GCSE results 2026: the pass measure slips as top grades edge up
GCSE results were issued on Thursday 20 August. The national picture barely moved: the standard pass measure fell by a tenth of a point, top grades rose by a tenth, and the distance between the strongest and weakest regions stayed close to nine points. The useful detail is in the subject entries, and in which national figure your school is being compared against.
Published 22 August 2026
67.0% at grade 4 or above, 21.8% at grade 7
Ofqual's results-day analysis puts 67.0% of GCSE entries in England at grade 4 or above, down 0.1 percentage points on 2025, and 21.8% at grade 7 or above, up from 21.7%. Both movements are smaller than the year-to-year variation you would expect within a single subject, so the honest summary of the national picture is that it did not change.
One genuine improvement sits underneath it. Ofqual reports a 0.8 percentage point rise in the proportion of 16-year-olds achieving grade 7 or above in mathematics, and attributes it to stronger attainment rather than to grading. English language went the other way, down 0.3 points at grade 7 and above. French, German and Spanish all came in slightly higher than last year.
London 9.2 points clear at grade 4, and 10.9 clear at grade 7
London recorded 71.7% of entries at grade 4 or above, the highest of any English region, against 62.5% in the West Midlands, a spread of 9.2 percentage points. At grade 7 and above the spread is wider: London on 28.6% against 17.7% in the North East, a gap of 10.9 points.
By school type, state schools improved by 0.1 points at grade 7 and above while independent schools fell back. If a local comparison between the two sectors is put to you in September, that direction of travel is the context it usually leaves out.
Source: Ofqual.
Statistics entries up 11%, engineering down 9.3%
The entry numbers moved much more than the grades. Statistics entries rose 11%, business studies 8% and sociology 5.2%. Going the other way, engineering fell 9.3%, computing 7.2% and French 5.5%.
Computing shedding entries while statistics climbs is the pattern to watch if you are choosing options for next year, because it changes which sets a school can afford to run. A subject losing 7% of its national entry is a subject where smaller schools start merging groups or dropping it.
Source: Ofqual.
The scale: 5.72 million results to 1.05 million students
Ofqual issued 5,720,045 GCSE results on 20 August to 1,047,750 students across 6,040 schools and colleges in England. Alongside them went 363,210 level 1/2 and level 2 technical awards and 11,185 level 2 technical certificates, taking the day's total to 6,094,440 results.
Mathematics was the largest entry at 851,250 students, followed by English language on 819,260, English literature on 613,550, combined science on 471,390 and history on 289,660.
Source: Ofqual, qualification results in England, summer 2026.
Check which national figure you are being compared against
More than one national number is in circulation this week, and they are not interchangeable. Ofqual's 67.0% covers all GCSE entries in England, including the large number sat by candidates older than 16 resitting English and maths. The awarding bodies' UK-wide figure and the 16-year-old-only figures quoted by many schools and councils are higher, because resit entries pull the all-age measure down.
If a school or local authority is quoting a percentage of pupils rather than a percentage of entries, it is not comparable with 67.0% at all. Ask which basis a figure uses before drawing a conclusion from it. Our guides to what Progress 8 measures and how Ofsted ratings work cover the rest of the accountability picture.