What Percentage Is a Grade 4 in GCSE Maths?

The June 2025 numbers, both tiers, three boards

Nothing about this grade is uniform. The percentages below are all from the same summer series and all describe a grade 4 in the same qualification.

The Foundation figures cluster between 45% and 67%. The Higher figures cluster between 16% and 26%. That is not a subtle difference in difficulty; it is two entirely different tasks that happen to end with the same number on the certificate.

• Edexcel 1MA1 Foundation — 144/240 = 60%
• Edexcel 1MA1 Higher — 53/240 = 22%
• AQA 8300 Foundation — 160/240 = 67%
• AQA 8300 Higher — 63/240 = 26%
• OCR J560 Foundation — 134/300 = 45%
• OCR J560 Higher — 47/300 = 16%

Why the Higher number is low, and why that is not good news

A Higher paper is written to separate grades 4 to 9, and the majority of its length is aimed above a grade 4 candidate. Scoring 22% on it means answering the opening questions well and then finding scraps. That is a real grade 4 and it counts for everything a Foundation grade 4 counts for — but it is not a comfortable position.

Look at how narrow the band is. On Edexcel Higher in June 2025 a grade 3 began at 36 marks and a grade 4 at 53. Seventeen marks out of 240 separated them. A student sitting at the boundary who has a bad morning on Paper 1 has nowhere to recover to, because everything they can reliably answer has already been counted.

On Foundation the same two grades are 39 marks apart, and the marks in between come from questions the student can actually attempt. That is the argument for the tier, and it is an argument about margin rather than about ambition.

The honest version of the tier conversation

Schools sometimes keep a borderline student on Higher because Foundation feels like a demotion, and families sometimes push for it for the same reason. The cost of that decision is visible in the numbers above: Higher gives access to grades 6 to 9 and takes away almost all the margin at grade 4.

The counter-argument is real too. Foundation caps at grade 5, so a student entered for Foundation cannot be awarded a 6 however well they do. If a 6 is genuinely in reach, Higher is right. If it is not, Higher is a gamble made with somebody else's future.

What we do in our GCSE programme is refuse to answer this from a feeling. We mark two past papers from the actual board — one Foundation, one Higher — and score both against real boundaries. A student who clears a 5 on Foundation and lands three marks above a 4 on Higher has just been given the answer.

What the grade 4 line actually controls

The Department for Education calls grade 4 a standard pass and grade 5 a strong pass, and both are reported in school performance tables. That is why schools talk about 5s while the qualification treats 4 as the pass line.

For a student in England the sharper consequence sits in the 16 to 19 funding rules: a student who has not achieved grade 4 in maths must keep studying the subject as a condition of their post-16 funding. Missing a 4 does not close doors so much as add a compulsory subject to the next two years.