Year by year
Every bar below is the national figure, every board blended, UK-wide. 2022 grades were the assessed-grades peak, and the reset since is visible in the shape of each year. Board by board, the same years look different; the explorer has that view.
National (JCQ)
Position among the 31 subjects JCQ published in every year from 2022 to 2026. Subjects that appear in only some years are left out, so the field is the same size each time and a change of place is a change in the subject rather than a change in the table. A subject sits differently on each measure, so the ranking is only ever a ranking of that one thing. The block beside each measure is the whole grade scale, in the colours used at the top of this page, with the grades that measure counts filled in.
The 9 subjects shown span 4.3 percentage points in 2022.
35,791 entries in 2022, 36,196 in 2026 — a change of +1.1%, against +6.3% across all 31 subjects JCQ published in every year from 2022 to 2026. This is what students chose, not how they were graded.
Every subject starts level at its 2022 size, so the bars show growth and decline rather than which subject is biggest. Boards that publish no entry counts are left out.
Ranked by growth since 2022, so #1 is the fastest-growing subject rather than the largest. In 2022 the 9 shown run from +0.0% to +0.0%.
Board by board · 2026
Differences between boards reflect who enters each board as much as any difference in standard. The data shows the divergence; it does not explain it.
National reference: A*–A 24.9% · 36,196 entries
English Literature is also offered at GCSE: see the GCSE distribution →
Grade distributions reflect who enters a subject as much as the exam itself, so nothing on this page is a difficulty ranking. Figures are published cumulative percentages from JCQ and the awarding bodies; per-grade shares are derived by subtracting adjacent bands. How the data is sourced and worked out.