A Level English Tutors Kingston upon Thames 2026

In 2024/25, 48 of the 175 students taking an English A-level at Kingston upon Thames' state-funded sixth forms and colleges were on the combined English Language and Literature course: 27.4%, against 8.5% in London and 13.8% in England. The Kingston share was 15.5% in 2020/21 and 9.1% in 2022/23. Below: who offers which English A-level, on which board and at what GCSE grade.

Every data source and school document below was read on 17 October 2026, and the figures that weaken the headline sit in the text, not in a footnote.

Which of the Three English A-Levels Does Each Kingston Sixth Form Enter?

Kingston upon Thames is its own local authority, number 314, so the Department for Education's local-authority data and the borough are the same thing; a sixth form in Esher, Wimbledon or Twickenham sits in Surrey, Merton or Richmond upon Thames and is not counted. DfE lists 14 providers against authority 314. Eleven have English A-level entries in its 2024/25 data, and the Get Information About Schools register recorded all eleven as Open, in Kingston upon Thames, with a sixth form, on 17 October 2026. Of the other three, Coombe Boys' School has no English row (Coombe Sixth Form is shared by the two Coombe schools and its English courses appear under Coombe Girls' School) and Malden Oaks School and Tuition Service has only a suppressed Literature row and no exam entries. South Thames Colleges Group is shown on its own line: it runs four colleges (Carshalton, Kingston, Merton and South Thames), so its row cannot be placed in Kingston.

Source: Department for Education, Schools and colleges: subject entries and grades, GCE A level, 2024/25 (dataset version 1.0.1), queried through the statistics API on 17 October 2026. Every figure in this table is an exam entry; a dash means DfE has no row. Type is DfE's institution information for 2024/25 (version 1.0.2).

Literature is the only English A-level entered at 5 of the eleven: Tiffin School, The Tiffin Girls' School, Kingston Grammar School, The Kingston Academy and Southborough High School. Language is entered at three: Surbiton High School (8), Richard Challoner School (7) and The Holy Cross School (2), 17 entries in all. The combined course is entered at four, all of them non-selective state schools: Tolworth Girls' School and Sixth Form (11), Coombe Girls' School (10), The Hollyfield School and Sixth Form Centre (9) and The Holy Cross School (8). At Hollyfield it outnumbers Literature, 9 entries to 3. None of the two selective state schools or the two independent schools entered anyone for it.

How Many of Kingston's State-Sector English Students Take the Combined Language and Literature Course?

DfE also publishes student counts by local authority and subject for five years. The series covers state-funded schools and colleges, so it leaves out Surbiton High School and Kingston Grammar School, and it reconciles exactly with the table above: for 2024/25 it gives 118 Literature students, 9 Language students and 48 on the combined course, the sums of the state-funded rows including the 10 entries at South Thames Colleges Group. England and London are sums of DfE's regional rows, and London includes Kingston.

Source: Department for Education, Student counts and results: A level by region and subject (end of 16-18 study), local authority 314, London and the nine regions of England, 2020/21 to 2024/25 (dataset version 1.0), queried through the statistics API on 17 October 2026. Students counted once per subject; the combined share is the combined-course students divided by students taking any English A-level.

In 2024/25 the Kingston share was 27.4% (48 of 175), London's 8.5% and England's 13.8%. Kingston's share was 9.1% in 2022/23 and 23.4% (46 of 197) the year after, while London's and England's did not move by more than a point in any year. That is a change particular to Kingston, though Literature is still the larger course: 118 of the 175 students, 67.4%.

Four things weaken it, and they belong with it. First, 2022/23 was a trough. The Kingston share in 2020/21 was 15.5% (28 of 181), close to England's 13.7%, so measured from the start of the series the share has gone from about England's level to about double it, not from 9.1% to 27.4%. Second, 10 of the 48 cannot be placed: South Thames Colleges Group's entries are in the Kingston series because DfE registers the group to the borough, though it runs four colleges. Taking those 10 entries as 10 students and removing them from both counts leaves 38 of 165, or 23.0%, still 1.7 times England's share. The series cannot be split by college for earlier years.

Third, English is losing ground everywhere. The table gives students taking any English A-level as a share of all A-level students.

Kingston's share fell 4.2 points between 2020/21 and 2024/25, London's 3.7 points and England's 3.0 points, so a falling English share is not a Kingston finding. Kingston's level is lower than London's and England's, but this is a share of all A-level students and moves with how many take other subjects; it does not measure how English is taught.

Fourth, this page does not claim a fall in Literature. Kingston's Literature students were 137, 139, 147, 135 and 118 over the five years. From 147 in 2022/23 to 118 in 2024/25 is a drop of 19.7% where England's rose 3.3%, but the run moves by between 2 and 17 students a year and one low year is not a trend.

