GCSE results day 2024: Grade boundaries and marking explained ahead of results day

• GCSE results day is now a little over a week away.
• All papers are now being graded using the new system, with six passing grades available.
• This year’s grade boundaries for each subject will also come out on results day.
• Each exam board has a slightly different process for marking and setting its grade boundaries.

While the wait for secondary school students who sat their A Levels to see how they did will finally be over this week, GCSE candidates still have another week of waiting to go.

This year’s GCSE results day will be next Thursday, on 22 August. More than 5.8 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. As such, it’s only natural that results day can be a stressful and anxiety inducing time for many, particularly if it turns out they have not done as well as they had hoped.

But with the new grading system now in place for all subjects, which grades actually equal a pass? And how can students and their families find out what this year’s grade boundaries were? 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 pupils sit at the end of secondary school. 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 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, 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 2024 grade boundaries were

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 2024 grade boundaries will also be released by each exam board on results day. 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.

Looking at last year’s grade boundaries, students who received a 9 frequently scored more than 80% of all possible marks in their exam. A lower passing grade of 4, however, only required 30-40% of possible marks for many subjects.

How was my exam marked?

Ofqual, the government’s qualifications regulator, says that once GCSE exams finished on 19 June this year, they were securely packed up and sent off to whichever exam board the school or college uses for marking.

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

All grading still needs to be in line with Ofqual’s official standards, and will have been 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 even 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.

The government has issued some advice for parents and carers supporting students as they wait to receive their exams results. This can often be a tense and emotionally fraught time, especially if things don’t go as expected. You can check this advice out online here.