A-Level Chemistry Tutors in Cambridge: The DfE Sixth-Form Data

Cambridge's sixteen sixth forms and colleges made 735 A-level Chemistry entries in 2024/25, more than the 715 they made in Biology. Hills Road Sixth Form College made 378 of them on OCR's Chemistry A (H432). Long Road Sixth Form College also names OCR — but its published modules are the Chemistry B (Salters) route. Same board, different course.

Why Do Cambridge's Two Largest State Colleges Both Use OCR for Chemistry and Still Teach Different Courses?

Hills Road Sixth Form College states its A-level Chemistry arrangement plainly on its own course page: "Awarding Body OCR Specification A - H432". That is OCR's Chemistry A, and OCR's own specification summary describes it as six modules, beginning with development of practical skills and then working through foundations in chemistry, the periodic table and energy, core organic chemistry, and physical chemistry and transition elements. It is a conventional concept-ordered course.

Long Road Sixth Form College's Chemistry page names its board as OCR too, and stops there — it prints no specification code. What it does print is its teaching modules: "Year 1 Modules Fundamentals of Chemistry Elements of Life Developing Fuels Elements from the Sea Ozone Story What's in a Medicine? Year 2 Modules Polymers of Life Chemical Industry Developing Metals Oceans Colour by Design". Those are not Chemistry A module names. They are the storyline modules OCR publishes for Chemistry B (Salters), whose own specification summary lists "Elements of life Developing fuels Elements from the sea The ozone story What's in a medicine? The chemical industry Polymers and life Oceans Developing metals Colour by design". The identification comes from matching Long Road's published list against OCR's, not from a code either party printed.

Source: Hills Road Sixth Form College's own A-level Chemistry and Biology course pages; Long Road Sixth Form College's own Chemistry and Biology course pages; OCR's own specification summaries for Chemistry A (H032, H432) and Chemistry B (Salters) (H033, H433). All read on 19 September 2026. Long Road's specification is identified from its published module list, not from a code the college prints.

The practical consequence is narrow and useful. Two Cambridge students, both at large state colleges a mile apart, both told they are "doing OCR Chemistry", are sitting different papers with different question styles. Chemistry B assesses chemical ideas inside applied contexts and expects students to carry their learning into unfamiliar ones; Chemistry A asks for the same chemistry in a concept-led sequence. Past papers, mark schemes and revision guides bought for one are the wrong ones for the other.

Which Cambridge Sixth Forms and Colleges Actually Enter A-Level Chemistry?

Cambridge City Council has no role in education. The local authority is Cambridgeshire County Council, so every "local authority" figure the Department for Education publishes against a Cambridge school is county-wide, blending the city with Ely, Huntingdon, St Ives, St Neots and Wisbech. No DfE table states a Cambridge-city figure for A-level Chemistry, which is the gap this page fills.

Sixteen post-16 institutions inside the city entered A-level candidates in 2024/25: two large state sixth-form colleges, three secondary academies with their own sixth form, one further education college, one specialist state free school, and nine independent schools and colleges. Every one of the sixteen entered at least one A-level Chemistry candidate — Chemistry is the one science on this list that no Cambridge provider skips.

Source: Department for Education, Compare School and College Performance, subjects entered, read for each of the sixteen providers individually, 16-to-18 results for 2024/25, on 19 September 2026. "None recorded" means that provider's own subjects-entered table carries no row for AS Chemistry. Entries are exam entries, not students.

Summed across all sixteen — a total the Department for Education does not publish at city level — Cambridge made 735 A-level Chemistry entries. Hills Road Sixth Form College made 378 of them, 51.4% of the city's total from one institution out of sixteen. Adding Long Road takes the two large state colleges to 58.9% of the city's Chemistry entries between them. That is a real concentration, but a looser one than the same two colleges hold in Biology, where this site's Cambridge A-level Biology page found them holding 67.7%: Chemistry is spread more evenly across the city's independent sector.

What GCSE Grades Does Each Cambridge Provider Ask for in A-Level Chemistry?

Entry requirements are set by each institution, not by the Department for Education or the awarding bodies, and for Chemistry they diverge more sharply than a single "grade 6 or 7" answer suggests. Three Cambridge providers publish theirs in enough detail to compare directly.

