GCSE Statistics: Boards, Entries and Progression in 2026

GCSE Statistics is a stand-alone GCSE offered by AQA (specification 8382) and Pearson Edexcel (specification 1ST0), sat alongside GCSE Maths rather than in place of it. OCR, Eduqas and WJEC do not offer it, confirmed against each board's own live GCSE subject list on 7 September 2026. UK entries rose from 34,879 in June 2025 to 38,770 in June 2026, and 72.28% reached grade 4 or above, against 67.28% across all GCSE subjects, per JCQ's Table 1.

Which exam boards offer GCSE Statistics, and which don't?

AQA's own specification confirms GCSE Statistics as qualification code 8382, first taught from September 2017 and first examined in the May/June 2019 series; the version current at the time of writing is Version 1.2, dated June 2026. AQA's own paper structure, the Statistical Enquiry Cycle and its grade boundaries are set out in full on our AQA GCSE Statistics guide rather than repeated here.

Pearson Edexcel's own specification confirms its equivalent qualification, code 1ST0, also first taught from September 2017, with first certification in June 2019. Its paper-by-paper breakdown and grade boundaries sit on our Edexcel GCSE Statistics guide.

OCR, Eduqas and WJEC do not offer GCSE Statistics. Checked against each board's own live GCSE subject list on 7 September 2026, none carries a Statistics entry: OCR's GCSE subject list, Eduqas's GCSE subject list and WJEC's GCSE subject list each run their own full alphabetical range with no Statistics qualification listed. A family whose school teaches GCSE Maths on one of these three boards will not find an in-house GCSE Statistics option there — AQA and Pearson Edexcel are the only two boards that examine it.

That absence is not absolute in practice for Wales: JCQ's own UK-wide table separately records 44 entries against Wales in the June 2026 series, down from 60 in June 2025. JCQ's location field records where a candidate sat the exam, not which board set it, so these are Welsh students entered for AQA's or Pearson's GCSE Statistics rather than a WJEC equivalent — WJEC's own GCSE list still carries no Statistics qualification of its own.

The table above summarises the position at a glance; the two board-specific guides linked from it cover each specification's own paper structure, tiers and grade boundaries in full, rather than repeating that detail here.

What if a school doesn't teach GCSE Statistics through either board?

A minority of schools' options blocks leave GCSE Statistics out altogether, and the qualification's own administrative rules address that directly rather than leaving a family to guess. AQA's specification states plainly that “this specification is available to private candidates” and defines one as “someone who enters for exams through an AQA approved school or college but is not enrolled as a learner there,” adding that such a candidate “may be self-taught, home schooled or have private tuition, either with a tutor or through a distance learning organisation,” provided they are based in the UK.

AQA's specification separately sets out a route for a school that has never run any AQA qualification before: “if your school or college hasn't previously offered our specifications, you need to register as an AQA centre.” Neither route changes which boards actually examine the subject, though — a pupil at an OCR, Eduqas or WJEC school still has to sit AQA's or Pearson Edexcel's specification, arranged through a centre approved for it, since neither of their own boards offers an equivalent qualification.

Is GCSE Statistics instead of GCSE Maths, or alongside it?

Alongside it. AQA's own specification describes Statistics as complementary rather than substitutional: “it complements subjects such as GCSE Biology, Psychology, Geography, Business and Economics, and opens the door to a variety of careers.” That is AQA's own language for how Statistics sits next to a student's other GCSE choices, not a replacement for any of them, including the Maths qualification these students are also taking — see our GCSE Maths page for that qualification in full.

AQA goes further on the timetabling question specifically: its specification states the qualification is “fully co-teachable alongside our GCSE Maths, helping you teach GCSE Statistics students in the same class.” In practice that means a school can run Statistics and Maths for the same pupils without staffing Statistics as a separate stand-alone course — which is also why a child's timetable can show Statistics lessons sitting inside what looks, at a glance, like extra Maths time.

