DfE 2024/25 figures for every Nottingham sixth form and college that entered students for A-level biology, and how our tutors work with students at each.
Book a Free ConsultationNottingham city is served by eleven sixth forms and colleges that entered students for A-level Biology in 2024/25, and between them they recorded 499 A-level Biology entries — 184 of those at Bilborough College alone. Nottingham’s state-funded schools and colleges averaged a C, 31.64 points per entry across all A levels; England’s B- and 36.1 covers all schools and colleges, independent ones included. Leading Tuition works with A-level biology students at sixth forms across the city.
Our expert A-level biology tutors help students across Nottingham with all three written papers and the required practicals, whichever board and endorsement route their own sixth form or college has entered them for.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe Department for Education’s local-authority listing for Nottingham (local authority code 892) returns well over a hundred schools and colleges. Checking the 16-to-18 subjects-entered page for every secondary school, sixth form and college on that list found eleven with an A-level Biology row for 2024/25 — the same eleven institutions that enter students for A-level Mathematics, though the entry counts for the two subjects are entirely different figures from entirely different rows. That set spans three kinds of institution: one dedicated sixth-form college (Bilborough), one further education college (Nottingham College, teaching A levels from its High Pavement site), and nine school sixth forms, two of them independent.
| Nottingham institution | A-level students | A-level Biology entries | Share of cohort in Biology | Average result per entry, all subjects | DfE progress banding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilborough College | 988 | 184 | 18.6% | C+ (33.7) | Below average (-0.1) |
| NUAST | 136 | 60 | 44.1% | B- (38.13) | Average (0.03) |
| Nottingham High School | 132 | 49 | 37.1% | A (49.75) | Above average (0.28) |
| Nottingham College | 301 | 40 | 13.3% | C- (27.27) | Below average (-0.43) |
| Bluecoat Aspley Academy | 148 | 40 | 27.0% | C- (27.26) | Below average (-0.25) |
| The Trinity Catholic School | 86 | 35 | 40.7% | C+ (33.49) | Average (0.05) |
| The Nottingham Emmanuel School | 99 | 25 | 25.3% | D+ (23.87) | Below average (-0.54) |
| Nottingham Girls’ High School | 51 | 22 | 43.1% | B+ (44.09) | Average (0.06) |
| Nottingham Academy | 48 | 19 | 39.6% | D+ (23.17) | Below average (-0.47) |
| Djanogly City Academy | 43 | 15 | 34.9% | C- (26.88) | Average (-0.06) |
| Nottingham Free School | 31 | 10 | 32.3% | C (31.1) | Average (-0.14) |
| Nottingham (state-funded schools and colleges) | – | – | – | C (31.64) | – |
| England (all schools and colleges) | – | – | – | B- (36.1) | – |
Source: DfE Compare School and College Performance, 16-to-18 subjects entered and A-level qualification pages for each institution, 2024/25 academic year, read 2 September 2026 on the Department for Education’s Compare School and College Performance service. “A-level students” is the number of students the DfE A-level measures for that institution are based on, and “share of cohort in Biology” divides A-level Biology entries by that figure. “Average result per entry” and the progress banding are both all-subject 16-to-18 measures, not Biology-only ones. The last two rows are the comparison lines DfE prints on each institution’s own page: the Nottingham line covers state-funded schools and colleges only, the England line covers all schools and colleges.
Two things stand out. The first is concentration at the top: Bilborough College’s 184 Biology entries are roughly 37% of the city’s 499, and the three largest providers — Bilborough, NUAST and Nottingham High School — account for 293 entries between them, close to 59% of the total. The second is how thin the tail runs: five of the eleven entered fewer than twenty-five students for A-level Biology, and Nottingham Free School entered ten.
The 499 figure is our own addition of the eleven institutional figures in the table above, not a Department for Education total — DfE publishes subject entries school by school and does not aggregate a single subject to city level. Anyone can re-add the column.
Entry counts on their own hide something the share of each cohort reveals. Setting Biology entries against the size of each institution’s own A-level cohort gives the proportion of students taking the subject, and in Nottingham the pattern runs opposite to what the raw entry numbers suggest.
