GCSE Maths Grade Boundaries 2026: AQA, Edexcel and OCR — Every Grade, Both Tiers

GCSE Maths is a linear qualification, so what counts is the total raw mark across all three papers, not the grade on any single one. AQA and Edexcel mark each paper out of 80 for a total of 240; OCR marks each out of 100 for a total of 300. Same qualification, same standard, different denominator — which is exactly why raw marks cannot be compared board to board.

Here are the official overall qualification boundaries for the June 2026 series. Higher tier covers grades 9 to 4, plus a safety-net “allowed” grade 3 for students who fall just below the grade 4 line.

Read the grade 3 column carefully if your child is borderline on tier. On Higher there is nothing below it: a student who misses the allowed grade 3 receives a U rather than a grade 2 or 1. If that decision is still live for your family, my guide to choosing between Foundation and Higher tier works through it properly.

Foundation tier runs from grade 5 down to grade 1, so a grade 5 is the ceiling however well a student does. The raw marks look far higher than on Higher tier for the obvious reason: the questions are more accessible, so a much larger share of the paper is expected to be answered correctly.

Notice how far apart the boards sit on this tier. A grade 4 needed 64% of the marks at AQA and 63% at Edexcel, but only 44% at OCR — a 20 percentage-point gap that says nothing whatsoever about how hard it is to earn a grade 4 with one board rather than another. It reflects how demanding each board's Foundation papers were in that particular series, and nothing more.

This is the single most misread number in GCSE maths. Parents see 44% and assume OCR is the soft option; in reality OCR's Foundation papers simply carried more marks that stretched beyond grade 4 standard. The grade is the same currency wherever it was earned, which is the whole point of the system — a point I dig into in my guide to whether the exam board actually matters.

This is the question I am asked more than any other, because a grade 4 is the threshold that decides whether a student must keep studying maths after 16. Here are the June 2026 numbers for both tiers, with the percentage alongside so you can see what each one really demands.

The Higher tier figures always surprise people: a grade 4 took just 21% of the marks at Edexcel and 19% at OCR. That is not generosity. A Higher paper is written to stretch students towards grades 8 and 9, so a student working at grade 4 standard can only access a small slice of it — and those marks are scattered across three papers, usually in the opening questions and the accessible parts of longer ones.

It also explains why I get nervous when a student tells me they are “only aiming for the grade 4 boundary” on Higher. Twenty per cent of the marks sounds comfortable until you sit the paper and find that the questions you can do are thinly spread. On Foundation the same grade 4 asks for around 63% of a paper you can largely access — a far more solid, far less nerve-racking route to the same grade.

Percentages are the language most students actually think in when they mark a past paper, so here is the June 2026 Higher tier picture converted into round numbers. Treat them as a snapshot of one series rather than a fixed rule.

Two of the questions I am asked constantly can be answered straight from this. What grade is 50%? On Higher in 2026, half marks was a grade 5 at AQA but a grade 6 at both Edexcel and OCR. On Foundation, half marks was a grade 3 at AQA and Edexcel, and a grade 4 at OCR. What grade is 70%? On Higher it was a grade 7 with all three boards — just barely at AQA, where 166 marks out of 240 was needed. On Foundation, 70% was a grade 4 at AQA and Edexcel and a grade 5 at OCR.

The pattern worth absorbing is the spread at the top. A grade 9 sat between 87% and 91% of the marks depending on the board, while a grade 7 ranged from 57% to 69% — a twelve-point swing for the same grade in the same summer. If a student has internalised “I need 60% for a 7” from a revision website, they may be aiming nine points too low for their actual paper.

Comparing two series side by side is where grade boundaries stop being trivia and start being useful, because the movement tells you something about the papers. This summer the three boards moved in genuinely different directions.

Edexcel's Higher boundaries fell across the board — grade 9 down nine marks, grade 7 down ten, grade 4 down three — which points to a harder set of papers than 2025. OCR's Higher boundaries rose sharply, with grade 4 up ten marks and grade 3 up eleven, pointing the other way. AQA barely moved at all: grade 9 held at 219 for a second year and grade 4 at 63, with one- and two-mark adjustments elsewhere. Meanwhile AQA's Foundation grade 4 dropped six marks while Edexcel's rose seven.

None of that means grading got easier or harder anywhere. Nationally the picture was stable: Ofqual described this year's GCSE results as stable overall compared with 2025, and in maths the proportion of 16-year-olds in England achieving grade 7 or above rose slightly, from 21.5% to 22.3%, with grade 5 or above up from 52.8% to 53.8%. Ofqual attributed that small rise at the top to genuine improvement in attainment, supported by evidence from the National Reference Test, rather than to looser marking.

Grade boundaries are set after every script has been marked, which is why no one — not your school, not a tutor, not a revision site — can tell you next summer's numbers in advance. Senior examiners review real student work at the likely boundary marks, and that judgement is combined with statistical evidence about how strong the cohort is, based on what those students achieved earlier in their schooling.

The principle underneath is Ofqual's comparable outcomes approach: a grade should mean the same thing from one year to the next and from one board to another. When a paper proves harder than intended, the boundary comes down; when it proves more accessible, the boundary goes up. I explain the mechanics in more detail, including what the 9-1 scale replaced, in my guide to GCSE grades explained for parents.

One technical detail worth knowing if you like to check the arithmetic: alongside the qualification boundaries above, boards publish notional component boundaries for each individual paper. They are useful for diagnosing which paper let a student down, but they do not always add up to the overall figure. AQA's June 2026 Higher grade 8, for example, is officially 192, whereas the three per-paper boundaries total 191. Always work from the qualification-level number, which is what the boards publish on results day — AQA at 8.00am, with the others the same morning.

The November series exists for maths and English only, and it has its own boundaries — set from a much smaller, quite different entry, so they are not simply a copy of the summer's. Here is what the November 2025 series required.

They sit close to the summer figures but not on top of them: Edexcel's Foundation grade 4 was 143 in November 2025 against 151 the following June, and AQA's was 158 against 154. For a student resitting, that difference is worth roughly two or three questions — reassuring, but nowhere near enough to be a strategy in itself.

The context matters more than the numbers. In 2026, only 16.4% of 17-year-olds resitting maths reached a grade 4, which is why a resit needs a genuine change of approach rather than a rerun of Year 11. If that is where you are, I have written a full guide to resitting GCSE maths after a grade 3, including the November 2026 dates and the post-16 funding rules. Results for the November 2026 series are released on 14 January 2027, and that is when its boundaries will be published.

Used well, boundaries turn a vague ambition into an arithmetic problem, which is a much easier thing to work on. Used badly, they become an excuse to aim low. The difference is whether a student counts marks or chases a grade label.

Take a concrete example from this summer's Edexcel Higher paper. A student averaging 45 out of 80 per paper finishes on 135 marks — a grade 6 in June 2026, because the grade 6 boundary was 114 and the grade 7 was 146. They are 11 marks short of a 7, which is roughly four questions across three papers, or one well-drilled topic. That is a far more motivating way to see it than “I'm a grade 6 student”.

Do always add a margin. Because next year's boundaries are unknown, I ask students to work to roughly ten percentage points above last year's figure for their target grade. A student aiming at Edexcel's 61% for a grade 7 should be hitting around 70% in mocks before we call it secure. Pair that with a proper revision structure — my week-by-week GCSE maths revision plan covers the method — and check what your child will be given in the exam, because the formulae sheet provided in 2027 changes what they need to memorise and what they simply need to be able to use.