GCSE Maths Tutors in Cambridge: City Schools vs the County Average

Cambridge is a city whose eight state secondary schools are, for GCSE reporting purposes, part of Cambridgeshire County Council rather than a local authority of their own. On the Department for Education’s 2024/25 data, those eight schools’ GCSE maths Attainment 8 scores span from 8 at North Cambridge Academy to 13.4 at Chesterton Community College — a range the single county-wide figure of 9.7 does not show.

Why ‘Cambridgeshire’ Isn’t the Same as ‘Cambridge’ in DfE’s Own Data

Every DfE performance page for a Cambridge secondary school files it under a single local authority: Cambridgeshire. Chesterton Community College’s own page states this plainly — “Local authority: Cambridgeshire (Compare all schools in Cambridgeshire)” — and every other Cambridge school’s page carries the identical line. Cambridgeshire County Council genuinely is a single education authority covering the whole county, not a Cambridge-specific tier of government the way Reading Borough Council or Nottingham City Council administers its own single city.

That distinction matters for anyone reading a “Cambridgeshire GCSE results” headline and assuming it describes Cambridge itself. The county’s 2024/25 GCSE cohort was 6,836 pupils, spread across schools in Ely, Wisbech, Huntingdon, St Neots, March and every other Cambridgeshire town, as well as Cambridge. Summing the cohorts at Cambridge’s own eight state secondaries — Chesterton Community College (190), Parkside Community College (128), Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (104), St Bede’s Inter-Church School (180), Coleridge Community College (110), Trumpington Community College (89), The Netherhall School (178) and North Cambridge Academy (125) — comes to 1,104 pupils: about 16% of the county-wide figure. The rest of that Cambridgeshire average is describing schools a parent in Cambridge itself has probably never heard of.

The Cambridgeshire-wide maths Attainment 8 average, 9.7, sits close to the England average of 9.1 — but averaging in market towns elsewhere in the county tells a Cambridge parent almost nothing about the schools actually available to their own child. The next section replaces that county figure with the eight real numbers behind it.

GCSE Maths Attainment 8 Scores at All Eight Cambridge Secondary Schools

The clearest way to see what the Cambridgeshire average hides is to look at each Cambridge secondary’s own GCSE maths Attainment 8 sub-score — the maths-specific measure DfE publishes at school level, on a 0-to-18 scale because maths counts double inside the wider Attainment 8 score. Sorted from highest to lowest, using DfE’s 2024/25 school performance data:

Six of the eight schools score above the Cambridgeshire average of 9.7; only The Netherhall School (9.5) and North Cambridge Academy (8) sit below it. Measured against the England average of 9.1, seven of the eight clear it — North Cambridge Academy is the sole exception, and its cohort of 125 pupils is large enough that the gap is not a small-sample artefact. Chesterton Community College’s 13.4 is 68% higher than North Cambridge Academy’s 8, despite both schools sitting inside the same city and admitting through the same non-selective process — the subject of the next section.

Cambridge Has No Grammar Schools — So What Explains the Gap?

A parent used to reading school-comparison tables for Reading, Barnet or Buckinghamshire might expect a gap this size to trace back to a grammar school skimming the strongest applicants. Cambridge offers no such explanation. Six of the eight schools above — Chesterton Community College, Coleridge Community College, Parkside Community College, St Bede’s Inter-Church School, North Cambridge Academy and The Netherhall School — are listed by DfE as having a ‘Non-selective’ admissions policy. The remaining two, Trumpington Community College and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, have no admissions policy recorded, but neither sets an entrance examination. Cambridgeshire has had no state grammar schools since comprehensive reorganisation, unlike some neighbouring counties that kept selection in some form.

That makes the 68% gap between Chesterton and North Cambridge Academy a genuinely comprehensive-school story rather than a selection story — every one of these eight schools draws from an open, non-selective catchment, and the maths results still vary by nearly as much as they do between a grammar school and its non-selective neighbours in other towns. Cohort size, EBacc entry patterns, staffing and each school’s own approach to setting by ability inside a mixed intake are the more likely drivers, though DfE’s published data does not itself say which factor dominates at any one school. What the data does make clear is that a family should not read ‘Cambridge’ as a single answer: which of the city’s eight schools a child actually attends changes the honest starting point for their GCSE maths results considerably.

