Which Birmingham sixth forms teach A-level Further Maths, the specification and options each has entered, and what the 2024/2025 outcomes data does and does not show.
Book a Free ConsultationA-level Further Maths in Birmingham is taught at a minority of the city's sixth forms: only 28 of 66 providers with a 2024/2025 Department for Education record returned a Further Maths cohort, and DfE suppressed 15 of those rows for small numbers. The 13 published cohorts range from 7 to 41 students, and two Birmingham departments share a specification code yet have chosen different optional papers.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppFour Birmingham sixth forms publish, in their own words, exactly what their A-level Further Maths course contains, and no two of them have chosen the same set of optional papers. King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys teaches OCR (MEI) Further Mathematics B, specification code H645, in three terminal papers: a 2 hour 40 minute paper on the core pure content, a 2 hour 15 minute mechanics paper and a 1 hour 15 minute statistics paper, set out in the school's own sixth form options booklet.
King Edward VI Handsworth School teaches the same specification code, MEI Further Mathematics (B) H645, but a different pair of options: Core Pure worth 50% of the A-level, a Statistics major worth 33.3% and a Modelling with Algorithms minor worth 16%, according to the school's own mathematics curriculum page. Under OCR's own H645 specification, a major option carries a 2 hour 15 minute paper worth a third of the total A-level and a minor option a 1 hour 15 minute paper worth a sixth, so Camp Hill Boys and Handsworth School share a specification code and an examination structure but not a single optional paper between them.
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, 0.45 miles from Handsworth School, teaches a different board entirely: Edexcel, with Further Mathematics students studying the Further Pure 1 and Further Pure 2 options, taught — unusually, the school says — as a discrete class rather than alongside an A-level Mathematics teaching group.
King Edward VI Aston School names its four papers without naming a board: two 1.5-hour Core Pure papers plus a Further Statistics 1 and a Further Statistics 2 paper, delivered across 22 periods of lessons a fortnight. Bishop Vesey's Grammar School's own Further Mathematics curriculum page links the Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE specification as its Key Stage 5 course document, though the page itself names no board in prose; that Edexcel specification is built from four externally-examined papers — two mandatory Core Pure papers plus two options chosen from eight, which the specification itself says makes ten possible option pairs.
For how AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas structure A-level Further Maths nationally, see our A-level Further Maths parent guide; for the Core Pure content and applied options every board shares, see our wider Further Maths overview. OCR publishes its own H645 specification in full on its qualification page.
Sixty-six Birmingham schools and colleges carry a record in the Department for Education's institution-level subject value-added data set for 2024/2025. Of those, 28 returned a row for A-level Further Maths at all — a minority of the 66 — and 38 returned none. DfE suppressed 15 of the 28 rows because the cohort was too small to publish safely, leaving 13 published rows. Those 13 published cohorts range from 7 students to 41, with a median of 10, and together they total 202 entries matched to prior attainment.
Seven King Edward VI Foundation sixth forms account for 117 of those 202 entries; the other six published providers account for the remaining 85. Eight of the King Edward VI Foundation's eleven listed sixth forms carry a 2024/2025 Further Maths row at all — seven published and one, King Edward VI Lordswood School for Girls, suppressed. The Foundation's own site names eleven sixth forms in total; the other three (Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy, King Edward's School and King Edward VI Sheldon Heath Academy) carry no Further Maths row in this data set.
Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, at 41 matched entries, and King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, at 36, are Birmingham's two largest published Further Maths cohorts — five students apart. Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls has 14 matched entries in the same data set, yet names Further Mathematics on none of the three sixth form and curriculum pages checked on its own site (its sixth form prospectus is published only as a Heyzine flip-book, and was not machine-readable, so this absence is bounded to the three HTML pages that could be checked). King Edward VI Five Ways School names Further Maths only inside its list of 21 available A-level subjects and publishes no dedicated Further Maths subject page.
Checking a DfE row against a school's own published curriculum is not always possible. Of the 13 published Birmingham providers, this page checked eleven against their own websites: four name a specification in their own documents (Camp Hill Boys, Handsworth School, Handsworth Grammar School for Boys and, by linking rather than naming, Bishop Vesey's), five name Further Maths without naming a specification (Aston, Five Ways, Camp Hill Girls, King Edward VI High School for Girls and The University of Birmingham School, whose own page still carries a note dated September 2021), and one, Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, names it nowhere that could be checked. The remaining provider, Aston University Engineering Academy, could not be checked at all: its website, auea.co.uk, returns a page body of only four characters.
