How to Read A-level A and A* Rates, Especially in Chemistry

Each August, official A-level tables show, for each subject, the share of entries awarded A* and the share awarded A* or A. Those percentages are often treated as a difficulty score, or as if a higher rate made one science a more attractive choice than another. They are not designed to be used that way.

This article explains how to read the official figures for A-level Chemistry beside Biology, Physics and Mathematics, and what the numbers do and do not show. It does not recommend a subject combination, and it does not predict a grade. For Chemistry’s own year-by-year A* and A*/A record, including 2020 to 2022 when awarding arrangements were different, see Chemistry as a subject choice: evidence from A-level and HKDSE. Those tables are not repeated here.

What the official tables record

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) publishes provisional A-level results for the UK each August. The 2026 tables cover the five awarding organisations that offer these qualifications across the UK: AQA, Cambridge OCR, CCEA, Pearson and WJEC (Eduqas).[1] The figures are for a national (or country) cohort in a named year. They are not a forecast for an individual student, a school or a future examination series.

Two details of the tables are often overlooked.

The percentages are cumulative. JCQ reports results “by cumulative percentages from A* to U”.[1] The A* column is the share awarded A*. The A*-A column is the share awarded A* or A, so it already includes the A* figure. A subject can look similar to another at A* and different once A is included. The two columns are not interchangeable.

Coverage has to be read with the year. The table below uses JCQ’s provisional UK figures for all ages in June 2026, including 18-year-olds and older candidates.[1] JCQ also publishes 18-year-old rows and separate figures for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Ofqual’s official summer 2026 release is England only; it recorded 61,050 students receiving an A-level Chemistry result in England that summer, a rounded student count, not the same series as JCQ’s UK entry totals.[2] JCQ states that the 2026 publication is provisional, because it is not informed by late entries and reviews of marking, and that 2025 figures are given for comparison.[1]

A 2026 comparison, not a ranking

The table shows JCQ provisional results for June 2026, all UK candidates, all ages. Percentages are the official cumulative figures, rounded to one decimal place.

Table notes. Source: JCQ, A level results by subject, age, sex and country — June 2026, Table 1, All UK, all ages, male and female, published 13 August 2026.[1] “A* or A” is JCQ’s cumulative A*-A percentage. “All subjects” is the JCQ total for that coverage. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place from the official workbook values.

Read across a single year, Chemistry and Biology had almost the same A* share in 2026 (9.4% and 9.3%), but Chemistry’s A* or A share was higher (32.3% against 27.8%). Physics had a higher A* share than Chemistry (11.5% against 9.4%), yet the two subjects were almost the same once A was included (32.5% and 32.3%). Mathematics, with a much larger entry, sat above both of those science figures on both measures.

None of those patterns is a ranking of how demanding the subjects are. The subjects have different content, different assessments and different groups of students. Entry size is part of that context: 65,541 Chemistry entries is not the same population as 73,925 in Biology, 45,800 in Physics or 115,380 in Mathematics. A published grade share describes how that national entry was graded in that year. It does not measure the work asked of an individual student, and it cannot tell a family which science is the more suitable A-level. The same caution applies when Chemistry is compared with “all subjects”: a 2026 A* share close to the all-subjects figure, and a higher A* or A share, is a description of one year’s distributions, not evidence that Chemistry is a more reliable route to a high grade.

Other cuts of the same official data

Changing the coverage changes the percentage. For Chemistry in 2026, JCQ’s UK all-ages figures were 9.4% at A* and 32.3% at A* or A; the UK 18-year-old figures were 10.1% and 34.0%.[1] A headline copied without its age row is not the same statistic. In June 2025, again for all UK candidates of all ages, Chemistry had 63,538 entries, 9.5% at A* and 32.6% at A* or A.[1] Those figures are close to 2026, which is consistent with the return to pre-pandemic grading already discussed in the earlier article on national statistics,[6] but they do not predict a later year. England-only rows also differ slightly from the UK totals. Two numbers should be compared only when they come from the same year, coverage (UK or England), age group and cumulative column. Ofqual’s A-level analytics tool publishes more detailed England outcomes; it is not the source of the UK table above.[3]

What a grade share cannot do

A grade share is not a difficulty score. Subjects are chosen at this stage, and the candidates who enter them are not a random sample of all A-level students. Even where two subjects have similar entry numbers, it does not follow that they are taken by similar groups of students. Ofqual has also explained why comparing awarding organisations by the share of high grades is a poor way to judge whether one board’s specification is more or less demanding: boards can have very different entries in size and in prior attainment, and awarding is designed so that grade standards in a subject are aligned across boards.[4]

Grade boundaries are set after the papers are taken. GOV.UK’s grading guide states that boundaries change from year to year to reflect the demand of that paper, and that the standard of work needed for each grade is intended to remain comparable from one year to the next. The number of students achieving each grade can also differ between boards offering the same qualification.[5] A lower or higher boundary is not, on its own, evidence that one board is a more favourable route to a grade.

When a table is used in a family discussion, it is worth recording the year, the source, whether the percentage is A* only or A* or A, and whether it is UK or England and all ages or 18-year-olds. Official files are updated, so a later final version can differ from the provisional August release. The figures cannot answer whether a particular student should take Chemistry, Biology or Physics.

Where to go next

Published A and A* rates describe how a national cohort was graded in a named year; they do not measure how demanding a subject is, or predict your child's grade.

Free AQA A-level Chemistry Guide (in English): a clear overview of the A-level course. Get the free guide

1-to-1 Chemistry tuition with Teacher Tommy: personal feedback for your child. Tuition enquiry

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Neither the guide nor tuition can predict or promise a grade.