GCSE results 2025: Small drop again in English and maths pass rates

This year’s GCSE results show there has been another small fall in the proportion of students passing English and maths, but overall grades have held steady.

The results for exam entries in England are very similar to 2024’s overall, with similar proportions of top grades (7 or above) and students achieving a 4 or above.

This morning’s results are for the cohort whose transition from primary to secondary school was disrupted by the onset of the Covid pandemic.

The English language pass rate has fallen from 61.6 per cent to 59.7 per cent in 2025. In maths, it fell to 58.2 per cent from 59.6 per cent last year.

Experts said the fall is mostly driven by more students resitting, rather than any particular drops in performance from specific age groups.

Exam board OCR said the proportion of English and maths resit entries is at an “all-time high”.

Meanwhile, there has been a small narrowing in both the regional divide and the gender gap.

Grading standards have been equivalent to those pre-pandemic since Ofqual completed a two-step process to return to normal in 2023. This year’s GCSE cohort was in Year 6 when the pandemic first started, meaning their transition to secondary was affected.

Last week’s A-level results saw a rise in overall top grades, but a growing regional divide in the top grades.

These are the key takeaways from 2025’s GCSE results.

• Overall grade spread
• English and maths pass rates
• Results by region
• State and private school results
• Results by gender
• Results in Wales and Northern Ireland

Overall grade spread remains stable

This year, 67.1 per cent of entries achieved a grade 4 or above across all subjects, rising to 70.5 per cent when only 16-year-olds are included.

This is only very slightly down from last year when 67.4 per cent of entries were graded grade 4 or above (rising to 70.4 per cent when just 16-year-olds were included). These were very similar to 2023 levels.

Meanwhile, 21.8 per cent of all students and 23 per cent of 16-year-olds achieved the top grades (grade 7 and above) this year. This compares with 21.7 per cent of all students and 22.6 per cent of 16-year-olds last year.

And finally, 5.1 per cent of all students achieved the top grade 9, up slightly on 5 per cent last year.

More on GCSE results:

• How did each GCSE subject perform in 2025?
• Six data insights from GCSE results 2025
• GCSE resits: everything you need to know

English and maths pass rates fall again

Last year saw a marked drop in the number of students aged 17 or over who achieved a grade 4 in English language.

In 2024, 61.6 per cent of all students achieved a grade 4 or higher in English, down from 64.2 per cent in 2023. For students 17 or older the pass rate was only 20.9 per cent - down from 25.9 per cent the year before.

This year has seen another fall in the English language grade 4 achievement rate - though much smaller than last year’s, and less driven by students resitting than in 2024.

For all students, this year, 59.7 per cent achieved a grade 4. The pass rate remained steady for students aged 17 or older at 20.9 per cent - but fell slightly for 16-year-olds from 71.2 per cent last year to 70.6 per cent.

In 2024, 59.6 per cent of all students achieved a grade 4 or above in maths GCSE. Just 17.4 per cent of entries from students aged 17 or above got a grade 4 last year, but this was slightly up from 16.4 per cent the year before.

This year in maths, across all students, those achieving a grade 4 or higher fell to 58.2 per cent. For those aged 17 or older, 17.1 per cent of entries achieved the grade 4, only very slightly down from last year. There was also a very slight decline for 16-year-olds from 72 per cent last year to 71.9 per cent.

For maths, the grade 4 achievement rate has decreased most for those aged 15 or younger, from 70.3 per cent to 68.6 per cent this year.

There have been repeated calls for an overhaul of the resit policy, which currently requires students who do not achieve a grade 4 in English and maths to repeatedly resit until they do.

The interim curriculum review report said it is “particularly concerning” that many students retaking at post-16 make no grade progress.

This year, there were 433,697 GCSE entries from students aged 17 or older in England. This is compared with 383,372 last year - a 13 per cent increase.

Entries were up in both GCSE English language and maths, which Claire Thomson, executive director of regulation and compliance at AQA, said is driven by entries by the 17-plus age group.

For English language, resit entries have “exceeded the pre-pandemic level of entries from this age group”, she added, and said the jump in the proportion of resit entries is higher than demographic change because of more 16-year-olds taking GCSEs, and the return to pre-pandemic standards.

