Which of London's sixth forms teach English Language, English Literature or both, on which exam board, and what the Department for Education's own value-added data says about five of them.
Book a Free ConsultationA-level English is not one qualification but three: English Language, English Literature, and English Language and Literature, reported separately by the Department for Education. Five named London sixth forms were checked here, from Brampton Manor Academy to The Henrietta Barnett School, against their own curricula and the DfE's 2024/25 subject value-added data. All five we checked enter English Literature, scoring from +0.38 at Brampton Manor to −0.03 at Henrietta Barnett; only one also teaches English Language.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe Department for Education reports A-level English as three separate subjects — English Language, English Literature, and English Language and Literature — each with its own entries and, where the cohort is large enough, its own institution-level value-added score. A parent searching for "A-level English" is very often thinking of one of the three without knowing it, and which one their child's own sixth form actually runs is rarely obvious from the school's prospectus alone. A department can teach one, two, or in principle all three, and a sixth form's open-day literature does not always say which.
Five London sixth forms were checked for this page, one per borough, chosen for institutional diversity rather than an exhaustive list: a non-selective academy, a selective girls' grammar school, a comprehensive with selective sixth-form entry, an independent girls' day school and an independent boys' day school. Each was confirmed Open on the DfE's Get Information about Schools register by Unique Reference Number on 22 September 2026 before any figure below was used, because a school's status can go stale between when a page is drafted and when it is published.
| Institution (borough) | Provider type | English A-level(s) taught | Literature entries (2024/25) | Literature value added (95% CI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brampton Manor Academy (Newham) | Non-selective academy | Literature | 62 | +0.38 (+0.15 to +0.61) |
| Graveney School (Wandsworth) | Comprehensive, selective sixth form | Literature | 91 | +0.25 (+0.06 to +0.44) |
| The Godolphin and Latymer School (Hammersmith and Fulham) | Independent, girls | Literature and Language | 15 | +0.23 (−0.25 to +0.7) |
| City of London School (City of London) | Independent, boys | Literature | 24 | +0.19 (−0.18 to +0.56) |
| The Henrietta Barnett School (Barnet) | Selective girls' grammar | Literature | 21 | −0.03 (−0.43 to +0.37) |
Source: Department for Education, Schools and colleges — qualification and subject value added, 2024/25 release (published 23 April 2026), queried at institution level for GCE A level English Literature. Ordered by value added, highest to lowest.
Of the five we checked, all five currently enter students for English Literature and none enters the combined English Language and Literature A-level. Only The Godolphin and Latymer School also teaches English Language as a separate course, confirmed from its own Sixth Form Curriculum Handbook rather than assumed from its Literature entry — more on why the DfE has no published score for that class further down this page. This is a pattern in the five providers checked, not a claim about every sixth form in London: a different five schools, in different boroughs, could in principle turn up a Language-heavy or a combined-entry department that this sample did not catch.
Of the five providers checked, two publish which board they enter for English Literature. The Henrietta Barnett School enters on Pearson Edexcel, specification 9ET0; Brampton Manor Academy enters on OCR, specification H472. The practical difference for a student revising: Pearson Edexcel's papers are open book, so clean copies of the set texts can be taken into the exam, while OCR's are closed book, so quotations have to be learned by heart. For a family choosing between two sixth forms on this basis alone, that is a genuine difference in how a student prepares, not just which logo appears on the exam paper. The other three providers checked — Graveney School, The Godolphin and Latymer School and City of London School — do not publish their board.
For how each specification is structured in full, see our guide to A-level English Literature, our Pearson Edexcel A-level English Literature page and our OCR A-level English Literature page.
A value-added score is measured in A-level grade points against students with similar prior attainment nationally, and it always comes with a confidence interval. Two of the five providers checked have an English Literature interval that sits entirely above zero: Brampton Manor Academy, at +0.38 with an interval of +0.15 to +0.61 from 62 entries, and Graveney School, at +0.25 with an interval of +0.06 to +0.44 from 91 entries. Both can be read as a genuine result rather than noise, because neither interval crosses zero, though Graveney's lower bound of +0.06 sits close to it.
The other three cannot be read the same way. The Godolphin and Latymer School's +0.23 carries an interval of −0.25 to +0.7; City of London School's +0.19 carries −0.18 to +0.56; The Henrietta Barnett School's −0.03 carries −0.43 to +0.37. All three intervals span zero, so none of those three point estimates should be read as a result in either direction — a smaller Literature cohort (15, 24 and 21 entries against 62 and 91) is the most likely reason the interval is wider at each of them, not evidence that the teaching itself is weaker or stronger than at the two providers whose intervals are clear.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppSet texts are the most tutor-relevant local fact on this page, and no marketplace result for this search names a single one for any London school. The Henrietta Barnett School's own Sixth Form Subject Information Booklet for September 2026 entry sets out its A-level English Literature reading list in full, and says it can change from year to year and class to class.
In Year 12, students study Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire alongside a selection of recent poetry, then compare two canonical novels — Tess of the D'Urbervilles paired with either Wuthering Heights or Mrs Dalloway — before studying a range of Romantic poets: Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats. In Year 13, the set text is Shakespeare's Othello, and students complete a Non-Examined Assessment in which they choose their own text to compare with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, studied the previous summer. The NEA folder totals roughly 3,000 words and contributes significantly to the final grade.
A tutor working from the wrong year's reading list, or from a different school's set texts entirely, is teaching the wrong course even where the underlying skills overlap. Two students in the same city, sitting the same board, can still be studying almost entirely different books if their sixth forms have chosen different options within that specification — which is exactly the kind of school-specific detail a generic A-level English resource cannot carry.
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The Godolphin and Latymer School's own Sixth Form Curriculum Handbook describes A-level English Language and A-level English Literature as two separate courses, each with its own syllabus outline: the Language course is examined at the end of the course and also carries a Non Examined Assessment worth 20% including a language investigation, while Literature — shown in the table above — is examined through two papers plus a 3,000-word NEA folder.
Yet when the same DfE dataset that produced the Literature scores above is queried for English Language at Godolphin and Latymer, every indicator returns the letter "c" — the DfE's own suppression marker, not a zero and not a missing row. The school appears in the file for that subject, but its Language cohort is too small for the department to publish a reliable score. That is a statement about cohort size, not about the quality of the teaching; the same school's Literature cohort, taught by the same department, is one of the three whose value-added interval crosses zero rather than one of the two clear of it.
Across the five providers checked, English Literature scores were published for all five and English Language for none. Only one of the five, The Godolphin and Latymer School, teaches English Language, and its 2024/25 cohort was too small for the DfE to publish a score. Where a sixth form's English Language cohort is that small, this DfE measure says nothing about it, and the school's own published results, where it publishes them, are the only source.
Entry requirements genuinely diverge between the providers checked, and neither approach is unusual. The Henrietta Barnett School publishes a fixed minimum: at least grade 7 (or grade A in an IGCSE) at GCSE in the subject to be studied at A level, alongside at least six grade 7s overall and grade 6 in GCSE English Language and Mathematics if those are not continued into the Sixth Form. A student arriving from another school with a grade 6 in GCSE English Literature would not meet that published bar on paper, whatever their overall profile.
Graveney School takes a different approach for English Literature specifically. Its own Entry to Advanced Courses booklet for the 2027-2028 academic year sets no fixed grade for the subject, stating instead that "because we are able to offer a variety of pathways in this curriculum area, we will advise as to the most suitable course for you depending on your performance at Key Stage 4." A parent comparing two sixth forms on this basis needs the specific school's own published requirement, not a citywide assumption, because the two approaches checked here sit at opposite ends of how rigidly a grade is applied.
Two boards, at least two open-vs-closed-book exam formats, and at least two entirely different sets of prescribed texts all sit inside the five sixth forms checked for this one page — and that is before counting the schools this page did not check. Our expert A-level English tutors across London start every programme from the student's own specification, board and set texts rather than a generic reading list, because a Pearson Edexcel student revising OCR past papers, or a Streetcar Named Desire student practising essays on a different Shakespeare play, is preparing for the wrong exam.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppOf the five London providers checked for this page, all five enter students for A-level English Literature. Only The Godolphin and Latymer School also teaches A-level English Language, confirmed by its own Sixth Form Curriculum Handbook, which describes both courses separately. None of the five teaches the combined English Language and Literature A-level. This is a pattern in the five we checked, not a claim about every London sixth form.
Yes. Alongside the whole-cohort A-level progress score, the Department for Education's qualification and subject value added file reports a separate score for GCE A level English Literature, with a number of entries and a confidence interval, institution by institution. For 2024/25 it published a Literature score for all five London providers checked here, ranging from +0.38 at Brampton Manor Academy (62 entries) to −0.03 at The Henrietta Barnett School (21 entries).
Brampton Manor Academy, at +0.38 with a confidence interval of +0.15 to +0.61, and Graveney School, at +0.25 with an interval of +0.06 to +0.44. Both intervals sit entirely above zero, meaning their 2024/25 English Literature cohorts scored reliably above the national average for students with similar prior attainment. The other three providers checked — Godolphin and Latymer, City of London School and Henrietta Barnett — have intervals that cross zero and should not be read as a result in either direction.
Pearson Edexcel, specification 9ET0. The school's own September 2026 entry booklet states: "We follow the EdExcel syllabus." Brampton Manor Academy, the other provider checked here that publishes its board, enters on OCR instead, specification H472. The practical difference is that Pearson Edexcel's papers are open book while OCR's are closed book.
According to its own Sixth Form Subject Information Booklet for September 2026 entry, Year 12 students study Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, a selection of Romantic poetry including Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and Keats, and compare Tess of the D'Urbervilles with either Wuthering Heights or Mrs Dalloway. Year 13 students study Shakespeare's Othello and complete a Non-Examined Assessment comparing a text of their own choice with F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The school notes that set texts can change from year to year.
It depends on the sixth form. The Henrietta Barnett School's published minimum is at least grade 7 at GCSE in the subject to be studied at A level, alongside six grade 7s overall. Graveney School sets no fixed grade for English Literature and instead advises each applicant individually based on Key Stage 4 performance. Always check the specific sixth form's own published entry requirements rather than assuming a citywide rule.
The school's own curriculum handbook confirms it teaches A-level English Language as a course separate from English Literature. But the DfE's 2024/25 subject value added file returns the letter "c" — its own suppression marker — for every indicator in that row, rather than a number. This means the Language cohort is too small for the DfE to publish a reliable score, not that no students sat the exam. The same school's English Literature cohort scored +0.23 from 15 entries.
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