A-Level Physics Tutors in Cambridge 2026

Cambridge's sixteen A-level sixth forms and colleges made 679 A-level Physics entries between them in 2024/25, and every one of the sixteen entered at least one Physics candidate. Hills Road Sixth Form College made 319 of those entries, teaching AQA's Physics specification (7408); Long Road Sixth Form College and Cambridge Maths School both teach OCR A Physics (H556) instead.

Which Cambridge Sixth Forms and Colleges Enter A-Level Physics, and How Many Students Does Each Have?

Cambridge City Council has no role in education. The local authority is Cambridgeshire County Council (LA 873), and every "local authority" figure the Department for Education publishes against a Cambridge school therefore blends the city with Ely, Huntingdon, March, St Ives, St Neots and Wisbech — towns with very different sixth-form populations. No DfE table states a Cambridge-city figure on its own. This page defines Cambridge as the sixteen post-16 institutions confirmed against the postcode on each one's own Get Information About Schools record, all CB1 to CB4: two large state sixth-form colleges, three academies with their own sixth form, one further education college, one specialist free school, and nine independent schools and colleges. Impington Village College and Comberton Village College, both well known to Cambridge families, sit in South Cambridgeshire district and are excluded on that rule.

Every one of the sixteen entered at least one A-level Physics candidate in 2024/25.

Source: Department for Education, Compare School and College Performance, "Subjects entered" table read for each of the sixteen providers individually, 16-to-18 results for 2024/25, read on 24 September 2026. "None recorded" means that provider's own subjects-entered table carries no row for AS Physics. Entries are exam entries, not students.

Summed across all sixteen providers — a total the Department for Education does not publish at city level — Cambridge made 319 + 64 + 61 + 42 + 35 + 32 + 22 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 11 + 9 + 9 + 7 + 7 + 1 = 679 A-level Physics entries in 2024/25. Hills Road Sixth Form College's 319 entries are 47.0% of that citywide total (319 ÷ 679), from one institution out of sixteen. The city's seven state-funded providers — Hills Road (319), Long Road (61), Cambridge Maths School (35), Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (20), Chesterton Community College (11), The Netherhall School (7) and Cambridge Regional College (1) — made 454 of the 679 entries between them, 66.9% (454 ÷ 679).

Hills Road Sixth Form College and Long Road Sixth Form College have both converted to academy status; our Cambridge Chemistry page explains how a conversion moves a college's results onto a predecessor URN on the Department for Education's own tables. Checked live on Get Information About Schools on 24 September 2026: Hills Road's current, open record is URN 152061 (Hills Education Trust Limited); its 319 Physics entries above are filed under its closed predecessor, URN 130615, which closed on 31 August 2025. Long Road's current, open record is URN 151132 (The Sixth Form Colleges Trust), which opened on 1 September 2024 — because that conversion took effect at the very start of the 2024/25 academic year, Long Road's 61 Physics entries above are already filed under this same current URN, not a predecessor.

What GCSE Grades Does Each Cambridge Provider Ask For A-Level Physics?

Entry requirements are set by each institution, not by the Department for Education or the exam boards. Only two of Cambridge's sixteen providers publish a Physics-specific GCSE requirement in enough detail to compare directly.

Source: Hills Road Sixth Form College's own A-level Physics page and Long Road Sixth Form College's own Physics A Level page, both read on 24 September 2026.

The other fourteen Cambridge providers do not publish a Physics-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: Hills Road asks the same GCSE Mathematics grade for A-level Physics as it does for A-level Chemistry — grade 7 in both cases — one grade higher than the grade 6 it asks for A-level Biology, a pattern our Cambridge Chemistry page sets out in full. Families working towards those grades can compare the GCSE-stage picture on our GCSE Physics tutors in Cambridge page.

Does Any Cambridge Provider Require A-Level Mathematics Alongside A-Level Physics?

Hills Road Sixth Form College's own course page answers this directly, and not in the direction a Year 11 family might expect. Under "Previous experience" it states: "You don't need to take A level maths but should be confident in gcse maths skills like trigonometry, algebra, exponentials and you will need to know your way around using a calculator." Cambridge's largest Physics provider by entries does not require its A-level Physics students to be studying A-level Mathematics at the same time — despite asking grade 7 in GCSE Mathematics simply to get onto the course. Long Road Sixth Form College's and The Perse School's own Physics pages are silent on the question in either direction: neither states a Mathematics co-requisite, and neither states that one is unnecessary.

Cambridge Maths School answers a related but different question. Its own admissions page states: "Students will be selected on merit according to demonstrated mathematical potential. We invite anyone who is sitting the higher tier GCSE mathematics paper and interested in studying mathematics and further mathematics at A-level, to apply to study at CMS." That rule is about Mathematics, not Physics — the school sets no Physics-specific entry bar at all. Its practical effect on Physics is still real: 35 of Cambridge Maths School's 43 students with an A-level entry in 2024/25 took Physics, 81.4% — most, not all, of its cohort — and every one of those 35 arrived at the school having already cleared an entry bar built entirely around Mathematics.

