GCSE grade boundaries 2026: what actually moved

The exam boards published their June 2026 grade boundaries on results day. I spent that afternoon reading the numbers out of all four boards' own documents and loading them into our free boundaries tool, so everything below comes from the published papers rather than from a summary of them.

Most boundaries went up. The change is small enough that it will pass a lot of families by, and large enough to move a borderline child down a grade. If your child is in Year 10 now, that second part is the one that matters.

What went up and what came down

You can compare 264 GCSE boundaries directly with last June. Of those, 165 went up, 73 came down and 26 stayed where they were. On average a grade needed about half a mark more in every hundred than it did in 2025.

Which grades moved depends on whether you count them or measure them. By count, the top of the paper moved most: 74 per cent of grade 9, 8 and 7 boundaries went up, against 59 per cent at grades 4 and 3. By size it is the other way round. Grade 5 moved furthest at 0.9 marks per hundred and grade 4 next at 0.7, while grade 9 averaged 0.44.

So more of the top boundaries moved, and the ones near the pass moved further when they did.

Grade 4 decides resits, sixth form entry and whether a child spends another year in a maths classroom they did not want to be in. The boards moved the number with the most consequences attached to it.

Grade 4 in maths, board by board

On Edexcel Foundation the grade 4 mark went from 144 to 151. On Eduqas Foundation it went from 111 to 121. A student who scored 147 on Edexcel Foundation last summer took home a grade 4. Same paper, same mark, this summer they take home a 3.

AQA went the other way on Foundation, down from 160 to 154, and OCR sat almost still. Higher tier was quieter everywhere except OCR, where grade 4 rose ten marks.

The four boards did not move the same way

Averaging every subject on each board shows two different patterns, and they matter more than the single headline figure.

OCR raised its boundaries at both ends, and most at grades 9 to 7. AQA barely moved at either end. Edexcel and Eduqas both came down a little at the top and went up at the pass end, and Eduqas moved furthest there, by 1.7 marks per hundred.

Eduqas set its grade 9 slightly lower than in 2025 and its grade 4 higher, so the two ends of the same paper moved in opposite directions.

They have not gone back to 2019, they have gone past it

The year on year numbers only tell you so much. The longer view is more useful, and it is the part almost nobody reports.

Take the 29 subject and tier combinations that ran in both June 2019 and June 2026. Seventy per cent of their boundaries are higher now than they were before the pandemic, and the average is 3.5 marks per hundred above the 2019 level.

The path there is the interesting bit. June 2022 came in below 2019, which is what everyone remembers as the generous year. Every series since has been higher than the one before it: 1.1, then 1.5, then 2.8, and now 3.5. The boards did not return to where they started. They kept going.

Science carries most of that. Since 2019 science boundaries are up 5.1 marks per hundred on average, maths 2.4 and English 1.2. If your child takes triple or combined science, that is the subject where the number they need has moved furthest. Every published science boundary by year is set out on one page if you want to see how far each award has moved.

The boards have also pulled apart. Edexcel is 5.9 marks per hundred above its 2019 level and AQA 4.0, while Eduqas is 1.9 and OCR is 0.5 below where it was. OCR is the only board of the four still sitting roughly where it was before the pandemic.

A few individual rows have moved a long way. On AQA Foundation maths a grade 4 took 122 marks out of 240 in 2019 and 154 this year, which is 32 more marks for the same grade. On AQA Higher maths a grade 7 went from 136 to 166 over the same period.

The biggest single changes

Science produced the largest moves of the series. Edexcel Foundation Combined Science needed 20 more marks out of 360 for a 4-4. Edexcel Foundation Chemistry needed 14 more out of 200 for a grade 4, going from 104 to 118.

AQA Higher Combined Science: Synergy went the other way and dropped 17 marks out of 400 for a 9-9.

Combined Science gave the tidiest pattern of the whole series, and it is worth knowing if your child takes it. Every 9-9, 9-8, 8-8 and 8-7 boundary came down, on every board. Every 3-3, 3-2, 2-2, 2-1 and 1-1 boundary went up, on every board. Not one exception in either direction across 63 boundaries. The top of the double award came down and the bottom went up.