Two of this page's entry counts — 10 at King Edward VI Aston School and 10 at King Edward VI High School for Girls — also appear on Leading Tuition's Birmingham A-level Maths page, as subjects-entered counts rather than value-added matched entries. The two measures agree here, but they are not the same thing: subjects-entered counts every exam entry, while the value-added figure counts only students DfE could match to their own prior attainment, and every entry count on this page is the matched figure.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppWhere a Birmingham sixth form publishes an entry requirement for Further Maths, it is demanding. King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys asks for at least a grade 9 in GCSE Mathematics, the top available grade, though a good result in the FSMQ Additional Mathematics qualification is described as "an advantage, but not essential", and the school says knowledge of that material "will not be assumed". King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls sets the same grade 9 threshold, though it says a grade 6 "may be considered subject to availability of places" on certain courses.
The workload commitment is published too. At Camp Hill Boys, Mathematics and Further Mathematics count as one subject choice but lead to two separate A-levels, and a student taking both is timetabled for 14 hours of lessons a fortnight against 9 hours for most other subjects. At King Edward VI Aston School, Further Mathematics students attend 22 periods of lessons each fortnight across four 1.5-hour papers. At King Edward VI Five Ways School, there are no option blocks at all — the school builds each student's timetable individually from up to 21 available A-level subjects — but a Further Maths student is, in practice, one of the smaller number who studies four A-levels rather than three plus the school's Extended Project Qualification.
Many Birmingham Further Maths students arrive at the sixth form already ahead of the GCSE syllabus. At King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, around 60 students a year take the AQA Level 2 Certificate in Further Mathematics alongside their GCSEs — a qualification that sits above GCSE Mathematics and below A-level — before any sixth form Further Maths course begins.
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Department for Education value added is a figure only when its own 95% confidence interval sits entirely on one side of zero. Across Birmingham's 28 Further Maths rows for 2024/2025, three clear that bar: one above zero and two below. The other 25 — the 15 DfE suppressed and 10 of the 13 it published — say nothing at all, because their intervals span zero or DfE withheld the figure.
The table below lists all 13 published Birmingham rows, sorted by cohort size, largest first — not by value-added score, so that reading down it never reads as a ranking of results.
| Provider | Matched entries | Value added | 95% interval | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bishop Vesey's Grammar School | 41 | 0.09 | -0.27 to 0.45 | not significant |
| King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys | 36 | -0.24 | -0.62 to 0.14 | not significant |
| King Edward VI Five Ways School | 23 | -0.64 | -1.12 to -0.16 | below zero |
| King Edward VI Handsworth School | 15 | -0.64 | -1.23 to -0.05 | below zero |
| King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys | 14 | 0.66 | 0.05 to 1.28 | above zero |
| Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls | 14 | -0.52 | -1.13 to 0.1 | not significant |
| King Edward VI Aston School | 10 | 0.54 | -0.18 to 1.26 | not significant |
| King Edward VI High School for Girls | 10 | 0.3 | -0.43 to 1.02 | not significant |
| King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls | 9 | 0.14 | -0.63 to 0.9 | not significant |
| St Thomas Aquinas Catholic School | 8 | -0.08 | -0.89 to 0.72 | not significant |
| The University of Birmingham School | 8 | -0.11 | -0.92 to 0.7 | not significant |
| Aston University Engineering Academy | 7 | -0.22 | -1.08 to 0.65 | not significant |
| The Arthur Terry School | 7 | -0.54 | -1.4 to 0.33 | not significant |
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys recorded a value-added score of 0.66 for 2024/2025, with a 95% confidence interval running from 0.05 to 1.28, from 14 students matched to their prior attainment. That interval sits entirely above zero, which is what makes it a finding at all rather than noise from a small cohort.
Two Foundation sixth forms recorded a score entirely below zero. King Edward VI Five Ways School's 2024/2025 value added was -0.64, interval -1.12 to -0.16, from 23 matched entries. King Edward VI Handsworth School's was also -0.64, interval -1.23 to -0.05, from 15 matched entries.
Birmingham's largest published Further Maths cohort does not clear zero either way. Bishop Vesey's Grammar School's 41 matched entries produced a value added of 0.09, interval -0.27 to 0.45 — a result the confidence interval places on both sides of zero, so it is not a finding under DfE's own rule. The remaining nine published Birmingham rows are non-significant on the same basis, spanning cohorts from 7 to 36 students.
