How A-levels are graded (2026): the A*-E scale, grade boundaries, and the history of AS and UMS

A-level grades look simple on results day: a single letter from A* to E for each subject. The machinery behind that letter is anything but simple, and the bits people half-remember (AS levels, UMS, modules, January exams) mostly describe a system that no longer exists. This guide explains how A-levels are actually graded in England in 2026, why the grade boundaries change every August, and what the reforms of the last decade did to the qualification your parents sat.

The grade scale

A-levels in England are graded A*, A, B, C, D, E. Below E the result is U (unclassified), which means no A-level is awarded. There is no F or G at A-level (those exist only in the old GCSE letter scale).

A few things worth fixing in your head straight away:

• A* is the top grade, introduced in 2010. There is nothing above it. The headline "three A*s" is the ceiling for three A-levels.
• E is a pass. An E grade is a full A-level pass and earns UCAS tariff points. People casually call low grades "fails", but only a U is technically unclassified.
• The grade is for the whole subject, not for a single paper. Your marks across all the papers in that subject are added together, and the total is compared against the subject grade boundaries.

How a raw mark becomes a grade

Each A-level subject is assessed by a set of exam papers (usually two or three) sat at the end of the course. After marking:

1. Your marks on each paper are added into a total raw mark for the subject.
2. The exam board sets grade boundaries: the minimum total mark needed for each grade.
3. Your total is compared to those boundaries, and you get the grade you have reached.

That is the entire conversion. The complexity lives in step 2, because the boundaries are not fixed in advance and are not the same every year.

Why grade boundaries move every year

This is the single most misunderstood part of the system, so it is worth being precise.

Exam papers are written fresh every year, and no two papers are exactly equally hard. If this year's Maths paper happens to be tougher than last year's, students will score lower raw marks on it through no fault of their own. To stop a harder paper from unfairly depressing everyone's grades, the boards move the boundaries down for a harder paper and up for an easier one.

The boundaries are set during a process called awarding (or standard setting), which combines two things: statistical evidence (how this year's cohort performed at GCSE, what the prior-attainment data predicts) and senior examiners' judgement of the actual scripts at the borderlines. The guiding principle Ofqual uses is broadly "comparable outcomes": a student of the same ability should get roughly the same grade whichever year they sit, so national grade distributions stay stable unless the underlying cohort genuinely changes.

This is why you cannot know in June what mark you need for an A. The boundary for that A is decided in August, after every script has been marked.

How A* is set

A* deserves its own note, because the way it is awarded changed with the reforms.

In the old modular A-levels (pre-2017), A* was awarded to candidates who averaged at least 80% across the whole A-level and scored at least 90% in the harder second-year (A2) units. It was a mechanical rule tied to UMS marks (more on UMS below).

In the current linear A-levels, there are no modules to average. Instead, exam boards use prior-attainment predictions to identify a subject-level A* boundary, and any student whose total mark reaches that boundary gets the A*. In practice the A* boundary sits some distance above the A boundary, but it is a single mark on the same total, not a separate "90% in the second year" rule.

What "linear" actually changed

If your parents sat A-levels, they probably sat a modular qualification, and three features of it have now gone:

• Modules sat throughout the course. You used to take unit exams across both years and bank the results. Now A-levels are linear: almost all the assessment happens in exams at the end of the two-year course.
• January exam series. Modular A-levels had a January window. The reformed linear A-levels are examined in the summer; there are no January A-level exams.
• AS counting towards the A-level. This is the big one, covered next.

The reformed A-levels were introduced for first teaching from September 2015, with the first results for the new AS levels in summer 2016 and the first results for the new A-levels in summer 2017. Subjects were rolled over in tranches across the following years.

AS levels: the history that confuses everyone

The AS level still exists, but its role flipped completely, and this is where most parental advice is out of date.

Old system (pre-reform). AS was the first half of the A-level. You sat AS at the end of Year 12, it counted for 50% of the final A-level grade, and you "carried" those marks into the A2 year. AS and A-level were two coupled stages of one qualification.

Current system. AS levels are decoupled. An AS level is now a standalone qualification that does not count towards the A-level at all. You can sit an AS in a subject as a separate qualification, but the marks contribute nothing to a subsequent A-level in that subject; the A-level is graded entirely on its own end-of-course exams.

The practical effect: most schools dropped AS exams entirely, because they no longer act as a "down payment" on the A-level and the AS year of teaching is better spent preparing for the linear A-level. Some students still take an AS in a fourth subject they do not want to carry to full A-level. That is the main place you will meet AS today.

UMS: why your parents talk about "ums marks"

UMS stands for Uniform Mark Scale. In the modular system, your raw mark on each unit was converted to a UMS score so that marks from different exam sessions (a harder January paper, an easier June paper) could be added together fairly across the two years. Grade boundaries were quoted in UMS, and the A* rule ("80% UMS overall, 90% UMS in A2") was a UMS rule.

Because the current A-levels are linear and sat in one go, there is nothing to standardise across sessions, so UMS has been abolished for these qualifications. Boundaries are now quoted as raw marks on the total. If an older relative or an old revision guide talks about "getting your UMS up", they are describing a system that no longer applies to your A-levels.

A worked sense of the maths

Made-up numbers, to feel how the pieces fit, for one A-level subject assessed by two papers each marked out of 100 (200 total):

• You score 78 on Paper 1 and 84 on Paper 2. Total raw mark: 162/200.
• The board sets this year's boundaries (after marking everyone) at, say, A* = 168, A = 150, B = 132, C = 114.
• Your 162 clears the A boundary (150) but is below A* (168). Your grade is A.

Notice three things. Your grade depends on the total, so a strong Paper 2 can rescue a weaker Paper 1. The boundaries are set after the fact, so 162 might be an A this year and (if the papers were easier and boundaries rose) only a B in a different year. And there is no rounding to percentages of individual papers; only the total against the published boundary matters.

What this means for you

• Do not chase a fixed percentage. Aim to maximise your total mark across all papers. There is no magic "you need 90%" number, because the boundary is set after marking.
• Strong second papers count as much as strong first papers. Everything is summed. A bad morning in Paper 1 is recoverable in Paper 2.
• Ignore advice built on AS, UMS, and modules. If a tutor, parent, or old guide leans on "your AS marks count" or "get your UMS up", they are describing the pre-2017 system. Your A-level is linear and graded only on the end-of-course exams.
• Read the current-year grade boundaries on results day. They tell you exactly how close you were to the next grade up, which matters if you are weighing a review of marking.

In summary

An A-level grade is your total mark across the subject's papers, compared against boundaries set each August to keep standards steady between years. A* sits at the top, E is still a pass, and the AS-counts-towards-the-A-level, modules, January exams, and UMS that older guides describe were all swept away by the linear reforms from 2015. Understand the total-against-boundary model and the rest of the folklore falls away.