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Official Statistics

Background information for entries and late entries for GCSE, AS and A level: 2025 to 2026 academic year

Published 5 November 2026

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2026

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/entries-and-late-entries-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-2025-to-2026-academic-year/background-information-for-entries-and-late-entries-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-2025-to-2026-academic-year

Give your views on our plans to discontinue this release

We are considering discontinuing the entries and late entries for GCSE, AS and A Level statistics. This is because we have seen limited evidence of user interest in the distinction between on-time and late entries and believe that component-level entry figures may no longer be useful to most users.

If you use these statistics, we would like to understand how you use them and what impact discontinuing the publication would have. Please complete our short survey or data.analytics@ofqual.gov.uk.

Note that we will continue to publish statistics before each summer and November assessment series which provide provisional figures on entries made, and we will continue to publish statistics on summer qualification results. Both sets of statistics provide information on entries that we believe is of greater value to users.

Information about the statistics

Purpose

This statistical release presents numbers of component-level entries and late entries and qualification-level results issued for GCSE, AS and A Level for the November 2025 series and June 2026 series (covering the 2025 to 2026 academic year), along with historical data dating back to the 2021 to 2022 academic year.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), a membership organisation comprising 8 providers of qualifications in the UK, including those awarding GCSE, AS and A Level, publishes on behalf of the exam boards deadlines by which entries should be made by schools, colleges and other exam centres in England. If an entry is made after the deadline, it is classed as late and may be subject to an additional charge.

Geographical coverage

This report presents data on entries, late entries and results issued for GCSE, AS and A Level in England.

Description

Four exam boards offered GCSE, AS and A Level qualifications in England during the time period covered in this release:

  • AQA Education (AQA)
  • Cambridge OCR
  • Pearson Education Ltd. (Pearson)
  • WJEC-CBAC Ltd. (WJEC)

Schools, colleges and other exam centres are responsible for submitting entries to exam boards for GCSE, AS and A Level on behalf of their students. In this statistical release, entries are counted separately for each component that makes up a qualification. An entry, therefore, is counted as a student being entered for an individual assessment component, whereas results refer to the overall qualification. Note, in this release ‘results issued’ refers to passing grades, ungraded results (U) as well as outcomes representing the absence of a result (Q, X). The absence of a result can be due to ongoing malpractice investigations, students being absent from the assessment or results being pending. Results for GCSE combined science are double-counted in this report, because the qualification is the size of 2 GCSEs.

External influences

There are various factors which might have influenced the entries for GCSE, AS and A Level in recent years:

Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, exams and other formal assessments returned in the 2021 to 2022 academic year, with adaptations and a package of support in place to recognise the disruption to students’ education. In the 2022 to 2023 academic year, assessment arrangements largely returned to pre-pandemic arrangements, and summer 2023 marked a return to pre-pandemic grading. These changes should be considered when interpreting entry patterns following the pandemic.

Data source

Exam boards send data on entries and late entries as well as on the results they issue in GCSEs, AS and A Levels to Ofqual for each exam series.

Data quality and areas of uncertainty

There may be errors in the data we receive from exam boards and as such Ofqual cannot guarantee that the information received is correct. Nevertheless, we do take appropriate steps to assess accuracy prior to publication.

The way we work with our data suppliers to promote data quality at source is described in our statement on administrative data sources. We also carry out our own quality assurance procedures as explained in our quality framework for statistical publications, to check the accuracy of the data and to challenge or question it where necessary. Publication may be deferred if the statistics are not considered fit for purpose.

Corrections and revisions policy

Once published, figures within this release are not usually subject to revision, unless an error is discovered, which would then be dealt with according to our corrections and revisions policy for official statistics.

Confidentiality and disclosure control

To ensure confidentiality and clarity of the accompanying data, all figures are rounded, as per our rounding policy for statistical publications.

Numbers are rounded to the nearest 5. If the value is between 1 and 4, it is represented as ‘Fewer than 5’. True zero is denoted as ‘0’. Where individual rounded values have been presented in a table along with their sum total, this total may be slightly different to the sum of the individual rounded values. This is because the total has been calculated from unrounded values before being rounded.

Percentages are derived from unrounded values; therefore, due to rounding, percentages may not always add up to exactly 100%.

See Statistics at Ofqual for other statistical releases and interactive visualisations.

Our provisional summer and November entries statistics provide information on the numbers of qualification-level entries made ahead of each exam series.

Our summer qualification results in England statistics provide information on the number of results issued each summer.

For other statistical releases published by the Department for Education, see:

For qualifications statistics relating to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, see:

Official statistics designation

These statistics are classified as Official Statistics.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR).

OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

You are welcome to contact us directly at data.analytics@ofqual.gov.uk with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.

Contact details

Email: data.analytics@ofqual.gov.uk

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