Every figure above is DfE's value-added progress measure for 2024/2025 entrants specifically: it compares a student's actual result against a prediction built from their own prior attainment, and it is not a measure of teaching quality. Nothing in this data set explains why one department's interval clears zero and another's does not — the published rows carry no information about which specification, board or optional papers a department has chosen, so this page does not connect any of the three significant scores to the courses described above.
Because Birmingham's Further Maths departments do not teach identical courses, a tutoring programme built around a generic Further Maths syllabus solves the wrong problem. Our expert A-level Further Maths tutors in Birmingham build each programme around the specification and optional papers a student's own sixth form has actually entered — Core Pure and mechanics for a Camp Hill Boys student, Core Pure and Modelling with Algorithms for one at Handsworth School, Further Pure 1 and 2 for one at Handsworth Grammar School for Boys — rather than teaching to a syllabus the student's own department does not follow.
Tutors also work from a student's own mock results and topic-by-topic gaps, whatever their sixth form's published entry requirement or cohort size. A department of seven students is a different teaching environment from one of forty-one, and both exist among Birmingham's published Further Maths cohorts; our tutors build a programme around the individual student in either case, not around the department's published statistics.
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Reviewed September 2026: figures checked against the Department for Education's institution-level subject value-added data set for 2024/2025 and against Camp Hill Boys, Handsworth School, Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, Aston, Five Ways, Camp Hill Girls, King Edward VI High School for Girls, The University of Birmingham School, Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls and Bishop Vesey's Grammar School's own published pages.
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys asks for at least a grade 9 in GCSE Mathematics, the highest available grade, before a student can start A-level Further Mathematics. A good result in the FSMQ Additional Mathematics qualification is described as an advantage but not essential, and the school says it does not assume any student has covered that material. Mathematics and Further Mathematics count as one subject choice at the school but lead to two separate A-level qualifications, timetabled at 14 hours a fortnight rather than the 9 hours given to most other subjects.
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys follows the Edexcel specification for A-level Further Mathematics, with students studying the Further Pure 1 and Further Pure 2 options. The school teaches Further Mathematics as a discrete class rather than alongside its A-level Mathematics group, which it describes as unusual among schools. Around 60 students a year at the school also take the AQA Level 2 Certificate in Further Mathematics alongside their GCSEs, ahead of any sixth form Further Maths course.
Both schools teach OCR's MEI Further Mathematics B specification, code H645, but they have chosen different optional papers. Camp Hill Boys' students sit a mechanics major and a statistics minor; Handsworth School's sit a statistics major and a Modelling with Algorithms minor. Under the H645 specification, a major option is examined in a 2 hour 15 minute paper worth a third of the total A-level, and a minor option in a 1 hour 15 minute paper worth a sixth, so the two schools' Further Maths courses share an exam board and a specification code but not a single optional paper.
Thirteen Birmingham providers have a published 2024/2025 Department for Education value-added row for A-level Further Maths, out of 28 that returned a row at all and 66 with a record in the data set. The Department suppressed the other 15 rows because the cohort was too small to publish safely. The 13 published cohorts range from 7 students to 41, with a median of 10, and together total 202 entries matched to prior attainment.
No. King Edward VI Five Ways School says it has no option blocks at all, building each student's timetable individually from up to 21 available A-level subjects rather than pre-set combinations. Most students at the school take three A-levels plus its Extended Project Qualification, and a smaller number take four A-levels including Further Mathematics. The school's own subject pages do not name an exam board for its Further Maths course.
No, they are two separate schools 0.45 miles apart in Birmingham. King Edward VI Handsworth School, at postcode B21 9AR, teaches OCR's MEI Further Mathematics B specification, code H645, with a Statistics major and a Modelling with Algorithms minor. King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, at postcode B21 9ET, teaches the Edexcel specification instead, with the Further Pure 1 and Further Pure 2 options. The two schools also differ in how they timetable the subject: Handsworth Grammar teaches it as a discrete class rather than alongside A-level Mathematics.
Not on any of the three sixth form and curriculum pages on its own website that this page checked. Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls has 14 Further Maths entries matched to prior attainment in the Department for Education's 2024/2025 data, so the subject is taught there, but its website names no exam board or specification for it. Its sixth form prospectus is published only as a Heyzine flip-book, which could not be checked as text, so this absence is bounded to the three HTML pages that were machine-readable.
Our expert A-level Further Maths tutors help students across Birmingham build a programme around their own sixth form's specification and optional papers, whether that is OCR (MEI) H645, Edexcel, or another board entirely. Read more on our national Further Maths tutoring page, or see how the subject compares to A-level Maths in the city on our Birmingham A-level Maths page.
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