Source: each institution's own course or curriculum page — Hills Road Sixth Form College's A-level Chemistry page, Long Road Sixth Form College's Chemistry A Level page and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology's sixth-form curriculum page — all read on 19 September 2026. The other thirteen Cambridge providers do not publish a Chemistry-specific GCSE grade requirement on a page this research could locate; where that is so, this page does not invent one for them.

One comparison is worth stating precisely, because it is easy to miss and it changes what a Year 11 student needs to prioritise: Hills Road asks grade 7 in GCSE Mathematics for A-level Chemistry but only grade 6 in GCSE Mathematics for A-level Biology, and it attaches the identical Higher Admissions Score of 71 to both subjects — so at Cambridge's largest provider the thing that separates a Chemistry offer from a Biology offer is a maths grade, not an overall admissions score.

That is not a quirk of one college. Long Road also sets grade 6 in Mathematics alongside grade 6 in Chemistry, and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology attaches a Mathematics requirement to its sciences over and above its general entry bar. A student in Year 11 in Cambridge who wants A-level Chemistry is being assessed on mathematics as much as on chemistry, which is a different revision plan from the one a prospective Biology student needs. Families working towards those grades can compare the GCSE-stage picture on our GCSE Chemistry tutors in Cambridge page.

Why Does Cambridge Enter More A-Level Chemistry Than A-Level Biology?

Nationally, Biology is usually the larger of the two sciences. In Cambridge in 2024/25 it was not: the city made 735 A-level Chemistry entries against 715 in Biology, a margin of 20. Both totals are this page's own sums of the same sixteen providers' individually-read subjects-entered rows, and the Biology figure is the reason the Chemistry figure can be trusted — running the identical extraction across the Biology rows reproduced exactly the 715 that this site's Cambridge Biology page already publishes, which is the control that the same year, the same provider set and the same row rule are being read the same way.

The margin is small, but the shape underneath it is not. Eight of Cambridge's nine independent schools and sixth-form colleges enter more Chemistry than Biology — The Perse School 75 against 55, The Stephen Perse Foundation 46 against 33, Abbey College Cambridge 25 against 17, The Leys School 20 against 14 — with St Mary's School the single exception. The large state colleges lean the other way: Long Road enters 94 Biology candidates against 55 in Chemistry. Cambridge's citywide Chemistry total is carried by its independent sector in a way its Biology total is not.

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How Do the Two OCR Chemistry Routes Assess Practical Work Differently?

The general rule that a science practical endorsement is reported separately from the A*–E grade is set out on our Cambridge A-level Biology page and applies to Chemistry in the same terms; it is not repeated here. What is Chemistry-specific is how the two OCR routes build practical work into the qualification.

OCR's Chemistry B (Salters) summary states that "Students must complete all components (01, 02, 03, and 04) to be awarded the A Level in Chemistry B (Salters)", with component 04 being the practical endorsement, and describes practical skills as assessed both "in a written examination" and "in the practical endorsement". Chemistry A puts development of practical skills in its first module and assesses it the same two ways. In both routes, then, practical work reaches the graded result through the written papers as well as through the separately-reported endorsement — which is why treating lab sessions as the part that "doesn't count towards the grade" is the wrong reading in Chemistry.

Hills Road describes its own assessment as "100% exam, across three exam papers plus a practical skills assessment with evidence", which is the same structure stated from the college's side.

One divergence is worth flagging, because assuming the sciences move together would mislead. OCR is withdrawing part of the Salters route, but only the AS: its qualification page states "We will withdraw the AS Level Chemistry B (Salters) (H033) qualification after the next academic year. The final first teach date will be September 2026. The final assessment opportunity will be June 2027." The A Level, H433, carries no withdrawal notice on that page. In Biology, by contrast, OCR is withdrawing both the AS and the A Level of its Biology B route. A Cambridge family reasoning by analogy from one science to the other would get this wrong.

Why Is Cambridge's Largest Chemistry Provider Filed Under a Closed URN?

A parent looking Hills Road up on Get Information About Schools today meets something confusing. The record carrying its 2024/25 results, URN 130615, is marked closed: the page reads "Hills Road Sixth Form College URN : 130615 Further education Download establishment data This establishment closed on 31 August 2025." The college has not shut. It converted to academy status, and its open record is URN 152061, which opened on 1 September 2025 under Hills Education Trust Limited.