English Language on its own tells a clearer story, though from small numbers. Kingston's state sector had 26 Language students in 2022/23 and 9 in 2024/25, a change of −65.4%, against −5.6% in England and +7.4% in London.

Surbiton High School's 8 Language entries are not in this series, so the borough's 2024/25 total, state and independent together, was 17 entries. The series cannot say which schools moved, when, or why: DfE's school-level entries in the data used here are for 2024/25 only, and each school's own documents, below, say what it teaches now.

Are Kingston's English Grades Higher Than England's?

Yes, in raw grades, and the excess sits in particular schools. The table gives each sixth form's A-level English Literature exam entries and how many were graded A* to B.

Source: Department for Education, Schools and colleges: subject entries and grades, GCE A level, English Literature, 2024/25 (version 1.0.1), queried on 17 October 2026. Hollyfield's grades are withheld by DfE at 3 entries, so the totals use the ten sixth forms with published grades.

Across those ten, 136 of 171 entries, 79.5%, were A* to B. DfE's own national comparator for English Literature is 56.5% (19,239 of 34,031 entries). The borough is 23 points above England on raw grades. But the borough contains two selective state schools and two independent ones, and they enter 113 of the 171 entries.

Source: the Kingston rows are those in the previous table. The England rows add every provider in DfE's 2024/25 subject entries and grades data whose English Literature grades are all published, grouped by DfE's institution information; colleges are left out of the comparison. Queried on 17 October 2026.

Like for like, the picture splits. Kingston's selective state schools are about 17 points above England's selective state schools and its independent schools about 11 points above England's independent schools, so even among schools that choose their intake Kingston's are high on raw grades. Its six non-selective state schools with published grades are 53.4% against 51.5% nationally, a lift of about 2 points on 58 entries, which is too small to mean anything. So the borough's headline comes from its selective and independent schools, and outside them Kingston's English grades match England's. Raw grades reflect a school's intake as well as its teaching, which is why DfE publishes a progress score, covered next.

The combined course and Language are too small to split this way. At the four state schools teaching the combined course, 18 of 38 entries (47.4%) were A* to B, against 48.4% for England (6,515 entries, DfE's national comparator) and 44.6% for England's non-selective state providers. Surbiton High School and Richard Challoner School together had 13 of 15 Language entries at A* to B.

Do DfE's Progress Scores Separate Any Kingston Sixth Form in English?

The Department for Education publishes a value-added score for each department with a 95% confidence interval, and a score separates a department from an average one only when its whole interval sits on one side of zero. Our Kingston A-level Maths page sets out what value added compares and why an interval that spans zero is not a finding, so that method is not repeated here. English Literature first, sorted by matched entries, which are the entries DfE could tie to a prior-attainment record and which differ from the exam entries above.

Source: Department for Education, Schools and colleges: qualification and subject value added, GCE A level, English Literature, local authority 314, 2024/25 (version 1.0.1), queried on 17 October 2026 and sorted by matched entries rather than score. Every figure is DfE's progress measure for 2024/25 entrants and is not a measure of teaching quality; the last column reports only whether that row's own interval reaches zero.

No Literature interval sits wholly above zero and one sits below it: Southborough High School, at -1.08 on 6 matched entries, with an interval of -1.83 to -0.34. That is the only Literature interval clear of zero and it rests on the smallest cohort in the table. The other 9 published intervals span zero. Hollyfield's Literature row is suppressed at 3 exam entries.

That result is unremarkable. Across England, DfE publishes a Literature score for 1,753 providers, and 11.9% (208) clear zero above and 12.3% (216) clear it below. A borough with ten published rows would expect about one of each by chance, so Kingston's none above and one below says nothing about Kingston. The same holds for the combined course (11.6% above, 11.6% below across 354 published rows in England) and for Language (10.4% and 9.8% across 682).

The combined course has five published rows in the borough, four at schools and one at the college group.

Source: as above, GCE A level, English Language and Literature, local authority 314, 2024/25. The college group's row is shown because DfE publishes it against Kingston, and kept out of every comparison, since its 10 matched entries cannot be placed in the borough. It is the only combined-course row that clears zero, and it clears it below.

English Language has two published rows: 0.51 at Surbiton High School (interval -0.08 to 1.1, 8 matched entries) and 0.46 at Richard Challoner School (interval -0.17 to 1.09, 7 matched entries). Both intervals span zero, as does every combined-course interval at a school, and The Holy Cross School's Language row is suppressed. We also pooled the Kingston rows within each of the three qualifications to look for a borough-level result; with three attempts and cohorts this small, none established anything, so the page publishes no pooled figure.

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Which Exam Board Does Each Kingston Sixth Form Enter for English?

