What Mark Do You Need for a Grade 9 or an A*?

Grade boundaries move every single year, which is why "you need 80% for a 9" is bad advice. The honest answer depends on the board, the tier and how hard the paper was.

How boundaries are actually set

Exam boards set boundaries after marking, using statistics that keep the proportion of each grade broadly stable year to year. A hard paper means lower boundaries; an easy paper pushes them up. In recent Edexcel Higher GCSE series, grade 9 has ranged from roughly the low 190s to the low 220s out of 240.

Turning that into a target

The practical approach is:

1. Sit a full past paper under timed conditions.
2. Mark it strictly against the official mark scheme.
3. Compare your raw mark against the last three years of boundaries — that range is your realistic grade.

Our free Grade Boundary Predictor does step 3 for you across Edexcel, AQA and OCR for both GCSE and A-Level.

Sitting legacy modular A-Level papers?

Older C1–C4, M1, S1 and FP1 papers were graded on UMS, not raw marks. Convert those with the UMS converter.

Then plan the work

Once you know your gap, build a schedule around your exam dates with the revision timetable generator, and see what your target grades are worth in university terms with the UCAS points calculator.

Practise on real papers with full worked solutions in the MathVault resource library.