How many students pass a GCSE English or maths resit?

How many students resit GCSE English and maths?

In summer 2026 there were about 199,000 GCSE maths entries and 171,000 English language entries from 17 to 19-year-olds, up 6% and 7% on 2025, according to FFT Education Datalab.

Ofqual's own figures point the same way. In summer 2026, 265,825 students in England received results for just one GCSE and 124,780 for two, both up for the second year running. Of the students taking one GCSE, only 9,085 were 16. Ofqual does not label these students as resitters, but in 2025 it attributed a 14% rise in post-16 students getting GCSE results to the greater number taking English language and maths resits.

Which GCSE maths tier do resit students take?

Almost all of them take foundation tier: 95.5% of November 2025 maths entries were foundation and 4.5% higher.

Foundation tier awards grades 5 to 1. Higher tier awards grades 9 to 4, and students who narrowly miss grade 4 on higher tier are awarded a grade 3. The foundation share has stayed between 94.9% and 95.9% in every November series since 2021.

Do students improve when they resit?

Around a third do. Of students who finished 16 to 18 study in 2024/25 without a grade 4, 38.8% of those taking English and 33.3% of those taking maths improved their point score.

This is the Department for Education's English and maths progress measure. Among students without a grade 4 at the end of Year 11, 81.2% entered an approved English qualification and 82.3% an approved maths qualification during 16 to 18 study. Of these, 27.2% (English) and 33.4% (maths) kept the same score and 15.1% (English) and 15.6% (maths) scored lower. DfE's text does not break down the remainder.

DfE warns that this cohort was still affected by pandemic-era grading and is not yet comparable with years before the pandemic. Sixth form colleges had the highest entry rates (88.7% English, 89.4% maths) and independent schools the lowest (36.4% and 46.2%).

Methodology and sources

• Post-16 results by age come from JCQ's GCSE results tables: Table 5 of the June 2026 results (published 20 August 2026) and Table 2 of the November 2025 results (published 8 January 2026). Both cover England. Ofqual's summary of the 2026 results gives the same rates for 17-year-olds.
• Counts of students taking one or two GCSEs come from the data tables of Ofqual's Qualification results in England: summer 2026. They count unique students and are rounded to the nearest 5. The table does not show whether a student is resitting.
• November entries come from Ofqual's official statistics on provisional November 2025 entries, as submitted by 23 October 2025.
• The progress measure comes from DfE's accredited official statistics on 16 to 18 results for 2024/25 (revised). It covers students at the end of 16 to 18 study, not a single exam series.
• Entry numbers for 17 to 19-year-olds come from FFT Education Datalab, an independent research organisation. They are entries, not students, and FFT gives them in thousands.
• The rates for all students aged 17 and over are Aripsy calculations: each age group's grade 4 rate weighted by its entries, using JCQ's unrounded summer percentages. JCQ publishes its November percentages rounded to one decimal place, so this page shows November results by age only.
• JCQ's tables are quoted with attribution but not offered for download, because JCQ does not publish them under an open licence. Every other value on this page is quoted as published.