A Levels are important, with the grades young people get on them opening doors in their life after school.
Now the schools whose sixth form students really shone in the last school year can be named. The government’s latest performance figures for state-funded schools after the 2024 summer exam season were a little delayed this time around, with secondary school performance data only going live until December. Primary school data came next, and on Thursday (February 13), performance data for sixth form schools and colleges has finally been released.
We’ve created a league table of the best-performing state-funded secondary schools and sixth form colleges across England based on this brand new results data. They have been ranked by their A Level performance point scores, a unique measurement derived from students’ A Level results that gives them a score out of 60. The overall ‘average grades’ their students achieved across their A Level entries have also been included.
For the most part, schools on the list also had an overall Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ before this measure was dropped last month, or if they’ve been inspected more recently, had at least ‘good’ grades across the board. This means that the quality of education provided, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and student safeguarding all met or exceeded government standards last time the school had a full inspection. Any that did not meet this criteria have been specified.
Here were the 21 state schools that topped the performance charts last year:
19. King Edward VI School
This King Edward is a selective boys’ secondary school in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, with a mixed sixth form. The school has existed in some form since the 13th Century, and is believed to have been attended by Shakespeare. In the 2023/24 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 48.08 - giving it an average grade of A-. | Google
20. University of Liverpool Mathematics School
This is a sixth form college in Liverpool with ties to the University of Liverpool (including being housed on-campus), focusing primarily on maths, computer science, and physics. In the 2023/24 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 47.66 - giving it an average grade of A-. | University of Liverpool Maths School/Supplied
21. Lancaster University School of Mathematics
Rounding out the top 21 is another specialist sixth form college for mathematics, this one in Preston, Lancashire, with ties to Lancaster University. This is a brand new school that only opened to its first cohort of students in 2022, and although it hasn’t been formally inspected by Ofsted, its initial monitoring visit was positive. In the 2023/24 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 47.5 - giving it an average grade of A-. | Google