A-Level Chemistry Tutors in Liverpool

A-level Chemistry in Liverpool is taught at 25 of the city's post-16 institutions, which between them returned 441 exam entries in 2024/25. Across the local authority, 439 state-funded students completed the subject and 45.1% were graded A* to B, against 53.5% for England's state-funded students on the same measure. Twenty-four Liverpool results were graded A*, or 5.5% against England's 8.1%.

Which Liverpool sixth forms entered A-level Chemistry, and what did their students get?

DfE publishes the grade split for each subject at each institution, not only an entry count, and that is what the table below uses. It is a different measure from the all-subject average result quoted on most school pages: this is Chemistry alone. Twenty-five Liverpool institutions returned a Chemistry entry in 2024/25. For the four smallest — St John Bosco Arts College, Alsop High School, St Francis Xavier's Catholic Academy and The Studio School Liverpool — DfE suppresses the individual grades, so their entry totals are published and their grade splits are not.

Source: DfE, Schools and colleges — subject entries and grades, 2024/25, read 19 September 2026 through the Explore Education Statistics public API, filtered to Liverpool local authority, subject Chemistry, qualification GCE A level. The Blue Coat School's Chemistry and Biology entry counts were re-checked independently on DfE's Compare School and College Performance service and agree exactly. The A* to B column is the published A*, A and B counts added together; the share is that total over the published entry count, and is ours rather than DfE's. Entries graded U or ungraded are not published separately, so the A* to B columns and the entry total do not always reconcile through the published A*–E grades alone. Ranked by Chemistry entries.

The Blue Coat School is not simply the largest Chemistry provider in Liverpool; it is the only one operating at that scale. Its 98 Chemistry entries are almost three times the next institution's 33, and 77 of them were graded A* to B. That is a 78.6% A* to B share against a citywide figure of 45.1%, and it includes 39 entries graded A and 16 graded A* — 16 of the 24 A* entries recorded across the 21 Liverpool institutions whose Chemistry grade split DfE publishes. At the other end of the table, three institutions with published grade splits — The City of Liverpool College, Dixons Broadgreen Academy and The Academy of St Nicholas — recorded no entry at all graded A* to B, from 29 entries between them.

Six Liverpool institutions entered more students for Chemistry than for Biology, which reverses the usual pattern: The Blue Coat School (98 against 77), St Edward's College (33 against 25), Liverpool Life Sciences UTC (25 against 20), Archbishop Blanch CofE High School (23 against 18), West Derby School (12 against 7) and Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School (20 against 19). Citywide the two subjects are almost level, at 441 Chemistry entries against 453 Biology entries. Archbishop Blanch CofE High School's 2024/25 result is published under the reference number the school held before its academy conversion. DfE closed that record on 30 November 2025, giving the reason as academy conversion, and the school continues under a new reference number that DfE records as open under the same name; the sixth form did not close.

Two institutions with a published 16-to-18 record entered nobody at all for Chemistry. The University of Liverpool Mathematics School entered 48 students for Mathematics, 44 for Further Mathematics and 37 for Physics, and none for Chemistry or Biology. Childwall Sports & Science Academy published A-level entries in Art and Design and English Language and no science A level of any kind. Neither is an absence of data: both institutions have a full published subjects-entered table for the year, and Chemistry does not appear in either.

Why does the same Liverpool school get a different result in Chemistry and Biology?

Alongside the all-subject progress score that appears on every school's summary page, DfE publishes a value added score for each subject separately. It compares the grades a school's students achieved in that one subject against what students with similar GCSE results achieved in it nationally, so a school can be above the line in one science and below it in another. For a family choosing between two sciences at the same sixth form, it answers a question the all-subject figure cannot.

Source: DfE, Schools and colleges — qualification and subject value added, 2024/25, read 19 September 2026 through the Explore Education Statistics public API, qualification GCE A level, exam cohort A level. Liverpool institutions with a published value added score in both subjects. DfE suppresses the score where entries are too few, so Broughton Hall Catholic High School, St John Bosco Arts College, Alsop High School, St Francis Xavier's Catholic Academy and The Studio School Liverpool carry a Biology score, a Chemistry score, or neither.

The two sciences disagree sharply at four Liverpool institutions. The Belvedere Academy sits at +0.32 in Biology and −0.35 in Chemistry; Liverpool Life Sciences UTC at +0.3 and −0.22. Both run the reverse pattern at North Liverpool Academy, −0.23 in Biology against +0.42 in Chemistry, and at West Derby School, −0.5 against +0.04. A parent reading only the school's all-subject progress banding would see one number covering both.

