Students taking GCSEs in England this summer will receive a
mixture of number and letter grades. English language, English
literature and maths are the first subjects to use the new
system, with most other subjects adopting numbers by 2019.
Eventually all GCSEs taken in England will receive numerical
grades.
9 things to know about the new GCSE grades
- GCSEs in England are being reformed and will be graded with a
new scale from 9 to 1, with 9 being the highest grade.
- New GCSE content will be more challenging.
- Fewer grade 9s will be awarded than A*s.
- English language, English literature and maths will be the
first to be graded from 9 to 1 in 2017.
- Another 20 subjects will have 9 to 1 grading in 2018, with
most others following in 2019. During this transition, students
will receive a mixture of letter and number grades.
- The new grades are being brought in to signal that GCSEs have
been reformed and to better differentiate between students of
different abilities.
- In the first year each new GCSE subject is introduced,
broadly the same proportion of students will get a grade 4 or
above as would have got a grade C or above in the old system.
- These changes are only happening in England. Wales and
Northern Ireland are not introducing the new 9 to 1 grading scale
as part of their changes to GCSEs.
- You can see how the 9 to 1 grades compare with the A* to G
scale in our GCSE grading
postcard.
Ways to keep up-to-date
We’ve got lots of information to help students, parents, teachers
and businesses understand the changes. You can keep up-to-date in
a number of ways:
