Overall picture

31,209 students sat GCSE Sociology exams in 2025 - this is slightly down from 32,725 in 2024 (a decrease of 4.63%). However, 2024 saw entries increase by 2,226 from 30,499 (an increase of 7.3%) - so overall, we have seen an increase in entries in recent years.

AQA are the largest awarding body for GCSE Sociology with 22,258 sitting the exam this year, compared to 8,951 entries for Eduqas. AQA's share was 71.3% in 2025, 70.4% in 2024 and 71.2% in 2023.

Official data from JCQ and FFT DataLab groups Sociology and Psychology together as Social Sciences (unhelpfully) - and for Social Sciences, 20.1% of students gained a Grade 7 or higher, and 66% gained a Grade 4 or higher. This is in line with previous years. The data from AQA and Eduqas show that the figures for GCSE Sociology are very similar to the overall Social Sciences data - 20% of those sitting the AQA paper achieved 7+, with 67.2% achieving 4+, compared to the Eduqas paper where 18.6% of students gained 7+, and 65.6% gained 4+ - which shows that students are achieving slightly better on the AQA specification - which has been the case for the last 3 years.

Proportion of GCSE Sociology grades for AQA (cumulative %)

Proportion of GCSE Sociology grades for Eduqas (cumulative %)

Gender split

There is a significant gender split across GCSE Sociology - 74% of entries are girls. Girls also outperform boys with 22.3% of them achieving Grade 7 or above, compared to 13.9% of boys, and 68.9% of them gaining Grade 4 or above, compared to 57.6% of boys.

In the graph below you can see that entries for boys have remained stable over the last decades, whilst more and more girls have opted for Social Sciences.

Grade boundaries

AQA have increased their grade boundaries for the last 2 years running - usually between 3 and 5 marks for each grade, whereas Eduqas have actually brought theirs down. However, overall the grade boundaries for Eduqas are slightly higher than for AQA. It could be argued that this is because the Eduqas papers are often regarded as a bit more accessible for candidates, however the students are performing better on the AQA papers!

AQA GCSE Sociology grade boundaries

Eduqas GCSE Sociology grade boundaries

Lessons learned from the examiner reports

When I was a full time teacher and head of department I am not sure I fully appreciated the importance of the examiner feedback reports that are published on results day - with the never-ending list of things to do, sitting down and reading the reports in detail just didn't happen. The problem is that the reports tend to be very detailed and often a bit unwieldy, meaning that many teachers who have good intentions, never actually find the time to read them properly.

However, the examiner reports are a really useful tool to help inform your teaching, and in particular where to focus your efforts on - and are a great tool to use in department meetings to ensure that everyone knows which parts of the papers students are tripping up on. Unfortunately neither AQA or Eduqas provide student exemplar answers and examiner commentary on those specific answers within their examiner reports, which is a shame as AQA do this for a number of other subjects which makes them even more useful than ever as part of department CPD.

This year's examiner reports are available in the secure areas of the AQA and Eduqas websites - ask your exams officer for access if you don't already have this (and you do not need to be a Head of Department for access).

You can find the reports up to 2024 here...

https://www.aqa.org.uk/subject...

https://www.eduqas.co.uk/quali...