Annual qualifications market report: academic year 2023 to 2024
Overview of the qualifications market in England and a single reference point about participants in the market.
Applies to England
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Key headlines
The main headlines in the regulated qualifications market in England for the 2023 to 2024 academic year were:
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There were 10,148 active qualifications (available qualifications with certificates) in the academic year 2023 to 2024, a 5.3% decrease from the 2022 to 2023 academic year.
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A total of 11.8 million certificates were issued for GCSE, AS, A level, vocational and other qualifications, up 3.7% from the 2022 to 2023 academic year.
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There were 6.5 million GCSE, AS and A level certificates issued in the 2023 to 2024 academic year, up 4.6% from the previous academic year.
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There were 5.2 million certificates issued for vocational and other qualifications in the 2023 to 2024 academic year, up 2.6% from the 2022 to 2023 academic year.
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The awarding organisations with the largest overall market shares (by number of certificates issued across all qualification types) were AQA (34.4%), Pearson (20.1%), OCR (6.5%) and City & Guilds (4.7%).
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Updates to this page
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The publication has been updated to include data that was unavailable at the time of original publication and to make some other minor corrections. Table 35 in the main report has been updated to include the number of certificates issued for Ofqual regulated qualifications awarded outside the UK during the 2019 to 2020, 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022 academic years. Revisions were made to certain figures in Table 5 and Table 21 in the main report. All changes applied only to academic years prior to 2022 to 2023, and did not affect the rows related to Level 1/Level 2 or Level 4 to 8 qualifications in Table 21 or rows relating to GCSE, AS or A level in Table 5. A more recent version of the Ofqual鈥檚 Register of Regulated Qualifications (extracted 28 April 2025) has been used. Tables 2, 3 and 4 in the main report have been updated as a result. The accompanying data tables have also been updated accordingly.
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First published.