Methodology
How we source, verify, and publish the grade boundary data behind the Grade Boundary Calculator. This page is the citable reference for the dataset: coverage is the 2022-2025 exam series across AQA, Edexcel, OCR (61 subject/tier/year entries currently published), and every figure traces back to an official board document.
Identify the official source document
For each exam board and series, we locate the board's own published grade-boundary table, either the current results-day page or, for prior years, that board's grade-boundaries archive of combined subject-level workbooks and PDFs.
Transcribe raw-mark thresholds directly
We record the exact raw-mark thresholds published by the board for each grade, for the subject, tier (Foundation/Higher for GCSE), and total mark shown in that document. No values are estimated, interpolated, or carried over from a different year or paper.
Omit rather than guess
Some subjects, particularly A-Level English Literature, History, and Physics at AQA, are published per exam-text or per-option code rather than as a single subject-level figure in a given series. Where a board's document does not give one unambiguous boundary for a subject/tier/year, we omit that entry entirely rather than picking an option or estimating a figure.
Publish with full sourcing
Every entry in the calculator carries the exact source document URL it was transcribed from, listed below by board. This page is the stable citation target for the dataset as a whole.
What "grade boundary" means here
A grade boundary is the minimum raw mark a student needed, out of the total marks available for a subject, to be awarded a given grade in a specific exam series. Boundaries are set by each exam board after marking is complete, based on the difficulty of that year's papers and the performance of the national cohort, they are not fixed percentages and are not known in advance of results day.
Because boundaries move year to year, and sometimes by a wide margin, a mark that earned a grade 7 in one series might earn a grade 6 or a grade 8 in another. The calculator's exam-series selector lets you compare the same subject and tier across every year we've published, so you can see that movement directly rather than relying on a single year's snapshot.
Sources by board
- AQA: Combined "GCSE subject" and "A-level subject" grade boundary tables, published after each June exam series. (current page, archive)
- Edexcel (Pearson): Pearson's published grade boundaries for UK GCSE and A-Level qualifications. (current page)
- OCR: Combined "GCSE grade boundaries" and "AS and A Level grade boundaries" PDFs, published after each exam series. (current page, archive)
- WJEC: Published grade boundaries for Welsh and English-market WJEC/Eduqas qualifications. Not yet imported into this calculator. (current page)
Caveats
- Boundaries typically move year-on-year as paper difficulty changes, in some subjects by a large number of marks; treat any single year as a guide, not a guarantee.
- Foundation and Higher tier GCSEs have entirely separate boundary sets, a mark that clears the top Foundation grade is not comparable to the same mark on the Higher paper.
- Some A-Level subjects publish boundaries per exam-text or per-option code rather than as one subject figure for a series; where that's the case for a subject/year, we've omitted it rather than picking an option (see step 03 above).
- Coverage is not yet complete for every board and year: Edexcel is currently limited to the 2025 series, and WJEC is not yet imported. We'll extend coverage as further official archives are sourced.