Entries, whole-cohort grades and DfE progress scores at four differently-typed London 16-18 providers -- a girls' school, a Catholic sixth-form college, a merged FE college group and a mixed academy.
Book a Free ConsultationLondon has 32 boroughs and no single Department for Education row that names an institution “London”. Its 16-18 providers are school sixth forms, sixth-form colleges and further education colleges, and in 2024/25 four verified institutions entered students for A-level Biology in numbers running from 36 to 88, while 10,340 students region-wide completed the subject.
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Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsAppThe Department for Education's Compare School and College Performance service reports every 16-18 provider individually, and its table=schools view — despite the name — includes sixth-form colleges and further education colleges as well as school sixth forms; there is no separate table=colleges view to check instead. Four institutions on this page were verified by their Unique Reference Number (URN) at the Department for Education's own register of schools (Get Information about Schools) as Open on 2 September 2026: The Camden School for Girls (Camden, URN 100054), Christ The King Sixth Form College (Lewisham, URN 130416), HRUC — Harrow, Richmond & Uxbridge Colleges (headquartered in Uxbridge, Hillingdon, URN 130446) and Graveney School (Wandsworth, URN 137005). None of the four is named on this site's GCSE Biology page for London, and none shares an institution with this site's A-level maths page for London. The four cover four boroughs with no page on this site until now: Camden, Lewisham, Hillingdon and Wandsworth.
They also cover four different kinds of provider: a girls' voluntary-aided comprehensive school, a Roman Catholic voluntary-aided sixth-form college, a merged general further education college group, and a mixed academy. That range is deliberate: sixth-form colleges and FE colleges rarely appear on tutoring pages at all, and one large London sixth-form college very nearly appeared here by mistake. Newham Sixth Form College, a further education college in Newham, is recorded Closed at GIAS — a different institution from Newham Collegiate Sixth Form Centre, the still-open free school this site's A-level maths page already names, which sits in the same borough under an easily confused name. Checking a closure at the source, not assuming it from a name, is what kept a closed college off this page.
Only one of the four institutions on this page publishes a Biology-specific GCSE bar on the page read for this article. The Camden School for Girls states, under “Entry Requirements” on its own Biology course page, that a student needs “Grade 6/6 or above in combined science or two grade 6 (including Biology and one other science) if taken as triple science”, alongside its general sixth-form entry policy. The school also names its exam board directly: “We will be following the Edexcel B Linear A Level specification” — Pearson Edexcel A-level Biology B, specification 9BI0.
Christ The King Sixth Form College, HRUC and Graveney School do not publish a Biology-specific GCSE threshold on the pages read for this article, and a general sixth-form entry policy is not a substitute: it sets an overall bar, not a subject one. Where a course page is silent, treat the general policy as a floor rather than a promise — a point every family should confirm directly with the sixth form rather than infer from this page or any other.
Our A-level Biology tutors work with students at school sixth forms, sixth-form colleges and FE colleges across London. Book a free consultation and they will start from the sixth form your child actually attends, not a generic scheme of work.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsApp| Institution (borough) | Provider type | A-level Biology entries | AS-level Biology entries | Whole A-level cohort grade | A-level progress banding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Camden School for Girls (Camden) | Girls' voluntary-aided school | 36 | — | A- (45) | Above average (+0.12) |
| Christ The King Sixth Form College (Lewisham) | RC voluntary-aided sixth-form college | 50 | — | C (29.09) | Below average (−0.31) |
| HRUC (Harrow, Richmond & Uxbridge Colleges) (Hillingdon HQ) | Merged general FE college group | 37 | 64 | C- (28.29) | Above average (+0.13) |
| Graveney School (Wandsworth) | Mixed academy | 88 | 114 | B- (35.05) | Average (0.06) |
| England, all schools and colleges | — | — | — | B- (36.1) | — |
Source: Department for Education, Compare School and College Performance, 2024/25 cohort. AS-level entries are shown only where the institution's own subjects-entered table records a non-zero row; The Camden School for Girls and Christ The King Sixth Form College record none. Average grade and progress banding are whole-cohort A-level figures for each institution, not Biology-specific — the DfE does not publish a subject-level progress score at institution level.
