What Counts as a Good IGCSE Maths Grade

Where each grade actually sits

Cambridge publishes the cumulative world distribution for every subject after every series. These are the June 2025 figures for IGCSE Mathematics, across all Core and Extended entries in every country that sat it.

The line worth pausing on is B. Exactly half of the world's candidates were graded B or above, which places the median candidate on the B/C boundary. A student who has been told a C is respectable has been told something that was true of a different cohort.

• A* — 19.8%
• A or above — 34.1%
• B or above — 50.0%
• C or above — 70.9%
• D or above — 80.3%
• Ungraded — 7.9%

The distribution does not decide it — the destination does

Percentiles are context, not a target. What makes a grade good is whether it opens the specific thing you want next, and every institution publishes that number. Three questions settle it, and all three have written answers you can look up this afternoon.

What does the sixth form or college you are applying to require in mathematics? What does the degree you have in mind require, and is it a maths-heavy course with a higher bar than the university's general minimum? And is the requirement expressed in A*–G or in 9–1, since your certificate may use the other scale?

This is a deliberately unromantic way to answer the question, and it is the one that survives contact with an admissions deadline. A grade is not good or bad in the abstract; it either clears a published line or it does not.

The ceiling that was set before any revision started

Cambridge's Core route for 0580 cannot be awarded above a grade C, and the 9–1 equivalent cannot be awarded above a grade 5. This is visible on the published threshold tables as dashes in the top grade columns, and it is absolute.

The consequence is blunt: any sixth form requiring better than a C in mathematics is out of reach from a Core entry, no matter how well the student performs. If the destination needs a B or a grade 6, the tier has to be settled before entries close, and that is a conversation with the school in Year 10, not a discovery on results day.

The number at the bottom of the table

Ungraded means below grade G — the certificate records no grade for that subject. In June 2025 that was 7.9% of world entries in IGCSE Mathematics, which is roughly one candidate in thirteen.

It is worth knowing that figure exists, because it disproves the assumption that the bottom of the scale acts as a floor. There is no grade that arrives simply for sitting the paper, and a student who has stopped attending or who is on the wrong route can end a two-year course with nothing recorded.

How we set a target, and the margin we build into it

In our IGCSE programme we write the target as a mark, not a grade. We take the published requirement, convert it to the threshold from the student's own option in the most demanding recent series, and then add a margin, because thresholds move between series and nobody knows their own until months after the exam.

That margin is the honest part of the plan. A student sitting on the exact threshold of last year's paper is not safely at that grade; they are one harder question away from the grade below, and the whole point of preparing early is to stop the boundary from being the deciding factor.