A Level Physics Tutors Croydon 2026

Ten of Croydon's 21 open sixth forms and colleges have a published A-level Physics progress score in the Department for Education's 2024/25 data. The other eleven do not, and in every one of them the Physics group in the year measured was six students or fewer, or absent. So for about half the borough the published table says nothing about Physics, and this page sets out what can be found instead.

Our expert A-level Physics tutors help students across Croydon with the papers their own sixth form sets, whether or not its Physics group has a published score. Below: who is in the data, the Harris sixth form centre, what the scores settle, girls in Physics, and each provider's board and entry grades.

Which Croydon sixth forms have a published A-level Physics score?

Croydon is its own local authority for this dataset, code 306: a provider belongs to the borough if the Get Information about Schools register (GIAS) records it under Croydon, wherever its students live. A school in Sutton is not in the table, and two Bromley academies are, through the sixth form centre described below. Twenty-five Croydon-registered establishments carry a 2024/25 A-level row in DfE's value-added data for Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry or Physics. Twenty-two are open and three have closed: Old Palace of John Whitgift School (31 July 2025), Cambridge Tutors College (30 June 2025) and The Cedars School (1 September 2025), as GIAS records. One open provider, Harris Federation Post 16, is a sixth form centre and not a school, so 21 open schools and colleges are counted below.

DfE's Croydon table for A-level Physics has 20 rows. Eleven are published and nine are suppressed, and three of the nine belong to the closed providers, which leaves six open providers with a suppressed row. Five more open sixth forms have no Physics row at all. That makes eleven open sixth forms without a published score, against ten with one. Across England, 1,681 of 2,584 open schools and colleges with A-level students (65%) have a published Physics score; Croydon's 10 of 21 (48%) is lower, but on 21 providers that gap is within what chance produces.

Compare's 'subjects entered' page gives every provider's A-level Physics exam entries, whether or not a score is published. The table sets it beside the value-added row.

Source: DfE Compare 'Subjects entered at 16 to 18' for each provider, and DfE 2024/25 qualification and subject value-added data, both read 16 October 2026; status and closures from GIAS. Sorted by exam entries, not by score.

Read across, all eleven open providers without a published score have six or fewer entries. Croydon Metropolitan College has six; five other open providers with a suppressed row have between one and five; Harris Invictus Academy Croydon, with no row, has one; four providers have none. The ten published rows all rest on six or more matched entries.

Suppression describes the size of the group in the year measured: the smallest published A-level Physics row among England's 1,730 has six matched entries. It does not describe the quality of a course or show that a course has stopped. Royal Russell School, Norbury High School for Girls and Shirley High School Performing Arts College each list A-level Physics in documents or pages we read in October 2026, while the data describe students who finished in 2024/25. The Quest Academy's documents disagree with each other; see the exam-board section.

Is Harris Federation Post 16 a Croydon sixth form for A-level Physics?

Harris Federation Post 16 is registered at Norfolk House in Croydon, and GIAS types it as a sixth form centre for ages 16 to 19. GIAS links ten Harris academies to it as 'Sixth Form Centre School', and each links back as 'Sixth Form Centre Link'. Harris Sixth Form's own site says its Single Centre sixth forms bring together ten campuses under one centre number. The centre's row is its campuses added together, so adding the centre to its campuses counts the same students twice. Each campus has a row of its own, in two DfE sources, below.

Source: GIAS links for URN 135416; DfE 2024/25 qualification and subject value-added data; DfE Compare 'Subjects entered at 16 to 18' for each campus, read 16 October 2026.

The arithmetic, so it can be redone. The published campus rows in the value-added data are 26 + 7 + 6 at three Croydon academies and 13 + 11 + 12 at campuses in Merton, Southwark and Bromley: 39 + 36 = 75. The centre publishes 76, so one entry is unassigned. It cannot be placed: Harris Girls Academy Bromley is suppressed and Harris Invictus Academy Croydon has no row, with one Compare entry each. Compare counts exam entries and closes the gap exactly: 14 + 11 + 12 + 1 + 26 + 7 + 6 + 1 = 78, the centre's own total.

Which figure is Croydon's? Neither alone. The 11 published rows add up to 263 matched entries. Setting the centre aside (taking off 76) leaves 187: the published rows at schools and colleges registered in Croydon, including 39 entries at three Harris academies that have rows of their own. Keeping the centre and removing those three academies (taking off 39) leaves 224: the centre is counted once, but the total now includes 37 entries at campuses in Merton, Southwark and Bromley, or the one unassigned. The figures differ by 37 because the centre's row reaches into four boroughs. We call neither Croydon students; below, the centre is set aside unless named. Compare, which reconciles exactly, counts 218 A-level Physics exam entries at the 21 open schools and colleges registered in Croydon, centre set aside.

What do Croydon's published A-level Physics scores settle?

Value added compares students' A-level grades with those of students nationally who started from similar GCSE results. It is DfE's progress measure for 2024/25 entrants, not a measure of teaching quality. Zero is the national average, and DfE treats a score as distinguishable only when its 95% confidence interval sits wholly on one side of zero. The fuller definition is on our Croydon A-level Maths page.

The 11 rows overlap: the centre contains the students in Harris City Academy Crystal Palace, Harris Academy South Norwood and Harris Academy Purley, so the rows describe eight separate groups of students.

Source: DfE 2024/25 qualification and subject value-added data, A-level Physics, queried 16 October 2026. Sorted by matched entries, not by score; not a ranking.

Nine of the 11 intervals include zero, so DfE's rule cannot tell those groups from the national average in either direction. Two sit wholly on one side: Trinity School, +0.57 on 42 matched entries (interval 0.22 to 0.93, wholly above zero), and Coombe Wood School, −1.38 on 19 (−1.91 to −0.85, wholly below). Each describes one cohort in the year measured, and neither is a measure of teaching quality.

