A-Level History Tutors in Cambridge 2026

Cambridge’s sixteen A-level sixth forms and colleges do not share one ‘A-level History’: eleven return a 2024/25 Department for Education value-added row, on boards including OCR (H505) and AQA (7042), and each department names its own breadth, depth and coursework periods within that shared specification. Hills Road Sixth Form College alone runs two separate OCR courses — Rights, Race and Revolutions (200 students) and Crisis, Conflict and Communism (106) — and only three clear zero on value added.

Which Cambridge Sixth Forms Actually Enter A-Level History, and How Many Students?

Cambridge City Council has no role in education. The local authority is Cambridgeshire County Council (LA 873), so a Department for Education figure filed against a Cambridge school also covers Ely, Huntingdon, March, St Ives, St Neots and Wisbech — towns with very different sixth-form populations. This page defines Cambridge as the same sixteen post-16 institutions, all with a Get Information About Schools postcode between CB1 and CB4, used on Leading Tuition’s Cambridge A-level Physics, Chemistry and Maths pages, and independently queried the Department for Education’s institution-level History value-added dataset for every one of them, filtered to subject History, qualification GCE A level and cohort A level, for 2024/25.

Eleven of the sixteen return a matched 2024/25 History value-added row. Of those eleven, three — Mander Portman Woodward, St. Andrew’s College Cambridge and Abbey College Cambridge — have their figure suppressed because the matched cohort is too small to publish, leaving eight published scores. Five providers — Cambridge Maths School, Cardiff Sixth Form College (Cambridge), Cambridge Arts and Sciences (CATS and CSVPA), Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, and Cambridge Regional College — return no History value-added row at all for 2024/25, which this page records as no published row, never as a confirmed zero entries.

Source: Department for Education statistics API, dataset 019c2960-abc0-700e-91ed-bb9823c0feed, queried for GCE A level, A level cohort, subject History, time period 2024/2025, for all sixteen Cambridge providers, read on 24 September 2026. “Matched entries” counts only students whose prior attainment DfE could match to a 2024/25 History result.

Hills Road Sixth Form College’s own course pages state a different, larger figure: 200 Year 12 and 13 students currently on Rights, Race and Revolutions and 106 on Crisis, Conflict and Communism, 306 combined. That is a current headcount across both year groups, not the same measure as the Department for Education’s 253 matched entries, which counts only the students whose prior attainment DfE could match to a 2024/25 result. The two figures answer different questions and neither corrects the other.

Which Board, and Which Named Period, Does Each Cambridge Sixth Form Actually Teach?

History is not one syllabus at any of the four Cambridge providers whose own pages name their options in full. All four happen to enter students under nationally-set specification codes — OCR’s A-level History A is H505, confirmed on OCR’s own qualification page; AQA’s is 7042, confirmed on AQA’s own specification page — but the named breadth, depth and coursework periods a department actually teaches sit entirely within that department’s own choice, never the awarding body’s. Three schools share the identical OCR H505 code and name almost no periods in common.

Hills Road Sixth Form College teaches two separate OCR (H505) courses that a student chooses between, not two halves of one course. Rights, Race and Revolutions covers Civil Rights in the USA 1865-1992, the Cold War in Europe 1941-1995, and Revolution or Reform? Britain 1783-1853. Crisis, Conflict and Communism instead covers democracy and dictatorship in Germany 1919-1963, tsars and communists in the Soviet Union 1855-1964, and England in Revolution: the early Stuarts, civil wars and Cromwell, 1603-1660. Both courses share the same three coursework options (below) and the same 20% coursework, 80% exam split across three papers. A student can only take one of the two.

The Stephen Perse Foundation’s OCR (H505) course shares Hills Road’s specification code but names none of the same periods. Its British unit is England 1547-1603, built around an enquiry into the Mid-Tudor Crises of 1547-1558 (25% of the A-level, a 90-minute paper); its non-British unit is Germany 1919-1963 (15%, 60 minutes); its thematic unit is Russia and its Rulers, 1855-1964 (40%, 150 minutes); and its coursework (20%) is an independent investigation the student researches individually.

The Perse School also teaches OCR, and names the Early Stuart period specifically — Charles I’s Personal Rule and the Bishops’ Wars — among its topics, though its own page does not publish a full breadth, depth and coursework breakdown the way Hills Road’s and The Stephen Perse Foundation’s do. Its own page states plainly: “The examining board is OCR,” with three exams sat in the Summer term of the Upper Sixth.

Long Road Sixth Form College is the only one of the four naming its own options that teaches a different board, AQA (7042). Every student studies the same breadth paper, Britain 1603-1702 — the causes of the Civil War, the execution of Charles I and the Restoration — then specialises in either Russia 1917-1953 or Germany 1918-1945. Unlike Hills Road’s choice of three coursework topics, Long Road fixes its coursework to one: the struggle for Black Civil Rights in America 1860-1965, for every student regardless of which depth option they chose.

Source: each provider’s own published A-level History course page, and OCR’s and AQA’s own qualification pages for the specification codes, all read on 24 September 2026.

