A-Level Results Day 2026: Grades, the Grade-Inflation Trend & UCAS Clearing

A-Level, AS and T Level results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are released on Thursday 13 August 2026. That date is confirmed across Ofqual, JCQ, UCAS and the exam boards. (Scotland runs on its own calendar — Qualifications Scotland results were issued earlier, on Tuesday 4 August 2026.)

On timing, the honest answer is: around 8am, but check with your own centre. Eight o'clock is the customary earliest collection time and it is when AQA publishes grade boundaries on its website. But Ofqual and JCQ do not mandate a single national collection hour, so some schools and sixth forms open a little later. If your plan depends on being there the moment results are available — for example because a university place is on a knife-edge — confirm your centre's exact opening time in advance.

Two things become visible that morning that are worth knowing about. First, your UCAS status: from the morning of 13 August you can see whether your firm or insurance place has been confirmed. Second, the grade boundaries: each board publishes them online on results-day morning, so you can finally see how many marks each grade required this year rather than guessing from last year's figures.

Before we look at trends, it helps to be clear about how grades are set now. Ofqual's guide for schools and colleges for 2026 states plainly that the standard of work needed to achieve a grade in 2026 will be comparable to summer 2025. Crucially, it also confirms there are 'no quotas for the number of students who must pass or fail a subject each year, and no cap on the number of students that can get each grade.'

That matters because it kills two common myths. The first is that a fixed percentage of students are pre-destined to fail — they are not. The second is that grades are capped, so your child is competing against classmates for a limited pool of A*s — they are not. Grading is criterion-referenced against a standard, then held steady year to year through Ofqual's awarding process.

This is what I mean by steady-state grading. Pre-pandemic standards were restored back in 2023 after the teacher-assessed years, and 2026 continues that settled approach. So the sensible expectation is stability — results broadly in line with 2025 — rather than either a sudden crackdown or an artificial boost. If you want the wider picture on how demanding the top A-Levels are in the first place, my honest guide to how hard A-Level Maths is and my piece on which A-Levels to choose both set realistic expectations.

'Grade inflation' is the phrase everyone reaches for, but the real story is more of an arc than a straight line. Here is the confirmed data for the proportion of A-Level entries in England graded A*/A (that is, A and above).

The 2021 peak was the product of teacher-assessed grades during the pandemic. What we have seen since is a return towards the pre-pandemic baseline, followed by a slow drift back up: from 26.5% in 2023 to 27.6% in 2024 to 28.2% in 2025. The top A* grade tells the same measured story — 9.4% of entries in 2025, up from 9.3% in 2024 and 8.6% in 2023, but well above the 7.7% of 2019.

So is this 'grade inflation'? A little, at the margins — 2025's figures sit modestly above 2019 rather than exactly on it, and the drift has been upward for three years running. But it is nothing like the pandemic spike, and it is a world away from the tabloid framing of grades becoming meaningless. The broader measures held up in 2025 too: 77.7% of entries were graded A*-C, and the A*-E pass rate was 97.4%, up from 97.1% in 2024. My reading, as a tutor, is that the standard your child is being measured against in 2026 is genuinely comparable to recent cohorts.

A couple of patterns from 2025 are worth understanding, because they shape the day. The first is scale: Ofqual issued 814,335 A-Level results in England in summer 2025, taken by 313,190 students — an average of 2.60 A-Levels each. (The UK-wide JCQ entry total was slightly different at roughly 821,875, down about 0.4% on 2024; the two figures count different things, so don't read a year-on-year change into comparing them.)

The second is the STEM story. Mathematics was again the single most popular A-Level in 2025, STEM entries rose, and further maths grew by around 7.2% to roughly 19,390 entries. Biology remained the most popular science. I'd offer one honest caution here: the precise per-subject entry counts genuinely differ between sources depending on whether they report England-only or UK-wide, so I'm giving you the direction of travel rather than false precision on the exact numbers. If your child is weighing the extra maths, my comparison of A-Level Maths versus Further Maths may help.

