What do I need in my last paper to get the grade I want?
Enter what you scored on the papers you have sat and the calculator works out what every grade needs from the marks still available. Because boundaries apply to your total across the whole subject, the sum is simple: the boundary minus what you already hold. Anything above the marks remaining is out of reach, and the calculator says so plainly rather than leaving you to work it out.
Last updated 12 August 2026 · Built and checked by the GCSEwiz team
240 marks are available across the whole subject. Your school can tell you what you scored on the papers you have already sat.
How the arithmetic works
GCSE grades are awarded on your total across the whole subject, not paper by paper. A weak Paper 1 is not a grade you are stuck with, it is a number you carry into Paper 2. That is genuinely good news in the middle of exam season, and it is the reason this calculation is worth doing rather than worrying about.
So if a grade 6 needs 130 marks in total and you already hold 71, you need 59 from the papers left. If 80 marks remain, that is comfortably possible. If 40 remain, it is not, and knowing that early lets you put the hours somewhere they will actually pay.
Being honest about what is out of reach
Some tools quietly hide the grades you can no longer get. This one shows them and marks them as out of reach, because a student who has lost a grade deserves to be told rather than left to notice.
That is not the end of anything. A grade that has gone in one subject has no bearing on the others, resits exist for the subjects where it matters, and one disappointing paper is a much smaller event in the following September than it feels like in June. What the number is for is deciding where the remaining revision goes.
A caution about last year’s boundaries
The targets here come from June 2025, the most recent published series. Next summer's will differ, usually by a handful of marks in either direction, occasionally by more when a paper lands harder than expected. Aim comfortably above the figure rather than exactly at it.