What Attainment 8’s Maths Score Actually Measures

Attainment 8 measures a pupil’s average achievement across up to eight qualifications, and — as DfE’s own methodology page puts it — that includes “English language; English literature (double weighted providing both English language and English literature are taken); maths (double weighted); three further qualifications that count in the English Baccalaureate (EBacc); and three further qualifications that can be GCSE qualifications.” Because maths is double-weighted, its own sub-score runs on a 0-to-18 scale rather than the usual 0-to-9 GCSE grade scale — Chesterton Community College’s 13.4 implies a cohort averaging comfortably above a straight grade 6, while North Cambridge Academy’s 8 implies an average closer to a grade 4.

None of the figures above are Progress 8 scores, because DfE has not calculated Progress 8 — for any school, in any local authority — for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 cohorts. Its own release explains why: “It is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26. This is because there is no KS2 prior attainment data available to use to calculate Progress 8 when the relevant cohorts reach the end of KS4 as primary tests and assessments were cancelled in academic years 2019/20 and 2020/21 due to COVID-19 disruption.” A Progress 8 maths figure quoted for any Cambridge school in 2025/26 is therefore an older, pre-2024 number rather than a current one.

Maths also sits inside the EBacc, the five-subject combination of English, maths, a science, a language, and history or geography. Nationally, 40.5% of pupils were entered for the full EBacc combination in 2024/25 — useful context for how common a broad academic timetable still is, though it is not a Cambridge-specific figure. Foundation tier GCSE maths caps the highest available grade at 5, so a pupil entered for Foundation cannot reach a 6 however well they perform; Higher tier reaches the full grade 9 but has a floor of grade 3. Schools typically decide the tier during Year 10 or early Year 11, based on mock results — a decision that sets a child’s ceiling well before results day, whichever of Cambridge’s eight schools they attend.

What Parents Say

DP

Deborah Prior

★★★★★

Confidence and progress

My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.

NI

Nicola

★★★★★

Amazing tutors!

We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.

S

Saifan Khan

★★★★★

Great Teaching and Focused Learning

I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.

See more reviews on Trustpilot

How Should You Choose GCSE Maths Support for Your Child’s Cambridge School?

The spread above means a single, generic GCSE maths package rarely suits every Cambridge family equally well. A child at Chesterton or Parkside is working inside a cohort already well ahead of both the county and national averages, where the realistic ceiling to push for is often a grade 8 or 9; a child at North Cambridge Academy or The Netherhall School may be starting from a genuinely different point, needing a plan built first around securing a grade 4 or 5 reliably. Neither situation is described accurately by “above-average” or “below-average” on its own — the actual gap, in points, is what tells a parent how much ground there is to make up.

One caveat worth stating plainly: Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology’s figures sit alongside the other seven schools’ in the table above, but they are not quite like-for-like. CAST is a University Technical College admitting from age 13 via either Year 9 or Year 10 entry, not the age 11 typical of Chesterton, Parkside and the rest, so its 2024/25 cohort of 104 pupils had at most three years at the school before sitting GCSEs — as little as two for those who joined in Year 10 — rather than the usual five. Its 12.1 maths score is real and sourced, but a family comparing it directly against a school their child has attended since Year 7 should read it with that difference in mind.

Leading Tuition builds a GCSE maths programme around a child’s own school, exam board and current working grade, rather than assuming every Cambridge pupil needs the same syllabus coverage at the same pace. For the exam’s own mechanics in more depth — paper structure, calculator and non-calculator sections, grade boundaries nationally — our main GCSE maths tuition page covers that ground, and our A-level maths page sets out what comes next for a child already working at the top of the GCSE range. If your child is earlier or later in their Cambridge school career, our guides to 13+ tuition in Cambridge and 16+ tuition in Cambridge cover those stages in their own right.

Frequently Asked Questions