North Somerset GCSE top grades decrease in 2026, Ofqual says

Overall, the proportion of GCSE entries achieving the highest grades (7 and over) in North Somerset has fallen over the past year, according to newly published figures.

Students in the area are achieving notably higher results that those in south Somerset, with average grades in the regions slightly below the national average.

Data released by exams regulator Ofqual shows that 19.3% of GCSE entries in North Somerset were awarded a grade 7 or above in 2026, down from 20.5% in 2025.

The figure places North Somerset joint 150th out of 295 local authorities across England, alongside Plymouth and Telford & Wrekin, and below the national local authority average of 21.0%.

Elsewhere in the region, Bath and North East Somerset recorded 26.3% of GCSE entries at grade 7 or above, while Bristol achieved 23.6%, Somerset 17.1% and South Gloucestershire 18.0%.

Across all 295 local authorities included in the data, the average proportion of GCSE entries awarded grades 7 and above slipped slightly from 21.1% in 2025 to 21.0% in 2026.

A grade 7 is equivalent to the lower end of the former A grade and is considered one of the top GCSE marks students can achieve.

The latest figures show North Somerset remains broadly in line with much of the country, although the area's share of top grades fell by 1.2 percentage points year on year, a larger decline than the national average.

Pupils celebrating this grades at Clevedon School today, Thursday August 20 (Image: Clevedon School)

London and South East dominate top GCSE results

Nationally, Cambridge recorded the highest proportion of top grades, with 53.5% of GCSE entries receiving grade 7 or above, up from 50.3% last year.

Richmond upon Thames in London ranked second with 43.4%, followed by Sutton on 43.0%, Kingston upon Thames on 42.5% and Trafford in Greater Manchester on 39.7%.

Trafford was the only local authority outside southern England to make the top 20.

At the other end of the table, Tamworth in Staffordshire recorded the lowest proportion of top grades, with just 6.7% of entries awarded grade 7 or above.

The figures relate to GCSE entries rather than individual pupils, meaning students taking multiple subjects contribute several entries to the overall totals.

Lower results don't reflect school quality, experts say

Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, told the Press Association: “These results confirm that England’s educational divide can no longer be understood as a simple North–South divide.

“London is increasingly an educational outlier, with a record gap in top grades compared with parts of northern England and the Midlands. The South West recording the biggest fall in grades 4 and above underlines England’s profoundly uneven geography of opportunity.

“These divides extend far beyond the school gates, reflecting differences in family resources, transport, jobs, enrichment and the futures young people can see around them.

“We need much stronger regional approaches that connect education with economic opportunity.”