September 2025 Psychology subject update

One of the priorities for examiners when writing papers and setting grade boundaries is to ensure comparability between exam series - ensuring that each grade awarded reflects the same standard of work in different years. Because it can be difficult to predict how challenging candidates will find questions until an exam is sat, there will however always be some variation between exam series in the difficulty of the papers.

Grade boundaries are therefore set once 'all the marks are in', during the awarding process between the completion of marking and the sharing of results with candidates. Examiners take the spread of grades achieved by candidates in previous series as a starting point. They also make use of other data about the cohort of candidates sitting the exams in that year, and feedback from examiners on the standard of candidates' responses relative to previous years. This allows any variation in the strength of the cohorts to be taken into account.

This means that if a particular exam series is more challenging, the grade boundaries will be lower (and the reverse is also true). Unless there is a significant difference in the strength of the cohort relative to previous years, the percentage of students achieving each grade will be approximately constant.

• Visit our web page on grade boundaries and download them for past series
• View grade statistics by exam series on our website

For linear qualifications like the UK A Level and GCSE in psychology grade boundaries are set on the total raw mark.

For modular qualifications like IAL psychology where candidates take their exams over different exam series a system is needed to ensure that each unit contributes fairly to the overall grade despite small variations in the challenge of individual exam papers, and therefor variation in their grade boundaries - this is the Uniform Mark Scale or UMS.

UMS grade boundaries are fixed and are the same for all IAL qualifications: 80% for an A, 70% for a B, 60% for a C, 50% for a D and 40% for an E. An A* grade is awarede for an average of 90% of the UMS marks for the IAL units (units 3 and 4 for psychology), as long as the candidate has 80% (the A grade threshold) across all units (all four for psychology). Counterintuitively this means that for an A* grade 70% of the UMS from the IAS units (units 1 and 2 - a low B) are sufficient.

The raw mark grade boundaries are quite different to these and vary series by series. The raw mark on a given exam is converted to a UMS mark out of 80 (for units 1 and 3) or 120 (for units 2 and 4) using a conversion table which examiners set when they set the grade boundaries for each paper.

The web page linked below allows you to convert specific raw marks to UMS marks for a given past exam paper. The 'all scores' tab allows you to view how every raw mark on that paper was mapped onto a UMS mark.

• Convert raw marks to UMS marks here

Grade boundary documents show the maximum mark for A Level psychology as 270, whereas there are in fact 260 raw marks across the three papers.

For GCSE psychology a maximum mark of 180 is shown while the raw marks on the two papers add up to 177.

In each case a 'scaling factor' is applied to the raw mark on each paper, and the overall qualification grade boundaries shown are in terms of the 'scaled marks' that raw marks are converted to.. This makes the weighting of each paper equal to the proportion set out in the specification (35%, 35% and 30% for the three A Level papers, 55% and 45% for the two GCSE papers), which would otherwise be difficult to achieve with raw marks.

For teachers wishing to use past grade boundaries as a guide when assessing students, the scaled mark grade boundaries as percentages can be used since the scaling factors do not affect these. Alternatively the 'notional component grade boundaries' published for each exam paper in each series can be used for this purpose. For linear qualifications such as these grade boundaries are not set for individual components (papers) but these documents show where they would be if they were.

• Find notional component grade boundaries on our grade boundary page

Yes, our qualification page has one edited by Ali Abbas listed along with the Pearson textbook on its resources page. Here's a link to the second edition:

Psychology GCSE for Edexcel: Revise and Supplement

There’s no single ‘correct’ way to structure A Level or IAL Psychology essays - and that’s straight from our examiners. What matters most is that ideas are clearly linked. At the top end of the mark scheme, AO3 is all about showing logical reasoning and making your evaluation flow.

Some students find it easier to do this by combining AO1 and AO3 in the same paragraph - explaining a point and then evaluating it straight away. Others prefer to write all their AO1 first, then move on to AO3. That can help with getting the balance right, especially on longer questions (roughly equal for 8 markers, but more AO3 than AO1 for 16 and 20 markers).

The best approach often depends on the question and the confidence of the student. So it’s up to teachers to decide what works best for their learners - and to reassure them that either method can lead to a strong, well-structured answer.