Two things do not survive a like-for-like reading of that table. First, Graveney School's Biology department is the largest by a wide margin — 88 A-level entries, well ahead of the next-largest, Christ The King Sixth Form College's 50 — inside a whole-cohort of 436 students starting A-level study in 2024/25, itself the largest of the four. Second, HRUC's URN covers a merged group with campuses in Harrow, Richmond and Uxbridge rather than a single site; the Department for Education publishes its Biology entries and whole-cohort results as one combined figure with no campus-level breakdown, so this page reports the group and does not attribute a number to any one of its three boroughs.
Reading Biology entries against each institution's own whole A-level cohort tells a third story, and it is this page's own division of two DfE-published figures, shown here as working rather than a published DfE percentage. Graveney School's 88 A-level Biology entries are 20% of its 436-student cohort, the largest share of the four. HRUC's 37 entries are 16% of 237; Christ The King Sixth Form College's 50 are 15% of 323; and The Camden School for Girls' 36 are also 15%, of a much smaller 233-student cohort, against 42 entries for Chemistry at the same school in the same year. Three of the four sit within a single percentage point of each other once the whole cohort, not just the raw entry count, is the denominator — Graveney is the one clear outlier, and on the high side.
Progress score is the Department for Education's value-added measure: how far a school or college's students got compared with students of similar prior attainment nationally, reported with a confidence interval and a banding. It is not the same question as the raw average grade, and on this page the two move in opposite directions twice over. The Camden School for Girls posted the highest average grade of the four — A- at 45 points — and above-average progress, +0.12, confidence interval 0.05 to 0.2. HRUC posted the lowest average grade — C- at 28.29 points, more than 16 points behind Camden — and also above-average progress, +0.13, confidence interval 0.04 to 0.21: a near-identical banding to Camden's, reached from what the DfE's own comparator shows is a much lower-attaining intake.
Christ The King Sixth Form College sits between those two on its raw grade — C at 29.09 points — and follows neither pattern: its progress score is −0.31, confidence interval −0.39 to −0.24, banded below average, the only one of the four institutions on this page in that banding. Graveney School's average grade, B- at 35.05 points, is the closest of the four to the England average of B- at 36.1 points, and its progress score of 0.06 (confidence interval 0 to 0.11) is banded average because that interval spans zero. Four institutions, three different bandings, and no relationship between which grade is highest and which progress score is highest: read the grade as who a provider teaches, and the progress score, with its interval, as a separate and much narrower question about what happened afterwards.
The confidence intervals decide how much weight each comparison carries. Camden's interval (0.05 to 0.2) and HRUC's (0.04 to 0.21) overlap almost entirely, so the near-identical above-average banding the two share is not a coincidence the DfE's own statistics would call marginal — both intervals sit comfortably clear of zero. Christ The King Sixth Form College's interval, −0.39 to −0.24, does not touch either of theirs or Graveney's 0 to 0.11, so its below-average banding is a genuine outlier on this page rather than statistical noise. What none of the four intervals can tell a parent is why: a value-added score is a comparison against similar students nationally, not a diagnosis of what a particular department is doing well or badly, and it says nothing about whether a given student's Biology grade in particular tracked the same direction as their school's average.
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London's 2024/25 A-level Biology cohort, built directly from the Department for Education's own table tool for the London region and the Biology subject, ran to 10,340 students. 1,000 (9.7%) were awarded A* and 1,937 (18.7%) an A, for a combined A*-A rate of 28.4% — the same figure the DfE's own cumulative-percentage column publishes, not this page's addition of two rounded numbers. Grade B went to 2,292 students (22.2%), C to 2,258 (21.8%), D to 1,604 (15.5%) and E to 892 (8.6%); 357 students were awarded U, and the DfE marks that row's percentage cell “z”, its published symbol for a figure not applicable rather than one withheld.
