National data is an excellent benchmark — provided you compare the right measures and understand its limitations.
National exam results provide an invaluable benchmark for departments, but they need to be used carefully.
The question is not simply “Are we above or below national?”
A better question is: How does the shape of our results compare with the national distribution, and what questions does that raise?
Compare the same qualification, subject, year and — where appropriate — exam board. Look at several grade thresholds rather than one headline measure and take account of cohort size.
National results provide context. They do not by themselves measure the effectiveness of a department.
Check:
A small difference in definition can produce a misleading comparison.
For GCSE English Language and Mathematics, for example, all-age national figures can include significant numbers of post-16 resit entries.
Suppose your department records:
It would be misleading to describe those results simply as either “better” or “worse” than national.
Different parts of the distribution are telling different stories.
Look at the complete profile.
If 72% of your students achieve grade 4+ compared with 67% nationally, your result is 5 percentage points higher.
That is different from saying results are “5% higher”.
Using percentage points makes comparisons much clearer.
National outcomes reflect the students who entered that qualification.
Different schools and colleges have different:
For that reason, a national comparison is not the same thing as a value-added measure.
If your cohort contains 18 students, one student represents 5.6 percentage points.
A result that appears several percentage points above or below national may therefore be explained by one student's grade.
Always report cohort size alongside the comparison.
Useful questions include:
Why is our upper end relatively strong?
Why do more students appear around grade 3 than nationally?
Has this pattern appeared in previous cohorts?
Is the difference concentrated in one component?
Does script evidence support what the headline data appears to suggest?
The purpose is diagnosis, not league-table construction.
Use My results in the tutor2u Exam Results Explorer to enter your grade distribution and benchmark it instantly against national data.
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Last checked August 2026. This is a plain-English summary of official guidance; always check the linked Ofqual, JCQ and exam-board pages for the definitive rules, which can change.
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