Bilborough College, the largest single Biology provider in the city by a wide margin, sends only 18.6% of its 988 A-level students into the subject — the second-lowest share of the eleven. Nottingham College, the city’s FE college, sends the lowest share of all: 40 entries from a cohort of 301, or 13.3%. Both are large, broad-curriculum providers running dozens of A-level and BTEC courses side by side, so even a big Biology department is a modest fraction of a much bigger whole.
At the other end, NUAST enters 60 students for Biology from a cohort of just 136 — 44.1%, the highest share in the city — and Nottingham Girls’ High School enters 22 from 51, or 43.1%. The Trinity Catholic School (35 of 86, 40.7%) and Nottingham Academy (19 of 48, 39.6%) sit close behind. These are smaller, more science-concentrated cohorts where Biology is one of a narrower set of subjects on offer, rather than one of dozens. Nottingham High School, at 49 of 132 or 37.1%, sits between the two patterns: large enough to run a substantial department, small enough that Biology remains a sizeable share of the whole.
What this means practically is that the two figures answer different questions. Bilborough’s 184 entries tell a parent that the department is large enough to run parallel groups and a full programme of enrichment; NUAST’s 44.1% share tells a parent that Biology sits close to the centre of what the school does, not at its edge. Both are useful, and neither replaces the other.
Our expert A-level biology tutors work one-to-one with Nottingham students in both kinds of department — whether your child is one of 184 at a large college department or one of a much smaller group at a school sixth form, the programme is built around the topics they have actually not secured.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppAll three of the city’s largest Biology providers publish their own GCSE threshold, and no two state it in quite the same terms. Bilborough College says that “to study Biology at Bilborough College you will need to have a 66 in Double Science or a 6 in Biology if you have studied Triple Science”, and adds that “in addition, you will need a 6 in Maths and a 5 in English Language.” Bilborough names AQA as its board: “we follow the AQA Biology specification.”
Nottingham College sets a general A-level gate before the subject-specific one: “to study 3 A Levels, including A Level Biology, you’ll need at least 5 GCSE’s at grades 9-4 including GCSE English at grade 4 or above and Maths at grade 6 or above”, rising to “at least 6 GCSE’s at grades 9-7” for a fourth subject. Its Biology-specific line reads: “one of your GCSEs must be a Grade 6 or above in GCSE Biology. This also includes a 6/6 in Combined Science/Science Trilogy. You must also have a 6 or above in GCSE maths.” The college is explicit about what does not count towards that gate: “GCSE Applied Science, GCSE Combined Science: Synergy, BTEC Science” are all listed as not accepted. Its qualification is recorded as “AQA A Level Biology”, taught from its High Pavement Sixth Form site in the city centre.
NUAST Sixth Form sets its Biology gate inside a general rule: “our general entry requirements are that you need 5 Grade 6s in your GCSEs to study A Levels”, and for Biology specifically, “one of these Grade 6s must be Biology or Double Science”. Maths is a soft recommendation rather than a hard gate: “it is recommended that you have a grade 6 in Maths, although this not essential.” NUAST does not publish an exam board on its Biology course page, so we have not named one for that institution.
Two named institutions, then, both require a grade 6 as the practical floor for GCSE Biology or the equivalent Combined Science element, but they differ on what else is required alongside it — Bilborough’s explicit grade 5 English gate, Nottingham College’s exclusion list of GCSE-equivalent science qualifications, NUAST’s softer stance on Maths. A family should read the sixth form’s own published page rather than assume any one of these three applies elsewhere. Our Nottingham GCSE biology page sets out how the city and county differ at 16, before any of these A-level gates come into play.
A-level Biology carries a practical endorsement reported separately from the A*–E grade, and two of the city’s named providers describe it in almost identical terms. NUAST Sixth Form: “students will be expected to complete 12 core practicals throughout the course. Teacher assessment of student skills, techniques and competency when completing practical work will count towards the Practical Endorsement at A Level. This is separate to the A level grade and if awarded, will be recorded as a ‘Pass’ on A Level certificates.” Nottingham College: “students need to complete the practical endorsement which comprises 12 required practicals in the laboratory – students can gain a pass/fail for this.”
That endorsement is a distinct, teacher-assessed, non-exam component: a student either passes it or does not, and the result sits alongside the A-level grade on the certificate rather than inside it. It is not the same thing as the separate requirement that written exam papers must themselves test practical knowledge. Bilborough College states its own figure for that: “at the end of the 2 years you will sit 3 exams, 15% of which will be based on what you learned in your practicals.” That 15% is marks within the written papers, assessed and graded like any other exam question; the practical endorsement is a pass/fail judgement made in the laboratory across the two years. A student can pass the endorsement and still lose marks on the practical-knowledge questions in the written papers, or vice versa — the two measures do not move together.
Nottingham College also notes a field element specific to its own course: “a field trip is a key component of our ecology and environment topic. This trip is required in order to complete a required practical”, with a possible small cost. That is a course-delivery detail rather than a national requirement, and a family should check whether their own sixth form runs an equivalent trip.
Our A-level biology tutors help Nottingham students prepare for both halves of the assessment — the written papers, including the practical-knowledge questions inside them, and the practical logbook work that feeds into the separate pass/fail endorsement.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNottingham the unitary authority and Nottinghamshire the county are separate Department for Education local authorities, and at A level they report different averages. Nottingham’s state-funded schools and colleges averaged a C, 31.64 points per entry, in 2024/25. Nottinghamshire’s averaged a C+, 34.65 points. England averaged a B- and 36.1 points, but that line covers all schools and colleges, independent ones included, so it is not like-for-like with either authority. On these all-subject figures the county sits marginally nearer the national line than the city does — DfE does not publish a Biology-only version of either average.
Two Nottinghamshire schools within easy reach of the city illustrate what sits on the other side of the line. The West Bridgford School entered 75 students for A-level Biology in 2024/25, from an A-level cohort of 223, averaged a B+ and 41.91 points per entry across all its A levels, and holds an ABOVE AVERAGE DfE progress banding with a score of 0.37. The Becket School entered 38 for Biology, from a cohort of 158, averaged a B- and 35.31 on the same measure, and is banded BELOW AVERAGE at -0.14. Being in the county is not on its own a guarantee of anything: West Bridgford’s all-subject average sits above every Nottingham city institution except Nottingham High School, while Becket’s sits in the middle of the city’s own range.
The difference from GCSE is that at 16 a student is no longer allocated by catchment. Sixth forms recruit across the boundary and students travel; NUAST Sixth Form describes its own intake as serving “the students of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and beyond”. For a family choosing where a child studies A-level Biology, the useful conclusion is that the authority boundary is close to irrelevant and the individual institution is close to everything. Our Nottingham GCSE biology page sets out the city/county split that does apply at GCSE, where school places are allocated geographically.
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Bilborough College publishes its own results-day statement; the Department for Education publishes verified figures for an earlier cohort months later, and the two answer different questions. In its 2026 results statement, Bilborough College reported that “students recorded a fantastic 97% pass rate across all courses and within that there have been some stunning subject performances too”, with “10 courses” reaching a 100% pass rate across the college as a whole. That 97% figure covers every course Bilborough teaches, not Biology specifically — the college’s own statement names A-level Maths, not Biology, when it singles out a subject result.
Bilborough’s verified DfE figure for the 2024/25 cohort, across all its A-level subjects, is a progress score of -0.1, which the Department bands BELOW AVERAGE because the score and its whole confidence interval, -0.14 to -0.05, sit below zero. The threshold is zero, not England’s own progress score of -0.03. Both statements are true at once because they measure different things: a pass rate counts how many students cleared the lowest passing grade, while a progress score measures how far each student moved from where their GCSEs said they were starting.
Neither figure is a Biology result. DfE does not publish a subject-specific progress score, so a parent cannot read Bilborough’s -0.1 as a statement about its Biology department specifically — only about the college’s A-level provision as a whole. The practical reading for a Nottingham parent choosing a Biology sixth form: a results-day percentage tells you about the exit and the cohort that was admitted; the progress banding tells you about the distance travelled across every subject the institution teaches, not the one your child is taking.
Our A-level biology tutors read the DfE figures for your child’s own sixth form before the first session, so the programme reflects the department they are actually in rather than a college-wide headline.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppEvery programme starts with the student’s own sixth form, board and endorsement route. A student at Bilborough College or Nottingham College is most likely sitting AQA papers; a student at NUAST or a smaller school sixth form may be on a different specification, and we confirm this in the first session rather than assume it.
From there the split between the written papers and the practical work shapes most of the planning. The written papers reward precise recall applied to unfamiliar contexts — the step that most often separates a grade B from a grade A. The practical side is different: the 12 required practicals need a logbook of competent technique, not exam-style answers, so a student behind on write-ups needs a different session from one behind on content.
Students taking Biology alongside A-level Chemistry are following the combination Nottingham College recommends as pairing “particularly well” with Biology, and we cover the overlapping biochemistry content explicitly. For students aiming at Medicine, Dentistry or Veterinary Science, where A-level Biology is a near-universal requirement, sessions also cover the university-admissions context, not just the exam content.
Sessions are one-to-one and online, with a shared whiteboard so a tutor can work a past-paper question, mark it against the real mark scheme and leave the annotated version with the student. Parents get a short written note after each session. Across all subjects and levels, 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews. Our wider A-level tuition and our other tutoring across Nottingham cover the rest of what we do.
Bilborough College, by a wide margin. DfE data for the 2024/25 academic year records 184 A-level Biology entries at Bilborough, against 60 at NUAST and 49 at Nottingham High School. Those three account for 293 of the 499 A-level Biology entries recorded across the eleven Nottingham city institutions that entered anyone for the subject. The remaining eight range from 40 at Nottingham College and Bluecoat Aspley Academy down to 10 at Nottingham Free School. Scale is not the same as concentration: Bilborough’s 988 A-level students mean Biology is 18.6% of its own cohort, while NUAST’s 60 entries come from a cohort of just 136, or 44.1%.
It depends on the institution, and the detail varies more than a single headline grade suggests. Bilborough College asks for “66 in Double Science or a 6 in Biology if you have studied Triple Science”, plus a 6 in Maths and a 5 in English Language. Nottingham College asks for a grade 6 or above in GCSE Biology, or a 6/6 in Combined Science, plus a 6 or above in GCSE Maths, and states that GCSE Applied Science, GCSE Combined Science: Synergy and BTEC Science are not accepted. NUAST Sixth Form asks for five GCSEs at grade 6, one of which must be Biology or Double Science, and recommends but does not require a grade 6 in Maths. A student applying to a smaller school sixth form should check that school’s own published figure rather than assume any of these three thresholds applies.
It is a separate pass or not-classified result, reported alongside but not inside the A*–E grade. NUAST Sixth Form describes it this way: students complete 12 core practicals, teacher-assessed on skills and competency, and “this is separate to the A level grade and if awarded, will be recorded as a ‘Pass’ on A Level certificates.” Nottingham College describes the same mechanism: “students need to complete the practical endorsement which comprises 12 required practicals in the laboratory – students can gain a pass/fail for this.” It is not the same as the marks for practical-related questions inside the three written papers, which Bilborough states separately as 15% of the marks available.
Where it is published, it is AQA. Bilborough College states on its own course page that “we follow the AQA Biology specification”; Nottingham College lists the qualification as “AQA A Level Biology”. AQA’s current specification is Biology 7402, first taught from 2015. NUAST Sixth Form does not name a board on its published Biology course page, and we have not been able to confirm which specification it follows; a family should ask the sixth form directly rather than assume AQA applies city-wide.
On the authority averages, the county is slightly ahead: Nottinghamshire’s state-funded schools and colleges averaged a C+ and 34.65 points per entry across all A levels in 2024/25, against a C and 31.64 for Nottingham city — both all-subject figures, not Biology-specific ones, because DfE does not publish a per-subject authority average. England’s B- and 36.1 covers all schools and colleges, independent ones included, so it is not a like-for-like line with either authority. The range inside the city is far wider than the gap between the two authorities: the eleven institutions above run from 49.75 points at Nottingham High School down to 23.17 at Nottingham Academy. At 16 there is no catchment, so families cross the boundary freely and the institution matters far more than which side of the line it sits on.
No — in Nottingham the opposite is true. The city’s two largest overall providers, Bilborough College (988 A-level students) and Nottingham College (301), send the smallest share of their own cohort into Biology: 18.6% and 13.3% respectively. NUAST, with a much smaller cohort of 136, sends 44.1% into the subject, and Nottingham Girls’ High School sends 43.1% from a cohort of 51. Absolute entries and share of cohort measure different things: Bilborough’s 184 entries are still the largest in the city, they are just a smaller slice of a much bigger cohort.
Tell us which sixth form or college your child attends and which board they sit, and our expert A-level biology tutors will build a programme around the written papers and the practical logbook work they have not yet secured.
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