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Which Exam Board Does Each Provider Teach for A-Level Physics?

Cambridge's two largest Physics providers by entries, Hills Road Sixth Form College and The Perse School, both teach AQA — but only one of them says so. The Perse School's own course page states it plainly: "The examining board is AQA." Hills Road's page names no board at all; its published "Course content" list — Measurements and their errors, Particles and radiation, Waves, Mechanics and materials, Electricity, Further mechanics and thermal physics, Fields and their consequences, Nuclear physics, Astrophysics — matches AQA's own Physics 7408 subject-content list topic for topic, including Astrophysics as its one chosen optional module from AQA's five. See our AQA A-level Physics page for the specification generally. That match, not a code Hills Road prints, is how this page identifies its board.

Long Road Sixth Form College and Cambridge Maths School both teach OCR instead, and both name their specification directly: Long Road's page states "Exam Board: OCR Physics A", and Cambridge Maths School's states "We follow the OCR A Physics (H556) specification." OCR's own qualification page confirms the code: Physics A is H556 at A-level and H156 at AS — see our OCR A-level Physics page. Abbey College Cambridge, the city's fourth-largest Physics provider by entries, names a third board on its own exam-boards page: "Physics Edexcel." Pearson's own specification document confirms the code: "Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Physics (9PH0)." More on that route is on our Edexcel A-level Physics page.

That is a genuine split among the four largest state and independent providers — AQA at two, OCR A at two, Edexcel at one — and it does not track the pattern our Cambridge Chemistry page found for Chemistry, where Hills Road and Long Road both teach OCR, on two different routes. For Physics, Cambridge's two largest state colleges do not share a board at all. The remaining ten providers do not name a Physics exam board on a page this research could locate, so none is stated here.

How Do Cambridge's Institution-Level Physics Value-Added Scores Compare Once You Read the Confidence Intervals?

The Department for Education publishes a Physics-specific value-added score for each institution, built only from students whose prior attainment can be matched to their Physics result — a separate, smaller count from the subjects-entered totals in the table above, and not restated together with them on this page. 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.

Source: Department for Education statistics API, dataset 019c2960-abc0-700e-91ed-bb9823c0feed, queried for GCE A level, A level cohort, subject Physics, time period 2024/2025, for all sixteen Cambridge providers, read on 24 September 2026. Value-added-matched entries count only students with matched prior attainment and are not the same measure as the subjects-entered totals in the table above.

Of Cambridge's sixteen Physics providers, twelve have a published value-added figure for 2024/25. Four of those twelve clear zero entirely. Two are positive: The Perse School (+0.52, interval 0.23 to 0.81, 63 value-added-matched entries) and Cambridge Maths School (+0.51, interval 0.09 to 0.92, 31 entries). Two are negative: Long Road Sixth Form College (-0.32, interval -0.62 to -0.03, 61 entries) and The Netherhall School (-1.07, interval -1.95 to -0.2, 7 entries) — the widest interval on the page, reflecting its small cohort. The Netherhall School's sixth form now trades as Oakes College Cambridge, though the Department for Education's 2024/25 data is still filed under The Netherhall School's own record. The other eight published figures all have intervals that span zero and are not statistically significant results, whatever their sign. Three providers — Cambridge Regional College, Cardiff Sixth Form College (Cambridge) and St. Andrew's College Cambridge — have their value-added figure suppressed by the Department for Education for 2024/25. Cambridge Arts and Sciences (CATS and CSVPA) has no published value-added row at all for Physics, despite appearing in the entries table above.

Where Does A-Level Physics Sit Against Cambridge's Other Core Subjects?

Cambridge's 679 A-level Physics entries in 2024/25 are the smallest of the city's four core science and mathematics subjects. Our Cambridge Chemistry page puts the city's A-level Chemistry total at 735 entries and its A-level Biology total at 715; our Cambridge Maths page puts A-level Mathematics at 1,475 entries, more than double the Physics total. AS-level Physics has almost disappeared from the city: only three of the sixteen providers entered any AS Physics candidate at all in 2024/25. Cardiff Sixth Form College, Cambridge is the outlier, and a striking one — its 29 AS Physics entries outnumber its own 20 A-level Physics entries, the only Cambridge provider where that is true, a pattern consistent with a college built substantially around one-year and resit programmes rather than the standard two-year route.

For the qualification content itself rather than the local picture, see our national A-level Physics page, which covers the board-by-board specification overview, where students typically lose marks, university applications and the ESAT. For Physics at GCSE in Cambridge specifically, including the difference between standalone GCSE Physics and Combined Science, see our Cambridge GCSE Physics page. Families comparing across Cambridge's wider subject range can also see our A-level Maths and A-level Chemistry pages for this city.

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