The caution that belongs with every one of these figures is the confidence interval DfE publishes alongside them, and it is doing real work here. Five Liverpool institutions have a Chemistry interval lying entirely below zero: Calderstones School (−1.01 to −0.02), Dixons Broadgreen Academy (−1.57 to −0.07), The City of Liverpool College (−1.69 to −0.39), The Academy of St Nicholas (−1.99 to −0.15) and Holly Lodge Girls' College (−2.25 to −0.55). No Liverpool institution has a Chemistry interval lying entirely above zero. St Margaret's Church of England Academy posts the city's highest Chemistry score at +0.48, but from twelve entries its interval runs from −0.17 to +1.13, which crosses zero. The honest reading is that Liverpool can show where Chemistry teaching has measurably underperformed prior attainment, and cannot yet show, at this sample size, where it has measurably outperformed it.

How much of a Liverpool sixth form's A-level cohort actually takes Chemistry?

Entry counts on their own conflate a large sixth form with a strong Chemistry department. DfE also publishes the share of each institution's A-level students entered for Chemistry, which separates the two, and in Liverpool the range is wide enough to change what a subject looks like from inside.

Source: DfE, Schools and colleges — A level maths and science, 2024/25, read 19 September 2026 through the Explore Education Statistics public API, subject Chemistry, sex Total. Both columns are DfE's own published measures. The 20 institutions shown are those that entered students for Chemistry and have 40 or more A-level students, ranked by share; the two providers with a published nil for Chemistry are covered in the text above rather than here.

More than half of The Blue Coat School's 177 A-level students take Chemistry, and very nearly half of Liverpool Life Sciences UTC's much smaller cohort of 51. At the other end, The City of Liverpool College has the second-largest A-level cohort in the city at 152 students and enters 9.2% of them for Chemistry, and St Hilda's Church of England High School enters 9.9% of 121. A student at a 55% school is in a large set with several teaching groups and a department built around the subject; a student at a 9% college may be one of a dozen, in a single group, with far less scope for the school to stream by pace. The teaching problem that creates is different in each case, and it is one of the first things worth establishing before any tuition begins.

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What else do Liverpool's A-level Chemistry students take?

Chemistry is rarely taken alone. DfE publishes, for each local authority, how many students took each combination of maths and science A levels, and the Liverpool answer is emphatic: of the 439 students who took Chemistry in 2024/25, just 20 took no other maths or science A level alongside it. The remaining 419, or 95.4% of them, carried at least one more.

Source: DfE, Maths and science — subject combinations by region and sex, 2024/25, read 19 September 2026 through the Explore Education Statistics public API, Liverpool local authority, sex All. The counts are DfE's published figure for students entering that combination and no additional maths or science A level. The share column is DfE's own published percentage of the 1,924 Liverpool A-level students in the measure.

Counting every combination that contains Chemistry rather than only the exact ones above, 308 of the 439 Chemistry students also took Biology and 282 also took Maths — 70.2% and 64.2% respectively, both figures ours from DfE's published counts. Only 80 took Chemistry with Physics. The single most common shape in the city, taken by 162 students, is Maths with Biology and Chemistry, which is also the standard shape of a medicine application. The University of Liverpool's own Medicine and Surgery MBChB, UCAS code A100, asks for AAA including Chemistry with either Biology, Physics or Mathematics and a third academic subject for September 2027 entry. Chemistry is the named subject in that requirement; Biology is one of three alternatives. Against that, 104 of Liverpool's 439 Chemistry results in 2024/25 were graded A or A*. Families working towards that route can also read our page on Liverpool medical school.

Which Chemistry specification is a Liverpool student sitting, and which one is being withdrawn?

Five A-level Chemistry specifications are live in England, and our A-level Chemistry exam board page sets out how each one assesses the subject. What matters locally is narrower: which one a particular Liverpool sixth form actually enters, and whether it has a withdrawal date attached.

Two Liverpool institutions publish an answer. Calderstones School names AQA 7405 on its own sixth-form Chemistry page, next to Course Co-ordinator Dr Ellson, and names AQA 7402 for Biology on the equivalent page. St Edward's College publishes a full board list that gives AQA for Chemistry, Biology and Physics alike, with Pearson Edexcel for Maths and Further Maths, though it gives no specification code. The Blue Coat School's sixth form information booklet names no board for any subject. We looked for a Liverpool provider entering Chemistry and Biology with different boards, or with different specifications from the same board, and did not find one in what the city's sixth forms publish; that is what the published pages show, not a statement that no such provider exists. A sixth form's own subject page, or its letter to parents, remains the only reliable way to confirm what a particular student is sitting.