JCQ's own June 2026 age breakdown shows how rarely Statistics is taken as a resit. Of the 38,770 UK entries, only 694 — under 2% — were aged 17 or over, the age band JCQ's tables use to flag students sitting a GCSE beyond the normal Year 11 series; 26,780 were aged 16 and 11,296 were aged 15 or under. On this evidence, Statistics is a subject taken once, early, alongside the rest of a student's GCSE options, not one students come back to.

That pattern is not because the option is closed off. AQA's own administration rules place no cap on resits at all — “learners can resit the qualification as many times as they wish, within the shelf life of the qualification” — so the tiny 17-and-over share is a genuine choice pattern among students and schools, not a rule stopping them from resitting.

How many students take GCSE Statistics, and is it growing?

GCSE Statistics is a small but fast-growing GCSE. JCQ's Table 1, published 20 August 2026, records 38,770 UK entries in the June 2026 series, up from 34,879 in June 2025. JCQ does not publish a year-on-year percentage for this, but the arithmetic is straightforward: 38,770 against 34,879 is a rise of just over 11% in a single year.

Those entrants also outperform the typical GCSE cohort. JCQ's same UK-wide table puts 72.28% of GCSE Statistics entrants at grade 4 or above in June 2026, against 67.28% across all GCSE subjects on that basis — both figures drawn from the same table, the same series and the same UK-wide scope, so the comparison is like for like.

Set against the biggest GCSE of all, Statistics is still a minor subject: GCSE Mathematics recorded 912,410 UK entries in the same June 2026 series, so Statistics's 38,770 entries amount to about 4% of that scale. Its entrants also skew young: 11,296 of the 38,770 UK entries, or about 29% on that arithmetic, were aged 15 or under, a share JCQ's table lets you calculate from its age-band counts but does not publish as a percentage itself.

Almost all of the year's growth sits in those youngest two age bands, not in resits. JCQ's 2025 age breakdown recorded 10,160 UK entries aged 15 or under and 24,015 aged 16; a year later those had risen to 11,296 and 26,780 respectively. The 17-and-over band moved the other way, down slightly from 704 to 694. The subject's growth is coming from more schools timetabling it for their ordinary Year 10 and Year 11 cohorts, in other words, not from a rising pool of resit candidates.

Entries also split unevenly by sex: JCQ's June 2026 figures record 22,143 male UK entries against 16,627 female, out of the 38,770 total. And the growth has not come at the cost of attainment — the 72.28% grade 4-or-above rate in June 2026 is itself an improvement on 71.09% in June 2025, so a larger entry has, if anything, been matched by a slightly higher pass rate rather than a diluted one.

Statistics's growth also looks different set against the whole GCSE system, not just against GCSE Mathematics. JCQ's UK-wide total across every GCSE subject moved from 6,160,034 entries in June 2025 to 6,199,256 in June 2026 — under 1% growth on that arithmetic, against Statistics's own rise of just over 11% in the same year. Whatever is driving more schools to offer it, it is running well ahead of the GCSE system's overall growth rate.

For a family weighing up whether to add Statistics to an options block, the JCQ figures answer two different questions at once. Entries are rising fast enough that a school offering it is following a growing national pattern, not a fringe choice, and its attainment profile is stronger than the all-GCSE average for those who take it — though neither figure explains why, since a subject not compulsory for a whole cohort will naturally look different from one every student sits.

Where does GCSE Statistics lead at A-level?

GCSE options choices are rarely only about the next two years, and GCSE Statistics is unusual among GCSEs in having its own forward routes spelled out in a board's specification rather than left to a school's own guidance.

Pearson's own specification names continuing statistics into “GCE AS or A Level Mathematics and GCE AS or A Level Further Mathematics” as one direct progression route; a separate cohort instead continues statistics as its own stand-alone A-level rather than folding it into Maths, covered on our A-level Statistics guide.

The same specification separately lists Psychology among the Level 3 subjects GCSE Statistics feeds into, alongside Biology, Economics, Geography and Sociology — see our A-level Psychology guide for what that A-level actually assesses.

The entry numbers above matter for that progression question too. A cohort of 38,770 UK students now finishes Year 11 having already studied a full statistics-focused GCSE, a foundation the A-level specifications above can build on directly rather than starting statistical reasoning from nothing.

Frequently Asked Questions About GCSE Statistics