| Grade | Students | Share |
|---|---|---|
| A* | 1,000 | 9.7% |
| A | 1,937 | 18.7% |
| B | 2,292 | 22.2% |
| C | 2,258 | 21.8% |
| D | 1,604 | 15.5% |
| E | 892 | 8.6% |
| U | 357 | — |
| Total students | 10,340 | — |
Source: Department for Education, “Student counts and Results — A level by region and subject”, regional location London, 2024/25, built via the DfE's table tool. The U row's percentage cell is marked “z” in the DfE's own table, its published symbol for a figure not applicable rather than one withheld; the table's own footnote records that the counts include pending awards.
That 28.4% sits close to the whole-cohort A-level national average for the same year: 36.09 points, graded B-, according to the Department for Education's headline release for 2024/25 — almost identical to the B- at 36.1 points the DfE's institution-level comparator publishes for “England, all schools and colleges” on every school's own results page. London and the South East have “consistently achieved the highest average point scores (APS) within the A level cohort over the last 5 years”, per the same DfE release, and London recorded the country's highest A-level retention rate of any region in 2024/25 at 94.5%, against a low of 89.2% in the North East. Retention counts students who started and were still assessed at the end of their main course of study, and both of those are whole-A-level-cohort figures covering every subject, not Biology alone; the DfE publishes no subject-specific retention rate.
Subject entries are not students, and AS-level and A-level Biology are two different rows in the Department for Education's own subjects-entered tables, not one course counted twice. HRUC recorded 64 AS-level Biology entries against 37 at A-level in 2024/25 — almost twice as many AS entries as A-level entries in the same subject at the same institution, typical of a general further education college where some students sit Biology as a standalone AS rather than continuing to the full two-year course. Graveney School recorded 114 AS-level Biology entries alongside 88 at A-level — the largest Biology department of the four by both measures, and one that also entered 95 A-level and 120 AS-level Chemistry students in the same year, marginally ahead of Biology in both rows. The Camden School for Girls' subjects-entered table records 36 A-level Biology entries and 42 in A-level Chemistry, with no separate AS-level Biology row at all; Christ The King Sixth Form College's table records 50 A-level Biology entries and likewise no AS-level Biology row.
None of that AS/A2 pattern is a verdict on quality: a general FE college that offers Biology at both levels reaches a wider range of students, including some sitting a single AS as part of a broader programme, while a school offering the A-level only is simply not entering that intermediate cohort. What it does mean is that a Biology “entries” figure from any single one of these tables needs its qualification level read alongside it, not assumed.
Our expert A-level Biology tutors help students turn AS-level or A-level entries at any London provider into a clear route to their target grade. Book a short call and they will map a term-by-term plan onto your child's real exam dates and their sixth form's own teaching order.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsAppOur expert A-level Biology tutors help students across London, at school sixth forms, sixth-form colleges and FE colleges alike, whichever accredited specification — AQA, OCR, Pearson Edexcel or WJEC Eduqas — their course actually follows. Every programme starts from the syllabus a student is sitting, not a generic Biology scheme of work, because the practicals a specification requires and the way its papers are structured both vary even though the underlying subject content overlaps heavily across boards.
The diagnostic separates recall from application, because A-level Biology marks are lost differently at each: recall questions are usually secure once a topic has been revised properly, while application and data-response questions — interpreting an unfamiliar graph, evaluating an experimental method, applying a genetics cross to a new scenario — are where most marks are actually dropped. Our tutors have degrees in biology and closely related life sciences from UK universities, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. Families weighing the single subject against a wider science combination may also find our Biology tuition page, our A-level Biology subject page and our A-level tuition overview useful for how programmes are structured across the two years. Some families come to Biology through medicine ambitions; our Medicine Prep Hub sets out how that preparation runs alongside A-level study.
Every organic result Google returns for a London Biology-tutor search is a tuition business or a tutor marketplace, and between them they publish what the open market charges. Tutor Hunt's own London Biology tutors page advertised “Lessons from £15 /hr” when read for this article in September 2026, with rates set on individual tutor profiles rather than by the platform, and covering every level from primary to degree rather than A-level alone.
