GCSE 2019 grade boundaries – AQA, Edexcel, CCEA and OCR criteria and numbered grading system

TEENAGERS across the country collected their 2019 GCSE results on August 22, 2019 - the same day the grade boundaries were released.

Here's everything you need to know and how the grading system works for the different exam boards.

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What are the 2019 GCSE grade boundaries?

Grade boundaries set out the minimum number of marks required for each grade.

These change each year depending on how well pupils perform as a whole.

Exam chiefs will lower the grade boundaries for harder exams to allow more students to get the top grades on account of the difficulty of the tests.

But if students do well on an exam nationwide, the boundaries are likely to be raised.

There are five different exam boards used in every school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This list includes Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), Council for Curriculum and Examinations Assessment (CCEA), Pearson Edexcel, Oxford Cambridge and RSA Exams (OCR) and Welsh Joint Examinations Committee (WJEC).

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Grade boundaries were released on results day, and were published separately by individual exam boards. These can be found on their websites below:

What are the new GCSE grades?

GCSEs in England are changing, with grades for certain GCSE subjects now graded via numbers.

Historically, GCSE students would get a letter assigned to their performance in each subject, from an A*, the best possible mark, to a U, for a paper which failed to achieve any grade.

However, GCSEs now have numerical grades from 1-9 awarded instead of the traditional lettered results.

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How do the new GCSE grades work?

The new system is numerical as opposed to letters:

• 9, 8 and 7 are equivalent to A* or A
• 6, 5 and 4 are equivalent to B or C
• 3, 2 and 1 are equivalent to D, E, F or G
• A U is equivalent to ungraded

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Why are GCSE grades changing?

The government is shaking up GCSEs to make them tougher - in the hope that they'll be taken more seriously by employers.

Part of this change involves using a new grading system, to signal that there have been reforms to the exams, and to make it easier to differentiate between results.

The shift to numbered grades also fits better with European exam results, with Germans - and most of Britain's other global competitors - using numerical exam grades.