GCSE equivalents

We recognise how important it is that everyone has the chance to benefit from opportunities offered by university education. We also know that not everyone achieves GCSE qualifications when they first leave school.

If you do not have GCSEs and the course you are interested in requires specific GCSEs, we may be able to accept an alternative like functional skills or an equivalency test. You'll find more about these qualifications on this page. 

You can find out if your Brighton course has a mandatory GCSE entry requirement on our course finder.

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Functional Skills

Functional Skills passed at level 2 are accepted as being equivalent to GCSEs for entry on to many of our courses.  

Functional Skills is a widely recognised and widely available programme that supports people to gain an English or maths qualification. There are many providers across the UK where you can gain the qualification in person or online.

We are unable to accept Functional Skills Level 2 for the following courses:

Equivalency tests

We also accept English, maths and science equivalency tests for entry onto some of our courses.

An equivalency test demonstrates that you have achieved the same standard as a traditional GCSE grade C or level 4.

Ar Brighton we only accept equivalency tests from A Star Equivalency.

We are unable to accept equivalency tests for the following courses:

Lost GCSE or O-level certificate?

If you have lost or misplaced your original GCSE/O-level certificates you have several options: request a replacement verified statement of results, take an equivalency test or retake a GCSE.

Before you retake a qualification, contact the school where you took the exams and ask if they have a record of your result or can tell you which exam board you took the exam with.

On the gov.uk website you can find information on how to contact the relevant exam board to see if they are able to reprint your results. The page also has details of who to contact if your exam board no longer exists.