The board decides which past papers, mark schemes and set texts a tutor works from, so it is the first fact to settle, and the progress data cannot supply it. A cell reads "not found" where the pages we could read do not say.

Read from each school's own pages and documents on 17 October 2026. Surbiton High School's pages were read in a browser, because its site refuses automated requests, and Southborough's English page is published as images and was read from them. "Not found" records what our reading returned, not a fact about the school.

Weighted by DfE Literature exam entries, the departments on OCR hold 67 of the 174 entries, those on Edexcel 63 and those on AQA 28, and the 16 at Kingston Grammar School sit on a board we could not read. No board has a majority and none of the eleven names Eduqas. These describe the eleven departments only, not the borough's students.

The four departments that teach the combined course sit on three boards: AQA at Tolworth, Edexcel at Coombe and Hollyfield (Pearson is Edexcel's awarding body) and OCR at Holy Cross, each under its own name and code: AQA 7707, Pearson Edexcel 9EL0 and OCR English Language and Literature (EMC) H474. Eduqas publishes one too, though no Kingston school names it. For Literature, AQA runs two specifications: Southborough High School and Tolworth teach Literature A (7712) and Richard Challoner School teaches Specification B, whose papers differ. Our AQA, Edexcel and OCR A-level English Literature pages cover each board's papers, so that detail is not repeated here.

Course lists and DfE counts do not always agree. The Kingston Academy's Literature page refers to a combined course that its curriculum list does not include, and DfE shows no combined entries there; The Holy Cross School has 2 Language entries but lists no Language course. A course list says what is offered next and DfE counts last summer's entries, so both can be right. Kingston College, part of South Thames Colleges Group, has a Journalism pathway that includes a full A-level in English in the second year without naming a specification, so we cannot say whether any of the group's 10 combined-course entries come from it.

What GCSE English Grades Do Kingston Sixth Forms Ask For?

The table gives each sixth form's stated GCSE English requirement for its A-level English courses, with the document each line comes from.

Read on 17 October 2026. Schools revise entry grades each year and apply other criteria, so the sixth form's current page governs.

Three departments ask for a grade 7: Tiffin School, The Tiffin Girls' School and Surbiton High School. Kingston Grammar School's school-wide rule asks grade 6 in English, and the non-selective schools that state a grade ask 5 or 6. Where a school states grades for both courses, the combined course asks no more than Literature, and at Holy Cross it asks one grade less in each English GCSE, 5 and 5 against 6 and 6.

On the stated lines alone, a Year 11 student predicted grade 6 in both English GCSEs meets the Literature bar at Coombe Sixth Form, The Kingston Academy, Southborough High School, Richard Challoner School and The Holy Cross School, and the bar at Hollyfield, but falls a grade short at Tiffin School, The Tiffin Girls' School and Surbiton High School. A student on a 6 and a 5 meets the Holy Cross and Hollyfield bars for the combined course but not Coombe's grade 6 in both.

What Should a Kingston Family Ask an English Department Before Choosing?

Five questions settle most of it. Which of the three English A-levels does the department teach, and does it teach the one the student wants, given that only three Kingston sixth forms entered anyone for Language in 2024/25? Which board, and for Literature which specification, because past papers for a different one are the wrong practice? Which GCSE English grades does it ask for? How many students sat it last summer, since DfE's exam entries run from 3 for Literature at Hollyfield to 40 at Surbiton High School? And, for the combined course, do the university courses the student has in mind accept it, since The Kingston Academy's own page advises students aiming at higher-tariff universities to choose English Literature instead?

How Leading Tuition Works With Kingston A-Level English Students

Our expert A-level English tutors help students across Kingston upon Thames with the reading, the written argument and the exam technique of whichever English A-level their sixth form enters. A programme starts from the board, the set texts the department has chosen and the grade a student is working at now set against the grade they want: close reading, comparison and the coursework essay on Literature; the language levels and the investigation on Language; the unseen texts and the creative-writing commentary alongside the set texts on the combined course. Sessions run one-to-one online with a shared whiteboard, so a tutor can work through a past-paper question on the student's own board and mark it against the real scheme. Our A-level English subject page and A-level English Language guide compare the specifications nationally.

Students taking another subject alongside English can see our Kingston A-level Maths page, Biology page, Chemistry page and Physics page, which cover the same eleven sixth forms, and Year 11 students working towards a sixth form's English grade can start with our Kingston GCSE tuition page. Our English Literature and English Language tuition services set out how a programme runs across a full academic year, and our overview of tutoring across Kingston upon Thames covers 11+ and admissions support in the same borough.

Entry counts, grades and progress figures come from the Department for Education's 2024/25 data and the five-year student counts from its local-authority release, queried on 17 October 2026; each school's board and entry grades come from its own documents, read the same day. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026.

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