A Level Maths is a big step up from GCSE. Here is what actually happens to students at each GCSE grade, counted from the day they start the course.
Pick the grade you are aiming for, then find your GCSE grade:
What this chart cannot tell you
It covers every student in the country, and the great majority of them study A level Maths with no individual support at all. It is a picture of the national average, not a forecast for any one student.
A GCSE grade sets the starting point, not the destination. What moves a student up a chart like this is finding the gaps early, learning how to revise properly, and building real exam technique. Those are the three things we work on.
Where these come from. Grade outcomes are Edexcel entry data for 31,107 students, GCSE Maths 2017 to A level Maths 2019, published via the Maths Emporium. Combining grades 8 and 9 gives 88.8% reaching at least a C, within a percentage point of the 89% found independently by Cambridge University Press & Assessment for a later cohort. Those figures count only students who sat the exam, so we have scaled them by how many finish the course, which runs from about 92% for the strongest starters down to about 74% for the weakest (FFT Education Datalab, 2026). That last step is our own estimate, so treat the exact numbers as a guide rather than a measurement. The shape of the picture is not in doubt.
From a grade 7 at GCSE, fewer than one in ten students who start A Level Maths come out with an A, and a little under half reach a C. From a grade 6, it is around one in thirty for an A, and about one in five for a C.
From a grade 9, three quarters achieve an A or A*. The gap between a 9 and a 7 at GCSE is far wider by the end of A Level than it looks on results day.
These are percentages of students who started the course, not of those who sat the exam, which is why a "did not finish" band is included. Most published figures quietly exclude the students who dropped out, which makes the outcomes look better than the experience.
Grade outcomes: Edexcel entry data for 31,107 students, tracking GCSE Maths in 2017 through to A Level Maths in 2019, published via the Maths Emporium.
Cross-checked independently: combining grades 8 and 9 by cohort size gives 88.8% reaching at least a C. Cambridge University Press & Assessment found 89% for a later cohort, working separately from different data (Progression from GCSE to A Level, 2020-2022, Report No. 139). Two sources, two cohorts, a tenth of a percentage point apart.
Completion rates: the outcome data counts only students who sat the exam, so each band is scaled by the share who finish the course, interpolated between the 92% and 74% anchors in FFT Education Datalab's 2026 completion-rate study.
What we are less sure about: that completion scaling is our own estimate rather than a measurement. It holds under both optimistic and pessimistic drop-out assumptions, and the central case reproduces FFT's published 90% overall completion for maths to within a point, but it is an estimate and we would rather say so than not.
Grade 5 is deliberately not shown. It exists in the source data, but with 281 students against 8,519 at grade 7, and it inverts: grade 5 appears to beat grade 6 on the top grades. That is a selection effect in a small sample, not a finding, and charting it would mislead.
What this chart cannot tell you is what happens to your child. It describes what a large group of students did on average, with no information about their teaching, their effort, or whether anyone noticed when they started to struggle. It is a starting point for a conversation, not a prediction.
Most of our students come to us because A Level Maths turned out to be harder than they expected. That is the normal reason, not an unusual one.