That matters for reading any figure about the college. The 378 Chemistry entries quoted on this page belong to the cohort that completed before the conversion, and the Department for Education publishes them against the predecessor URN, which is the correct place for them. The successor record does not yet carry a 16-to-18 subjects-entered table of its own — that data is not published there yet, rather than absent because the college stopped entering candidates. Anyone comparing Cambridge providers on the current record alone will find the city's largest Chemistry provider apparently carrying no subject data at all.

Which Cambridge Providers Enter AS Chemistry, and Why Is Cardiff Sixth Form College an Outlier?

AS Chemistry has largely disappeared from Cambridge. Only five of the sixteen providers entered any AS Chemistry candidate at all in 2024/25, and between them they made 33 entries against the city's 735 at A level. Hills Road Sixth Form College, Abbey College Cambridge and Cambridge Maths School entered one each, and Cambridge Arts and Sciences (CATS and CSVPA) two.

Cardiff Sixth Form College, Cambridge accounts for 28 of those 33, roughly 85% of every AS Chemistry entry made in the city. It is also the only Cambridge provider entering more AS Chemistry candidates than A-level ones: 28 at AS against 21 at A level. That shape is consistent with a college built substantially around one-year and repeat programmes rather than the standard two-year route, and it is worth knowing before reading its figures alongside a conventional sixth form's. A student arriving mid-course, or re-sitting, is in a materially different teaching pattern from a student two terms into a linear A level.

Does a Provider's Strength in One Science Predict Its A-Level Chemistry?

It does not, and Cambridge has an unusually clean demonstration. Cambridge Maths School, the specialist state free school, entered 18 A-level Chemistry candidates in 2024/25 and 2 in Biology — nine times as many in one science as the other. On Chemistry alone it sits alongside Mander Portman Woodward in the city's table; on Biology it is close to the bottom.

The ordering shifts further up the table too. The Perse School is Cambridge's second-largest Chemistry provider on 75 entries but its third-largest Biology provider on 55, because Long Road's 94 Biology entries outrank it there while its 55 Chemistry entries do not. A family choosing a sixth form on a general reputation for science, or on a friend's experience of the Biology department, is not reading evidence about Chemistry teaching. Students still choosing a provider may find our 16+ tuition in Cambridge page more useful than these entry counts.

How Should You Read These Cambridge Chemistry Figures Without Being Misled?

Every count on this page is exam entries, not students. A Cambridge student taking Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics appears once in each subject's row, and the Department for Education's subjects-entered tables do not publish how many individual students those entries represent. Nor does any DfE table publish a Cambridge-city aggregate: every citywide figure here is this page's own sum of sixteen separately-sourced rows, which is why the method is stated rather than assumed.

Where a specification or an entry requirement is not listed above, that is a gap in what the institution publishes, not a zero. Thirteen of the sixteen providers describe their Chemistry course without naming a board or a GCSE grade on any page this research could find, and this page does not fill those gaps by inference. The one inference it does make — Long Road's Salters route — is labelled as such, and rests on the college's own module list matching OCR's published one.

It is also worth saying plainly what this page is not about. Cambridge's name makes search results noisy, and much of what is written about "Chemistry at Cambridge" concerns applying to the university. This page is about A-level Chemistry teaching at sixth forms and colleges in the city, and about tuition for the students sitting those A-levels, whatever they go on to apply for.

That distinction is also why the pages currently ranking for this subject are a poor guide. Of the five results returned for "A-Level Chemistry tutors Cambridge" on 19 September 2026, three do not resolve to a page about A-level Chemistry in Cambridge at all: two redirect to national pages with no Cambridge content, and one Cambridge tutoring company redirects its Chemistry URL to its own Biology page. The remaining two are tutor directories that name no Cambridge sixth form.

Families comparing subjects across the same sixteen providers can read our A-level Maths tutors in Cambridge page, which covers this dataset for Mathematics. Broader subject detail sits on our A-level Chemistry tuition page, the full stage on our A-level tuition page, and every subject we teach in the city on our Cambridge tutoring hub.

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