What is a grade 9 at GCSE? The top grade and how few get it

What is a grade 9 at GCSE?

A grade 9 is the highest grade on the 9 to 1 scale. In England it is not fixed to the old A*. Ofqual only fixes the bottoms of grades 7, 4 and 1 to the old A, C and G, and AQA says grades 7 to 9 are based on the proportion of students who would have been expected to get an A or A*. In Northern Ireland CCEA lines its A* up with the 9, which means fewer students get an A* than before.

How a grade 9 is awarded

AQA says a formula means that around 20% of all grades at 7 or above will be a grade 9. In England in 2026 the 5.0% of results at grade 9 were about 23% of the 21.8% at 7 or above. The formula works subject by subject, so the number of 9s depends on how many students reach a 7 in that subject. Ofqual says there is no cap on the number of students who can get a grade, and that boundaries are set after marking is nearly complete.

How many students get a grade 9 or above

Just 5.0% of England's results were a 9 in 2026, 5.2% among 16-year-olds, so about one result in twenty.

Among the subjects in this table the separate sciences have the highest shares of 9s, partly because they attract the highest proportion of the most able students, as JCQ explains. English Language has the lowest, at 2.2%.

How many marks you need for a grade 9

What AQA required for a 9 in June 2026: Source: AQA's June 2026 document.

That is how few marks you can lose: on AQA Higher in June 2026, 21 out of 240 in Maths, 67 out of 200 in Biology, 45 in Chemistry, 43 in Physics and 20 out of 180 in Computer Science. Maths Higher is the tightest, at 91% of the total.

Straight 9s across many subjects

Ofqual's data tables report that 1,375 of the 16-year-olds in England who took seven or more GCSEs in 2026, 0.2%, got a grade 9 in every one of them. That is 850 girls, 0.3% of the girls in that group, and 525 boys, 0.2% of the boys. Across all subjects and ages, 5.0% of results were a 9, so a student who gets 9s in several subjects is rare.

Is a grade 9 harder than an A*?

The scales are not the same, so there is no like-for-like answer. England fixes only three points, and a 9 is in the range that covered the old A and A*. What the data show is that grade 9 is rare: 5.0% of results.

How close are you to a 9?

A 9 starts at 82% on our typical Higher scale. Try Chemistry Higher; AQA's real Chemistry 9 was 78%, Maths 91%.

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