More than 5.6 million GCSE results were issued to nearly 670,000 students in England this summer.

Results for this year’s GCSEs were similar to those awarded in 2023. The approach to grading returned to pre-pandemic arrangements in England last year, and this year Northern Ireland and Wales have completed their transition to pre-pandemic arrangements.

Every year there are small fluctuations in results. This can be due to changes in the cohort of students and changes to qualifications and course choices over time.

Increased entries

GCSE entries increased by more than 250,000 compared with summer 2023. This is due mainly to the 4.6% growth in the 16-year-old population but also increased entries from post-16 students for GCSE English language and maths.

Overall outcomes

Overall GCSE results in England were similar to 2023: 

• 21.7% of grades were at 7 and above (21.6% last year and 20.7% in 2019). 
• 67.4% of grades were at 4 and above (67.8% last year and 67.1% in 2019). 
• more than 50% of students took 8 or 9 GCSEs this year.  14% took more. 
• there was a 10.7% difference between the highest and lowest-performing English regions (28.5% of students in London and 17.8% of students in the North East achieved grade 7 or above).
  

Popularity of subjects (UK wide)

According to the number of entries, the top 10 subjects remain unchanged: 

• The ten most popular GCSE subjects in terms of entries in 2024 were: Science Double Award (980,786 entries), mathematics (878,165), English language (845,834), English literature (655,905), history (325,437), geography (297,411), religious studies (245,019), art and design subjects (208,934), biology (194,925), and chemistry (185,274). 
• Of the larger entry subjects, business studies had the biggest percentage increase in entries – up 9.7% (to 135,090). Other subjects increasing in popularity included statistics (up 19.9% to 31,844), music (up 8.7% to 35,861) and computing (up 5.8% to 95,841). 
• Citizenship was amongst the subjects decreasing in popularity (entries were down 4.7% to 20,790).
  

English and maths GCSEs

• In England, 71.2% of 16-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above in English (71.6% in 2023). 72% of 16-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above in maths (72.3% in 2023). 
• In England, more post-16 students took English and maths GCSEs this summer compared with 2023 due to an increase in population size and lower grade 4+ achievement rates in 2023. Over 133,000 post-16 students took GCSE English and over 165,000 took GCSE maths.  19% of 16-18-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above in English (23% last year) with 15% achieving a grade 4 or above in maths (13% last year).

Gender patterns

• Girls continued to outperform boys overall. 70% of female entries and 64% of male entries achieved grade 4 or above, whilst 24% of female entries and 18% of male entries achieved grade 7 or above.  However, there is variation across subjects with boys outperforming girls in certain subjects such as maths and computer science. 
• Of students receiving grade 9 in all subjects they took this year, 65% were female and 35% were male.
  
  

A full breakdown of grades achieved by subject and gender is available on the JCQ website. Ofqual’s interactive analytics tool gives further breakdowns.

Ofqual will publish an equalities analysis, setting out the differences in results between students with different characteristics in the autumn.

Our summaries of this year’s results trends for A Levels and VTQs are also available.