GCSE exams returned to pre-pandemic grading standards in 2023, meaning it was harder to get a grade 4 for the past two cohorts than for previous ones.

“It is worrying that so many students fail to achieve a good grade when they resit,” said Jill Duffy, OCR chief executive, speaking in a press briefing this morning.

The National Reference Test, also published today, shows English and maths performance is relatively stable compared with last year, Ofqual chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham said.

Regional divide narrows

There has been a slight narrowing of the regional divide this year in terms of the proportion of students achieving a grade 4 or above.

This year, the gap between the areas with the highest and lowest proportion of students achieving this was 8.7 percentage points. This was between London (where 71.6 per cent of entries got a grade 4 or above) and the West Midlands (62.9 per cent).

Last year, the gap at grade 4 was 9.4 percentage points - again between London and the West Midlands. The narrowing has mostly been driven by a 0.9 drop in the proportion of entries getting grade 4 in London.

In terms of the top grades, the regional divide has stayed almost the same at 10.6 percentage points. In London, 28.4 per cent of entries were awarded grade 7 or above, while in the North East 17.8 per cent got those top grades.

In 2024, the gap between the top grades in the North East and London stayed fairly stable at 10.7 percentage points. That was up from 9.3 points in 2019.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the students receiving results today experienced “a great deal of disruption” due to the pandemic. “It has not been easy, and the previous government did not put enough investment or focus into educational recovery,” he added.

State and private school top grades

Meanwhile, the gap between state and private schools achieving the top grades has very slightly widened to 28.6 percentage points, up from 28.4 points last year.

Across all state-funded schools, 20.6 per cent of entries achieved the top grades, compared with 49.2 per cent of entries from private schools.

Data for specific types of state school show 19.5 per cent of entries from academies achieved the top grades, very similar to 19.2 per cent last year. At secondary comprehensives, 19.8 per cent achieved the top grades.

Top grades were more common at free schools, with 23.7 per cent achieving a grade 7 or above here.

The proportion of entries achieving a grade 4 or above was 66.5 per cent across state schools, leaving a gap of 24 percentage points between state schools and private schools, where 90.5 per cent of entries were awarded a 4 or above. This is similar to last year’s gap of 24.1 percentage points.

Gender gap closes but girls still ahead

This year’s results show the gender gap at its narrowest since 2000, though girls remain ahead in both the top grades and in achieving grade 4 or above.

In 2024, girls were more likely to achieve a grade 4 across all subjects (70.8 per cent) compared with boys (64.1 per cent). This was a very similar gap to the previous year.

The gap has narrowed slightly in 2025: performance from boys at the grade 4 level stayed the same at 64.1 per cent, while there was a small drop in the proportion of entries from girls awarded grade 4 or above, to 70.2 per cent.

In terms of top grades, boys saw a very slight uptick, with 19.3 per cent of entries awarded grade 7 or above compared with 18.9 per cent last year. Girls, on the other hand, saw a very slight fall from 24.4 per cent last year to 24.2 per cent.

The gap also existed for the highest grade 9, which was awarded to 5.8 per cent of entries from girls and 4.4 per cent of entries from boys (last year, the figures were 5.8 per cent and 4.2 per cent, respectively).

Boys still tend to outperform girls in maths: as with last year, boys were more likely both to get a grade 4 or above and to get the top grades in maths GCSE.

Last year, Education Policy Institute researchers pointed out that the attainment gap between girls and boys has narrowed since the pandemic, and this has to some extent been driven by falling attainment from girls rather than boys doing better.

Wales and Northern Ireland results

In Northern Ireland, 31.6 per cent of GCSE students achieved a grade 7 or above in 2025, as compared with 31 per cent in 2024 and 30.5 per cent in 2019. Meanwhile, 83.5 per cent of exam entries received a grade 4 or above, similar to the 82.7 per cent of entries last year and the 82.2 per cent of entries in 2019.

In Wales, 19.5 per cent of students achieved a 7 or above, compared with 19.2 per cent in 2024 and 18.4 per cent in 2019. This year, 62.5 per cent of exam entries received a 4 or above - similar to the 62.2 per cent of entries that achieved this in 2024. The equivalent figure for 2019 was 62.8 per cent.

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