The third pattern is regional, and it is the one I find most sobering. In 2025 the top-grade gap between regions widened. London had the highest A*/A rate at 32.1% (up from 31.3%), while the North East had the lowest at 22.9% — and, tellingly, it actually fell from 23.9% the year before. That is a gap of around 9.2 percentage points between the strongest and weakest regions (a figure derived by subtracting one from the other, not an official 'gap' statistic). It is a reminder that where a student sits an A-Level still correlates with their odds of a top grade — which is exactly the inequality good teaching and tutoring exist to narrow.

If results don't match an offer, Clearing is the route to a place. Clearing 2026 runs from 2 July to 19 October 2026, with the big surge on results day. On 13 August you can view your status and search vacancies from the morning, but you can only add a Clearing choice from 13:00 (in Scotland, on 4 August, it was from 10:00). The order matters: phone the university first, get a verbal offer, then add just one Clearing choice at a time in UCAS.

The most important change to flag — because outdated advice is everywhere — is that UCAS Adjustment no longer exists. It was discontinued from 2022 entry and is not available for 2026. If your child beats their offer and wants to trade up, the mechanism now is self-release: a 'Decline my place' button that releases them into Clearing. Be careful with it. Self-release cancels the firm place plus any linked accommodation or scholarship, and it is effectively irreversible. My firm advice: secure a verbal offer from the new university before declining the place you already hold.

How many students actually place through Clearing? UCAS's evergreen phrasing is that 'more than 50,000 students find their place through Clearing every year' — treat that as a rounded figure rather than a precise annual count. What is clear is that recent years have seen record Clearing activity, so the process is busy but far from a last resort. Students heading towards competitive or admissions-tested courses should read my guide to the MAT, TMUA, ESAT and PAT admissions tests, and if you are looking at engineering or applied-science routes I offer targeted engineering and admissions tuition in Oxford.

If a grade looks wrong — especially one that a university place hinges on — there is a defined process, but it runs on a tight clock. For A-Levels needed to secure a place, your school should request a priority review of marking by 20 August 2026; these are completed within 15 calendar days and aim to finish by 3 September, which is UCAS's advisory date for providers to hold places open. The standard (non-priority) deadline for reviews of marking is 24 September 2026, and the same date applies for Access to Scripts copies used to support teaching and learning.

Two practical points. First, all post-results services are requested by the school or college as the entering centre, not by the candidate directly — so speak to your exams officer, quickly, on the day. Second, reviews correct genuine marking errors, and a grade can in principle move in either direction, so it is a considered step rather than a free reroll. Talk it through before requesting one.

On resits, be clear about the calendar: there is no autumn 2026 resit series for A-Levels or AS. Only GCSE English Language and GCSE maths have November 2026 resits (for students aged 16 or over on 31 August 2026). An A-Level student who wants to resit must wait for the summer 2027 series. That sounds like a long wait, but it can be the right call — a full year with focused support often lifts a grade far more than a rushed re-sit ever could. It is also, frankly, where good one-to-one GCSE and A-Level tuition in Oxford earns its keep.

The brief for this piece was to stick my neck out, so here are five reasoned predictions. Every one is a projection, not data — the actual 2026 results publish on 13 August, and outcomes depend on cohort size, prior attainment and Ofqual's awarding decisions. I'll give you the claim and the reasoning, and I'll be honest about my confidence.

Whatever the envelope says, a plan beats panic. If the grades are what you hoped for, the main job is admin: check UCAS Hub to confirm your place and read the university's next steps. If a place is confirmed, you're done — enjoy the day you earned.

If results fall short, work the sequence rather than the emotions. Check whether your insurance choice has come through. If not, don't wait — start phoning universities in Clearing from the morning, have your UCAS ID and grades to hand, and only add a Clearing choice once someone has verbally offered a place. If a specific grade looks wrong and a place depends on it, get your exams officer to lodge a priority review by 20 August. And if the right answer is a considered retake with proper support, that is a strong plan, not a failure — the next A-Level series is summer 2027.

I work with Oxford families through exactly these mornings, and the students who come out best are rarely the ones who never wobbled — they're the ones who had a calm adult and a clear next step. If you'd like that steadying hand for the year ahead, whether it's a retake, a strong start to a degree course, or shoring up the A-Levels underneath a university offer, I'm here. You can read more about my one-to-one maths tuition and science tuition in Oxford, and we can talk through the right plan for your child.