CCEA GCSE grades: A* to G with a C* in Northern Ireland

The CCEA nine-point scale

CCEA, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, awards GCSEs on a nine lettered grade scale, A* to G, including a C*. The scale applies to GCSEs taught from September 2017, with the first results in 2019. It came from a 2016 decision by the then Education Minister, after England moved from letters to the numbers 9 to 1. Wales kept an eight-letter scale, and Northern Ireland chose to add a ninth grade so its letters could line up with the English numbers.

CCEA's own guide sets out how the letters compare with the numbers:

CCEA adds that approximately the same percentage of students who got an A or above in the past will get A or 7 and above, and approximately the same percentage who got a C or above will get C or 4 and above. The new A* is aligned with the 9, so fewer students get an A* than used to, and introducing the C* means the percentages getting B and C reduced. For employers, CCEA's guide says that when comparing letter grades with number grades, grade 4 is equivalent to grade C, and that if employers ask for GCSEs at grade C and above there is no reason for that to change.

Do pupils in Northern Ireland also get 9 to 1 grades?

Some do. Northern Ireland has an open qualifications market, so schools can offer GCSEs from AQA, Cambridge OCR, Pearson and WJEC (Eduqas) as well as CCEA. The JCQ notes that those boards award 9 to 1 grades in Northern Ireland. In 2026 a small percentage of students in Northern Ireland, 3.2%, received a 9 to 1 grade, and the vast majority, 96.8%, took GCSEs graded A* to G. Students there can therefore get letters and numbers in the same set of results, which is why the comparison above matters. See our GCSE grade equivalents guide for all the scales side by side.

GCSE results in Northern Ireland 2026

JCQ published the Northern Ireland results on 20 August 2026 for over 32,000 students. Entries were 173,477, down 0.1% from 173,675 in 2025. The results were stable.

By sex, 36.2% of female students and 26.8% of male students achieved A/7 and above, and 85.7% of female and 81.5% of male students achieved C/4 and above. About 41.0% of all GCSE entries were in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, against 40.8% in 2025.

The Northern Ireland pass rates are higher than England's. In England in 2026, Ofqual's figures show 21.8% of results at grade 7 and above and 67.0% at grade 4 and above. Our GCSE grades explained guide has the England figures grade by grade.

What a C* means for you

• A C* is a strong pass. It lines up with a grade 5, which AQA describes as a strong pass, equivalent to a high C and a low B on the old system.
• A C is the standard pass. It lines up with a grade 4, the level CCEA says employers can treat as a C.
• Check which scale a course uses. A sixth form or college may write its entry requirements in letters or in numbers. The table above converts one to the other.

Use today's paper to see your grade

Sit today's paper on our GCSE papers, such as Maths Higher, Maths Foundation, Physics Higher or Biology Higher. It is a short timed paper of 8 questions worth 25 to 35 marks, not a full exam board paper. When you mark it, the results page shows a predicted grade and the marks needed for each grade. Those cut-offs are typical ones, not an exam board's: on the Higher tier, grade 4 starts at 28% of the marks and grade 7 at 61%, and on the Foundation tier grade 4 starts at 60%. A real board's boundaries move from year to year, so treat the prediction as a guide.

Our papers show a number from 9 to 1. If you are sitting a CCEA GCSE, use the table above to read your result as a letter: a 5 is a C*, a 4 is a C and a 7 or 8 is an A.

Exam answers

The answers and a worked mark scheme come with today's paper once it is marked. They belong to our papers, not to CCEA, so they are not official answers.

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