None of those marketplace pages names a single London institution's Biology entries, whole-cohort average grade or DfE progress score, or explains that the practical endorsement is reported separately from the A*-E grade. The rate is the easy figure to find. It says nothing about whether a tutor fits the specification a student is actually sitting.
Our A-level Biology tutors work with students whatever their sixth form's starting point, from a merged FE college group to a selective grammar school. Book a free consultation and the work starts from your child's own specification, practicals and target grade.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsAppNot in a way grade statistics alone can show. Ofqual sets grade boundaries under its comparable-outcomes principle, which holds a subject's national results close to what a similar prior cohort achieved, so a raw grade distribution is not evidence that one science is marked more harshly than another. In London, 28.4% of the 10,340 students who completed A-level Biology in 2024/25 were awarded A* or A, built directly from the Department for Education's own table tool for the London region and the Biology subject specifically.
It can, though on this page only one of the four named institutions states which board it enters. The Camden School for Girls says on its own Biology course page that it follows “the Edexcel B Linear A Level specification” -- Pearson Edexcel A-level Biology B, specification 9BI0 (the “B” naming is easy to misread: Edexcel's Biology A, 9BN0, is the Salters-Nuffield route, and Biology B is the more conventional one). Five A-level Biology specifications remain open to new starters across four boards -- AQA (7402), OCR Biology A (H420), Pearson Edexcel's Biology A / Salters-Nuffield (9BN0) and Biology B (9BI0), and WJEC Eduqas (entry code A400QS). A sixth, OCR's Biology B / Advancing Biology (H422), is being withdrawn: OCR's own qualification page states “the final first teach date will be September 2026”, with a last AS assessment in June 2027 and a last A-level assessment in June 2028, so a student not already partway through it cannot newly start it. Christ The King Sixth Form College, HRUC and Graveney School do not publish a board on the pages read for this article.
10,340 students in London completed A-level Biology in 2024/25, on the Department for Education's own table tool filtered to the London region and the Biology subject. That is a count of students who completed the subject region-wide, a different unit from the exam entries the four named institutions on this page publish at institution level, which ran from 36 to 88 A-level Biology entries each in the same year.
It depends on the sixth form, and only one of the four institutions on this page states a Biology-specific bar on the page read for this article. The Camden School for Girls publishes, under “Entry Requirements” on its own Biology course page, a “Grade 6/6 or above in combined science or two grade 6 (including Biology and one other science) if taken as triple science”, current as of September 2026. Where a sixth form does not publish a subject-specific threshold, its general sixth-form entry criteria are the only published bar, and they are not the same thing.
No. It is reported separately. The Department for Education's own subject content requires students taking A-level Biology, Chemistry or Physics to carry out “a minimum of 12 practical activities, which will contribute towards the Practical Endorsement”, and Ofqual's conditions for science require the outcome -- a Pass, or a Not Classified where a student does not achieve or does not take the assessment -- to be recorded on the certificate. The Camden School for Girls states this plainly on its own Biology page: the endorsement “is separate to the A Level grade and will be reported as a pass on the A Level certificate”.
Because general further education colleges commonly enter students for a standalone AS-level alongside, or instead of, the full two-year A-level, while several school sixth forms on this page enter almost none. HRUC recorded 64 AS-level Biology entries against 37 at A-level in 2024/25 -- more AS than A-level entries in the same subject at the same institution -- while Graveney School, a much larger comprehensive, recorded 114 AS-level Biology entries alongside 88 at A-level. Both counts are DfE subjects-entered figures, not students: a student who sits the AS exam and continues to the full A-level can appear in both rows.
The grades used throughout this page are the 2024/25 results, announced to students on 14 August 2025 and published as verified statistics by the Department for Education in April 2026, with the release last updated in July 2026. They are the most recent full institution-level dataset. The 2025/26 results, announced in August 2026, exist so far only as national summaries with no institution-level or region-and-subject breakdown.
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