Why the same grade needs different marks on different boards

This surprises most parents, and it is worth knowing before you compare your child's mark to anything you read online.

In June 2026 an AQA student needed 166 marks out of 240 for a grade 7 in Higher maths, which is 69 marks in every hundred. An Eduqas student needed 116 out of 240, which is 48. Both take home a grade 7. One of them answered fifty more marks' worth of questions to get there.

The gap is not only in maths. In English Literature an OCR student needed 29 marks per hundred for a grade 4 and an Edexcel student needed 47. All 120 sittings sit on our GCSE English grade boundaries by year page, Language and Literature, all four boards, 2017 to 2026.

AQA Higher maths shows how far this can move over time.

In 2017 a grade 7 on AQA Higher maths took 52 marks per hundred. This year it took 69, and it has gone up in every series since exams came back after the pandemic.

None of this means AQA has become stricter on purpose. Boards cannot make every paper equally difficult, so instead they move where each grade starts, using how the whole cohort performed alongside examiner judgement. An easier paper pushes the boundary up and a harder one pulls it down.

That is worth saying plainly, because it is the thing most people get backwards. A higher boundary does not mean the exam was harder. It usually means the opposite. Two years are two different sets of questions, so the only thing you can compare between them is the mark your child needs, not how tough the paper felt.

What it does mean is that a rule of thumb like "you need about 60 per cent for a 7" is now wrong by up to twenty marks per hundred depending on which board your child sits. Work from the real boundary for their board, their tier and their year.

Six things to do before next summer

1. Ask which board before you compare with anyone. A friend's child getting 60 per cent tells you nothing on its own. A grade 7 in Higher maths needed 69 marks per hundred on AQA this year and 48 on Eduqas, so the same percentage is two different grades depending on whose paper it was.
2. Mark a past paper against its own year. When your child sits a 2023 paper, use the 2023 boundaries printed for that series, because that is the only set the paper was ever judged against. Then treat the grade it gives you as optimistic and add a margin, because the number has gone up since.
3. Set the target from the highest of the last three years. On three of the eight board and tier combinations in maths, the highest recent boundary is 2025 rather than 2026. Aiming only at this summer's number would have undershot on AQA Foundation, Edexcel Higher and OCR Foundation.
4. Expect next June to be higher again. The average boundary has risen in all four series since exams returned, by 2.7, then 0.3, then 1.4, and now 0.6 marks per hundred, counting every boundary that can be compared with the year before. Planning to last year's figure has been the losing bet four years running.
5. Check the science award, not just the subject. On Combined Science this year the top grades came down on every board and the pass end went up on every board, so a sibling's or a friend's result from the separate sciences tells you nothing about where the double award sits.
6. Query a result that is a mark or two off through the school. Reviews of marking are requested by the centre and not by families, and there is a deadline, so ask the exams officer the same week the result arrives rather than waiting to see how the term goes.

The June 2026 maths boundaries in full

Here are the four boards side by side for GCSE maths, June 2026, exactly as published. A dash means that grade is not available on that tier.

On a phone, scroll the table sideways to see grades 7 down to 1.

Note the maximum mark column. OCR marks its maths papers out of 300 and the other three out of 240, so you cannot read OCR's raw numbers across to the rest without converting them first.

Check a mark against the real boundaries

Every number in this post sits in our free tool, along with 864 rows covering GCSE and International GCSE maths, English and science from 2017 to 2026. Each row links back to the exam board document it came from, so you can check any of it yourself.

• GCSE grade boundaries tool, where you enter one paper score and see the grade it would have earned in any year.
• GCSE English grade boundaries by year, every Language and Literature sitting from 2017 to 2026 in one table.
• GCSE science grade boundaries by year, the separate sciences and every combined award, year by year.
• Maths Mastery Lessons, our interactive topic lessons for the gaps a mock usually exposes.
• GCSE resources, including past papers and mock marking.

If your child is a few marks off a grade and you want a second opinion on where those marks are going, send me the paper. I would rather read the real script than guess from a percentage.