What Does Each School’s A-Level History Coursework Actually Set?

A-level History coursework is 20% of the qualification at every Cambridge provider that publishes its weighting, but what each department actually sets for that 20% varies more than any other part of the course. Hills Road offers its students an active choice between three set topics; Long Road fixes one topic for everyone; The Stephen Perse Foundation leaves the topic to the student’s own research interest entirely. None of these choices is dictated by the exam board — OCR and AQA both set the coursework’s general rules, but a department chooses its own topic, or range of topics, within them.

Hills Road’s three coursework choices, offered to students on either of its two History courses, are: witch hunts in early modern Europe, c.1450-1750; the French Revolution, Robespierre and the Terror, 1793-94; and the end of the British Empire in Kenya. A student picks one topic, independent of which of Hills Road’s two named courses — Rights, Race and Revolutions or Crisis, Conflict and Communism — they are otherwise following.

Long Road sets one fixed coursework question for every A-level History student: an extended essay on the struggle for Black Civil Rights in America, 1860-1965, using primary material and historians’ differing interpretations of the period. There is no choice of topic at Long Road, unlike at Hills Road.

The Stephen Perse Foundation instead sets no fixed topic at all: its coursework is an “independent investigation,” 3,000 to 4,000 words, researched and written under supervision on a question the student chooses individually — a third model again, distinct from both Hills Road’s fixed menu of three and Long Road’s single fixed question.

Source: each provider’s own published A-level History course page, read on 24 September 2026.

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What GCSE Grade Does Each Cambridge Sixth Form Ask For A-Level History — and What If a Student Didn’t Take GCSE History?

Only three of Cambridge’s sixteen providers publish a History-specific GCSE grade requirement in enough detail to compare directly — the rest either publish a blanket Sixth Form entry bar covering all subjects or do not publish a requirement this research could locate. Where that is so, this page does not invent one.

Source: each provider’s own published A-level History course page and admissions page, read on 24 September 2026.

Hills Road’s own page is the only one of the three that states directly what happens if a student never sat GCSE History: its option (b) requires grade 6 in GCSE English Language or English Literature, “and 4 in History if studied” — a condition that only applies if the student took the GCSE at all. A student who never sat GCSE History can still apply on the English-only route. Long Road’s and The Perse School’s own pages do not address the question either way; both simply state their standard entry bar and are silent on what a student without GCSE History should do.

How Do Cambridge’s History Value-Added Scores Compare Once You Read the Confidence Intervals?

A value-added figure is only a finding when its own confidence interval sits entirely above or entirely below zero; where the interval spans zero, the true effect could be positive, negative or nothing at all, whatever the single reported number reads. Of Cambridge’s sixteen History providers, eleven return a 2024/25 value-added row. Three of those eleven — Mander Portman Woodward, St. Andrew’s College Cambridge and Abbey College Cambridge — are suppressed by the Department for Education because their matched cohort is too small to publish, leaving eight published figures. Exactly three of those eight clear zero.

Source: Department for Education statistics API, dataset 019c2960-abc0-700e-91ed-bb9823c0feed, queried for GCE A level, A level cohort, subject History, time period 2024/2025, for all sixteen Cambridge providers, read on 24 September 2026.

The Perse School’s +0.34 is a genuine positive finding, but it rests on just 36 matched students, and its interval — 0.05 to 0.64 — is wide. Hills Road Sixth Form College’s -0.14 is also a genuine finding, in the opposite direction, but it rests on 253 matched students, seven times as many, and its interval — -0.25 to -0.03 — is narrow. That precision is exactly why a small effect still clears zero: Hills Road’s History value-added score is negative by an amount worth roughly a seventh of a grade, not a large gap, and it is only visible as statistically significant because the cohort behind it is unusually large for a Cambridge sixth form. Long Road Sixth Form College’s -0.21 across 101 matched entries sits between the two on both counts.

Cambridge Maths School, Cardiff Sixth Form College (Cambridge), Cambridge Arts and Sciences (CATS and CSVPA), Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology and Cambridge Regional College return no History value-added row at all for 2024/25 — not the same as a confirmed zero History entries.

Ancient History and Classical Civilisation Are Not A-Level History

Ancient History and Classical Civilisation are separate A-level qualifications from History, with their own Department for Education subject codes, and a provider entering students for one of them is not entering them for History — the two should never be added together or substituted for each other. The Perse School is a local, checkable example: alongside its A-level History page, it publishes a wholly separate A-level Ancient History page, describing a “source-led subject that explores the culture, literature and history of the ancient world” — a different course, with a different specification, taught alongside History rather than as a version of it. This page’s Department for Education figures throughout are History only.

For the History qualification generally — how hard the top grade is, June 2026 grade boundaries, and what Oxford and Cambridge ask of History applicants — see our national A-level History page, and our OCR and AQA A-level History pages for each specification generally. For GCSE History in Cambridge specifically, see our Cambridge GCSE History page. For how Hills Road’s and Long Road’s 2024/25 data are filed under closed and open Get Information About Schools records, see our Cambridge A-level Physics page, which explains the same conversions in full.

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