades), however, there was no corresponding change in GCSE biology. This compositional effect is also seen in the overall grades, with results in individual sciences higher than other subjects.
Figure 5: proportion of entries at grade 4/7 and above and change since last year
Girls outperform boys – but the gap continues to narrow
In 2026, 73.7 per cent of entries from girls achieved a grade 4 or above in comparison with 67.8 per cent of entries from boys. This gap between boys and girls has narrowed further from 2025 (now 5.9 percentage points, down by 0.2 percentage points) and has been continually narrowing since 2019. The gap is now 2.9 percentage points lower than it was in 2019.
Similarly, the gap between boys and girls has narrowed amongst the highest attaining, when compared with 2019. This year, 25.5 per cent of entries from girls and 20.7 per cent of entries from boys were awarded a grade 7 or above. This represents a gap of 4.8 percentage points, 0.2 percentage points down on last year and 1.7 percentage points down on the 2019 gap. This gap was higher in period 2020 to 2022.
Figure 6: the gap in attainment at grade 4/7 between girls and boys
Girls continue to consistently score higher scores than boys in the vast majority of subjects, though the advantage is uneven across subjects. In 2026, the only subjects where boys consistently outperformed girls grade 4 were statistics, maths, physics, and chemistry.
Figure 7: the gender gap in attainment at grade 4 and above
Geographic disparities persist
There are long standing disparities in the attainment of pupils in different parts of the country. While regional differences are relatively small compared to, for example, the difference between the highest and lowest performing schools, it was still the case that pupils in the South East and in particular London outperform pupils elsewhere.
For 16 year olds, the percentage of entries awarded a grade 4 or above in London was 75.5 per cent, whilst only 66.6 per cent of entries in the west midlands were at the same threshold. At grade 7 or above, London is again the highest performing region (30.2 per cent of awards at grade 7 or above) while the lowest results were in the north east (19.0 per cent).The gap between the highest and lowest performing regions has widened since last year.
Figure 8: outcomes by region
This year, Ofqual has published data at local authority level and we can now see these geographic disparities even more clearly. London and the wider south east dominates the list of authorities where outcomes are highest. Amongst the top 10 performing local authority areas, 80 per cent of entries are at grade 4 or above. At the other end, Blackpool, the Isle of Wight, Stoke-on-Trent and Knowsley are all at 60 per cent or below.
Figure 9: outcomes by local authority
Ofqual made changes to the grade distribution using the NRT for the first time
The National Reference Test (NRT) in English and mathematics taken by a representative sample of year 11 pupils. It is intended as a consistent measure that enables us to see whether attainment has genuinely changed over time. It has also been a way that we have measured the impacts of the pandemic with the last pre-pandemic NRTs taking place in February/March 2020 just before schools closed due to the pandemic.
Ofqual compare results on the test to the baseline year, 2017. Having done so, they have concluded that there has been a genuine improvement in attainment at grade 7 or above in mathematics and have therefore adjusted grade boundaries accordingly to allow for a small improvement and the percentage of entries awarded a grade 7 or above has increased by 0.8 percentage points.
Ofqual did not make changes to the grade distribution for other thresholds, or in English – though at grade 4 or above, results in English have been below the baseline in recent years.
Figure 10: results from the national reference test
