How GCSE combined science grades work: a quick guide

Lots of students get confused about their combined science grades because they look different to the rest of their GCSEs.

We get quite a few questions about how these unique grades work on The Student Room, so we've put together a quick guide to help you understand them.

Combined science covers all three sciences: biology, chemistry, and physics. It’s sometimes called double science, as you’ll receive two GCSEs. 

The combined science GCSE doesn’t go into as much depth as taking biology, chemistry and physics individually. If you studied each science separately, you would receive three GCSEs.

Only the students who study the three sciences as separate subjects get three GCSEs, graded from graded from 9 (highest) to 1 (lowest) for each. 

So if you study combined science, you'll get two GCSE grades because the course covers around two-thirds of the content in the single GCSEs for biology, chemistry and physics.

Your grades will be given as two numbers because they are worth two GCSES. And the grading is similar to single GCSEs, going from 9-9 (highest) to 1-1 (lowest). 

But your combined grades will look one of two ways: they will either be the same number twice (e.g. 8-8) or one number followed by the number below it (e.g. 8-7). 

An 8-7 grade sounds confusing. If I missed out on an 8-8, why wouldn’t I just get a 7-7? 

Think of it as an in-between grade. It's there so you don’t drop down an entire double grade if you lose a couple of marks. For example: 

• If you are one mark away from an 8 in a single GCSE, you would receive a 7.

• If you are one mark away from an 8-8 in a double GCSE, you would receive an 8-7 instead of falling to a 7-7.

And remember: this double grade reflects your performance across all three sciences - you don't get a separate mark for each science or paper you've taken.

If you want to find out more about how combined science is graded, head over to Ofqual's website.