One withdrawal does apply, and it is easy to read across from Biology incorrectly. OCR has announced that it will withdraw the AS-level Chemistry B (Salters) qualification, entry code H033, with a final first-teaching date of September 2026 and a final assessment opportunity in June 2027. The A level, H433, is not covered by that notice. OCR's own withdrawals table lists the A-level qualifications it is retiring with a final assessment opportunity in June 2028, and Biology B (H422) and Physics B (H557) both appear on it. Neither A-level Chemistry specification does. Of the three sciences, Chemistry is the one where the context-led B course survives at A level, so a Liverpool student told that "the B specification is being dropped" because a sibling heard it about Biology has been told something that is not true of Chemistry.

Do Liverpool's sixth forms ask for more GCSE maths for Chemistry than for Biology?

Nationally, A-level Chemistry carries twice the minimum mathematical weighting of A-level Biology: at least 20% of the marks against at least 10%, a floor set in the DfE subject content and restated in each board's specification. Whether a city's sixth forms translate that into a higher GCSE maths bar for Chemistry is a separate question, and it has to be answered from what they publish. In Liverpool, on the evidence the city's sixth forms put in front of parents, they do not.

St Edward's College sets its requirements subject by subject and is the clearest case. For Chemistry it asks for two grade 6s in GCSE Combined Science Trilogy and a grade 6 in the Chemistry component, or a grade 6 in GCSE Chemistry, together with a grade 6 in GCSE Mathematics. Its Biology requirement is the same sentence with Biology substituted, and the same grade 6 in GCSE Mathematics. The college's Physics requirement is where the maths bar moves: grade 7 in GCSE Mathematics rather than grade 6. At this college the maths grade separates Physics from the other two sciences, not Chemistry from Biology.

The Blue Coat School reaches the same place by a different route. Its sixth form information booklet for 2024 admission sets a school-wide minimum of grade 6 in GCSE Mathematics and grade 6 in GCSE English for anyone taking three A levels, with 52 points from their best eight GCSEs, rising to 62 points for four A levels. On top of that it lists a subject minimum, and Chemistry and Biology carry the identical bar: grade 7 in the GCSE, or grades 8-7 or 7-7-7 across Core, Additional and Further Science. The maths requirement at Blue Coat is real, but it applies to every A level in the building. Calderstones School asks for a grade 6 in GCSE Chemistry, or 6/6 in GCSE Trilogy or Synergy Science, and sets the same bar for Biology in Biology's terms.

The practical consequence for a Liverpool student is that the maths demand arrives after the admissions decision, not before it. Nothing in these published criteria warns a student who scraped a grade 6 in GCSE Mathematics that a fifth of their Chemistry marks will turn on mathematical skill at that standard, in moles, titration arithmetic, enthalpy cycles, equilibrium constants and pH. Admissions requirements can be revised each cycle, so the current criteria are worth confirming directly with any sixth form before applying. Students still working towards the entry grade will find our GCSE Chemistry tutors in Liverpool page covers the step before this one.

How Leading Tuition works with Liverpool A-level Chemistry students

Our expert A-level Chemistry tutors help students across Liverpool with the full two-year course, from atomic structure and bonding through to electrochemical cells, NMR spectroscopy and chromatography, working from the specification their own sixth form enters. Teaching is one to one, so the starting point is the student's own position rather than a class average.

The first session is diagnostic, and the data on this page is a large part of why. A student at a sixth form with a strong published Chemistry record usually needs depth and exam technique: the multi-step calculations where method marks are awarded line by line, and the extended answers that separate an A from an A*. A student at a college with a weaker record, or one carrying gaps from GCSE, usually needs the arithmetic and the underlying chemistry rebuilt before the second-year content will hold. Both are common in Liverpool, because the same city contains a sixth form where 78.6% of Chemistry entries reach A* to B and colleges where none do.

Where a student is taking Chemistry alongside Biology, as 308 Liverpool Chemistry students were in 2024/25, the value added figures above matter directly: a school can be measurably behind in one of the two and not the other, and the tuition should follow the subject, not the school. Our A-level Biology tutors in Liverpool page carries the equivalent record for that subject, the A-level tuition hub covers the other subjects a Liverpool Chemistry student is likely to be taking, and you can see everything we run across Liverpool. Every institutional figure on this page can be checked directly on DfE's Compare School and College Performance service.

Reading a published record tells you what a cohort did, not what one student will do. Our expert A-level Chemistry tutors work from the student's own papers and marks, one to one, and build the plan around the specification their sixth form actually enters.

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