How many girls take A-level Physics in Croydon?

DfE's school-level 'A level maths and science' data gives, for each school, the percentage of its A-level students of each sex entered for a subject; its 'Maths and science: subject combinations by region and sex' data gives borough totals by sex for five years. Both count students, not grades. We checked head-counts made from percentages three ways: girls plus boys equal Compare's Physics entries at 20 of the 21 open schools and colleges (one differs by one entry); the state-funded sums, 19 girls and 111 boys, equal the subject-combinations figures for the borough exactly; and at the Harris centre the 8 girls and 70 boys implied equal the sums over its campuses. Counts of girls of five or fewer are grouped, not attached to a school.

In 2024/25, 32 of the 217 students entered for A-level Physics at Croydon's 21 open schools and colleges were girls: 14.7% (a 95% range of about 11% to 20%), against 25.4% across London and 23.9% across England. As a rate, 3.4% of Croydon's 949 A-level girls took Physics (about 2.4% to 4.7%), against 7.0% in London and 5.9% in England; for boys it was 18.5% of 998, against 23.9% and 22.2%, so the shortfall is proportionally larger for girls.

Trinity School is the only one of the 21 with six or more girls entered; at eight others the number was between one and five, and at twelve it was none. The three girls' schools among the 21 had 218 A-level girls and 8 of them took Physics (3.7%); at the other 18 providers 24 of 731 did (3.3%). The two ranges (about 2% to 7%, and 2% to 5%) overlap, so the low rate is not a feature of one kind of school here.

Source: DfE 'Maths and science: subject combinations by region and sex', Croydon and the nine English regions summed, queried 16 October 2026. Independent schools are not in this table.

The five-year state-funded series does not show a steady fall: three of the first four years sit between 21% and 24%, close to England's, and 2024/25 is the lowest at 14.6% (19 girls of 130), a count 2020/21 also reached.

Physics is almost always taken with Maths here: of the 130 state-funded Physics students in 2024/25, 121 (93.1%) also took A-level Maths. Girls are 47.1% of Croydon's state-funded Chemistry students, 57.2% of Biology and 32.0% of Maths.

Which exam board and GCSE grades do Croydon sixth forms ask for in A-level Physics?

Where we found a Physics-specific page or table, the grid records the board it names and the GCSE grades it asks for. We record only what a page says.

Source: each provider's own sixth form documents and subject pages, read as text on 16 October 2026. 'Not found' means not found in the pages we read, not that the school has no requirement. No Physics-specific page was found for Trinity School, Whitgift School, Croydon College or Croydon Metropolitan College.

Seven providers name AQA for Physics somewhere in their own materials and two name OCR; we found none naming Edexcel. Within one department the sciences can sit with different boards: Croydon High School names AQA for Chemistry but OCR for Physics, Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School names Edexcel for Biology but OCR for Physics, and Riddlesdown Collegiate runs OCR Biology beside AQA Chemistry and AQA Physics. Each board's papers are on our AQA, OCR and Edexcel A-level Physics pages.

On Maths, the grade asked for Physics is 5 at Archbishop Tenison's; 6 at Coloma Convent Girls' School and Oasis Academy Shirley Park; and 7 at Harris Sixth Form, Harris Invictus Academy, Croydon High School and Royal Russell School. Shirley High School's booklet gives 'Maths 6-6'. The Harris documents are the only ones we read that set the Physics Maths grade a point above Biology and Chemistry, 7 against 6, in the Harris Sixth Form 2026-27 table and the Harris Invictus brochure alike, and Harris adds that students must also study A-level Maths. At Coloma the Physics grade equals Chemistry's (6) and sits a point above Biology's (5), in the same entry table. A Year 11 student working towards any of these starts earlier, alongside our GCSE tuition in Croydon page.

Combined Science is accepted at most providers that state a Physics grade, on different terms: 7-6 at Coloma, 6/6 at Harris, 6:5 at Norbury, 7,7 at Oasis Academy Shirley Park and Woodcote High School, and 6 in Physics or Combined Science at Archbishop Tenison's. Harris Invictus Academy's 2025-26 brochure says 7 in Physics where Harris Sixth Form's 2026-27 document says 6, so ask the campus which applies.

Two cautions about school documents. The Quest Academy's sciences page says Key Stage 5 offers Chemistry (OCR), Biology (AQA) and Physics (AQA). Its October 2026 Q6 booklet lists no A-level in Physics, Chemistry or Biology, and Compare records no Physics entries for 2024/25. We report the disagreement and do not resolve it. Second, a current document says what a school offers now and the data say who finished in 2024/25, so the two can differ without either being wrong.

How do Leading Tuition tutors approach A-level Physics across Croydon's sixth forms?

The first job in any Croydon programme is establishing which papers the student will sit, because the borough is split. Where the board is AQA the Physics assessment is three written papers weighted 34%, 34% and 32%, the third carrying practical skills, data analysis and one optional topic. Where it is OCR, as at Croydon High and Archbishop Tenison's, the course is taught in six modules. Riddlesdown describes the practical endorsement as a separate certificate, so we work the required practicals as exam material, not as a side task.

Because 93% of Croydon's state-funded Physics students also take A-level Maths, we keep the two in step: where a Physics problem needs a technique the student has not yet met in Maths, we teach it inside the Physics problem. Lessons run one to one online with a shared whiteboard, working through the board's past papers and marking against the real mark scheme. Many Croydon groups are small, and we put the time into individual feedback on practical write-ups and data analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions