A level subject combinations and outcomes


The charts below show the grade distributions for students taking different combinations of A level subjects.

You can select an individual subject or a combination of two or three subjects. You can choose to show the distribution of all grades or to only show data for students who achieved certain grades in the selected subjects.

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The table below shows the most frequent combinations of A level subjects.

You can view the most frequent combinations of two or three subjects or select combinations with a particular subject. You can also view the most frequently taken individual subjects.


For any feedback on these graphs or tables, please contact [email protected].

Return to the Ofqual Analytics home page.

If you need an accessible version of this information to meet specific accessibility requirements, please email [email protected] with details of your request.

This interactive visualisation shows data on subject combinations and grades for A level subjects taken by students in England. It covers the years from 2019 to 2025.

The 'Grades' tab shows students' grades for different subject combinations. You can select a combination of up to three subjects and explore how students' grades in one subject relate to their grades in other subjects. For example, you can find out:

  • how many students achieved grade A* in mathematics and achieved grade A* in biology and chemistry?
  • what grades did students who achieved grade C or above in geography achieve in history?

The 'Subjects' tab shows the most frequent combinations of subjects. You can choose to see the individual subjects that were most frequently taken or the most frequently taken combinations of two or three subjects. You can also select a subject to see which other subjects were most frequently taken together with it. For example, you can find out:

  • which two subjects were most frequently taken together?
  • which subjects were most frequently taken together with physics?

    • When you hover over the chart, pop-up boxes show the number and percentage of students for each grade.

Only A level qualifications are included. AS qualifications are not included. Data for previous years only includes reformed A level qualifications.

Schools and colleges in England are included.

Students of all ages from schools and colleges in England who took at least one A level exam are included. You can tick the check box 'Filter for students aged 18 only.' to only show the data for students aged 18. For each combination of subjects, only students who took all of the selected subjects are included.

The subjects shown are all distinct subjects. This is different from other Ofqual statistics where subjects are generally grouped using the subject groupings established by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ). Notable subject groupings that are split into separate subjects in this interactive visualisation are mathematics, which is split into mathematics and statistics, art & design subjects which is split into the separate art and design subjects and modern foreign languages which is split into the separate languages.

For each year, only A level subjects which were taken by at least 2,500 students are included. Only reformed A level subjects are included. A level subjects were reformed in stages. For the 2019 or 2020 summer exam series, subjects that weren't examined in the reformed version are not shown.

All valid qualification-level results issued on results days which include passing grades and Fails (U) are included. In the 'Grades' tab, you can select to show all grades, any particular grade or a range of grades. If a grade is not shown, this is because no student achieved that grade for your combination of grades and subjects.

Grading in summer 2025 and 2024 continued as normal following the return to pre-pandemic standards in summer 2023. Further information is available in the Ofqual guide for schools and colleges, the Ofqual student guide 2025 and the understanding grading: toolkit for schools and colleges. Further information for 2024 is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2024.

In summer 2023 the aim was to return to pre-pandemic grading. As in any year, grade boundaries were set based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence. The return to pre-pandemic grading means that national results were lower than in summer 2022. Further information is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2023.

Awarding in summer 2022 was at a midway point between summer 2019 and summer 2021. As in any year, grade boundaries were set based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence. Further information is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2022.

Ahead of summer 2021, the government determined that many exams and assessments could not be held fairly because of the disruption students had faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers were asked instead to submit grades to the exam boards, based on their assessment of what students have shown they know and can do, enabling progression to the next stage of education, training, or employment. Further information is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2021.

The summer 2020 exam series was cancelled due to the measures put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were awarded either their centre assessment grade or the calculated grade, whichever was the higher. Further information about the alternative arrangements for awarding in summer 2020 is available on the Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2020.

In 2020 and 2021, when GCSE, AS and A level grades were determined by teachers, national outcomes were higher than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Outcomes were also higher than pre-pandemic in 2022 when grading was at a midway point between summer 2019 and summer 2021. For more information see Ofqual’s approach to grading exams and assessments in summer 2022 and autumn 2021 .

Data is sent to Ofqual by awarding organisations prior to results day. When Ofqual receives the data, some results may not have been fully processed. The results issued on results days are provisional and may be changed, for example following a review or appeal initiated by the student or their school or college. Because results are provisional when this visualisation is published, figures may differ from figures that reflect student’s final records of achievement. Our figures may differ slightly from those published by the Department for Education (DfE) and JCQ. There may be differences in data processing, rounding and when data was collected from awarding organisations.

Subject combinations with fewer than 25 students are not shown. The number of students who achieved each grade in a subject is rounded to the nearest 5. If a grade is not shown, this is because no student achieved that grade for your combination of grades and subjects. The total number of students in a subject is calculated from unrounded values and then rounded to the nearest 5. The total can be slightly different to the sum of rounded numbers of students achieving each grade.

Click the 'Listen to this chart' button to play sounds based on the chart data. The higher the pitch of the sound, the more students have received the grade. A special sound is played for the grade that has been achieved by the most students. 'Listen to this chart' makes the data more accessible to people who are blind or have low vision.

We are publishing this data so that students, schools, policy makers and other stakeholders can easily access and explore information on qualifications and outcomes.

This data does not show differences in grading standards across subjects. Ofqual's 2024 research programme on inter-subject comparability provides more information on this complex topic.

For any feedback on these graphs or tables, please contact [email protected].

Return to the Ofqual Analytics home page.

If you need an accessible version of this information to meet specific accessibility requirements, please email [email protected] with details of your request.