Guidance

Grading and Admissions Data for England (GRADE) user guide

A user guide for the linked administrative data on education, assessment and university admissions available in the GRADE data set.

• From: Ofqual
• Published: 29 April 2022
• Last updated: 31 July 2026
  Show all updates

  1. 31 July 2026

     Updated user guide to reflect the third release of the GRADE data set with added years 2023 to 2024

  2. 21 July 2025

     Added information for the new lookup table of pseudonymised unique school reference numbers in the DfE dataset.

  3. 24 January 2025

     Added PDF file for Grading and Admissions Data for England (GRADE) user guide and removed GRADE framework files, which are superseded by the user guide.

  4. 8 January 2025

     Added the HTML page 'Grading and Admissions Data for England (GRADE) user guide'.

  5. 29 April 2022

     First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Grading and Admissions Data for England (GRADE) user guide

Ref: Ofqual/25/7198

HTML

Details

The Grading and Admissions Data for England (GRADE) data sharing project is a joint open data initiative by Ofqual, the Department for Education (DfE) and Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). The main aim is to make data available for independent research that serves the public good.