Results trends 2025: GCSEs

Results trends 2025: GCSEs 22 August 2025

More than 5.6 million GCSE results were issued to students in England this summer in 133 different qualifications. Entries for GCSEs have decreased slightly this year compared with 2024 despite a population increase of year 11 students.
 
Overall outcomes
Overall GCSE results were similar to last year. Achievement at grade 7 and above was 21.8% (21.6% in 2024), and achievement at grade 4 and above was 67.1% (67.4% in 2024). Over 45% of 16 year-olds achieved grade 4 or above in 7 or more GCSEs. The average number of GCSEs taken per 16 year-old student remains stable at 7.8.

Popularity of subjects (UK wide)
According to the number of entries, the top 10 subjects at GCSE remain unchanged. Fewer students sat GCSE biology, chemistry and physics but there was an increase in entries for combined science:

The ten most popular GCSE subjects in terms of entries in 2025 were: Science Double Award (up 0.9% on last year to 989,264 entries), mathematics (up 1.7% to 893,198), English language (up 2.4% to 866,023), English literature (down 1.0% to 649,481), history (down 5.7% to 306,759), geography (up 1.8% to 302,706), religious studies (down 3.1% to 237,515), art and design subjects (down 1.1% to 206,598), biology (down 5.8% to 183,539), and chemistry (down 6.0% to 174,088).
Of the subjects outside the top 10, business studies continued to increase in popularity with a further increase in entries this year (up 2.1% to 137,924). Other subjects increasing in popularity included statistics (up 9.5% to 34,879 entries), music (up 6.1% to 38,060) and physical education (up 2% to 89,584).

English and maths GCSEs

Across the UK, 70.5% of 16-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above in English Language (down on 71% in 2024). 71.1% of 16-year-olds achieved a grade 4 or above in maths (down on 71.2% in 2024).
More post-16 students re-sat English Language and maths GCSEs this summer compared with 2024. In the UK, over 186,000 post-16 students took GCSE English Language and over 217,200 took GCSE maths. 23.1% of post-16 students achieved a grade 4 or above in English Language (22.9% last year) with 18.2% achieving a grade 4 or above in maths (18.6% last year).

Gender patterns
Whilst girls continue to outperform boys at GCSE, the gap between boys’ and girls’ GCSE attainment has narrowed, due to a combination of boys performing marginally better and girls performing marginally less well than in 2024. The percentage of entries graded 4 or above has increased for boys (up from 67.1% to 67.5%) while for girls it has fallen very slightly (from 73.7% to 73.6%). These represent only small changes and vary from subject to subject.

Regional patterns
The gap between London and the rest of the country has narrowed slightly at GCSE grade 4 when compared with last year. At grades 4 and above, London was the highest performing region (71.6%), with the West Midlands achieving the lowest percentage of grade 4s (62.9%). The geographical region with the highest percentage of GCSE grade 7s and above was London (28.4%). The North East had the fewest (17.8%).

A full breakdown of grades achieved by subject and gender is available on the JCQ website.

Ofqual has published a statistical report on this year’s results for more in-depth analysis of outcomes in England. Also available are interactive visualisations of outcomes by centre type, grade combinations, and an interactive map of England showing results in different subjects by grade and county.

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.

Related link
Summary of this summer’s entries