A-Level Physics Tutors in Nottingham 2026

Twelve of Nottingham city's sixth forms and colleges entered students for A-level Physics in 2024/25, recording 264 entries between them — from Bilborough College's 116 down to a single student at Nottingham Free School. One of the city's fourteen DfE-listed institutions, Hollygirt School, has no sixth form at all, and Nottingham University Samworth Academy entered nobody for Physics. Board, entry requirements and DfE's value added differ sharply between the three providers checked below: Bilborough College, NUAST and Nottingham College.

Which Nottingham city sixth forms and colleges actually run A-level Physics — and at what scale

Nottingham city is local authority 892, and the Department for Education's own subject value-added dataset lists fourteen schools and colleges under it. One of them, Hollygirt School, has no sixth form at all — see our Nottingham A-level English guide for the GIAS detail behind that — so this page treats the city's active provider set as the remaining thirteen. Of those thirteen, twelve entered at least one student for A-level Physics in 2024/25; Nottingham University Samworth Academy entered none.

Between them, the twelve providers recorded 264 A-level Physics entries in 2024/25, measured from DfE's own subjects-entered tables — a different, slightly larger count than the value-added-matched cohort used later on this page, and labelled separately for that reason.

The range matters more than the total. A department of 116 runs parallel teaching groups and a full enrichment programme; a department of one or two is a single student largely following the course alone. Five providers enter ten students or fewer for Physics — Nottingham Girls' High School GDST and Nottingham Academy on 5 each, Djanogly City Academy and Nottingham Girls' Academy on 2 each, and Nottingham Free School on 1 — and DfE suppresses their value-added score for exactly that reason. A small class is not evidence a course runs badly, only that a reliable score cannot be built on so few students.

A student who separated stand-alone Physics from Combined Science at GCSE has already met a version of this same scale question one stage earlier. Our Nottingham GCSE Physics guide covers which schools enter almost every pupil for triple science and which do not, which is the decision that determines whether A-level Physics is even a live option for a given student's sixth form two years later.

Which Nottingham providers require A-level Maths alongside Physics, and which don't?

For a Year 11 student choosing A-level Physics in Nottingham, the sharpest local difference is not the GCSE grade required but whether A-level Maths has to run alongside it — and the city's three best-documented providers answer that three different ways.

At Bilborough College, the city's largest Physics department, the published gate is a minimum of a grade 6 in GCSE Maths and a 5 in English Language, plus a grade 6 in Core and Applied GCSE Double Science or a 6 in Physics for a Triple Science student. Bilborough's own course page names no A-level Maths condition at all for Physics.

At NUAST, the requirement is explicit: a minimum GCSE grade of 6.5 in Combined Science (or a 6 in Physics) and a grade 7 in GCSE Mathematics, as well as “concurrent study of A-Level Mathematics… necessary.” A student who does not want A-level Maths in their programme does not have a route into NUAST's Physics course.

Nottingham College sits between the two. A-level Maths is “not a requirement… it is highly recommended”, and a student who wants to skip it needs a discussion with a Physics teacher or a member of the careers team before the college will confirm a place. The college's general rule for three A-levels is at least five GCSEs at grades 9–4, including English at grade 4 or above and Maths at grade 6 or above.

Board and specification, confirmed from each provider's own course page and the awarding body

Nottingham's Physics providers split between two exam boards, each confirmed on the provider's own course page and cross-checked against the awarding body’s own specification listing.

Bilborough College follows “the Edexcel (9PH0) Specification”, in its own words — Pearson's own qualification page for the course, titled ‘Edexcel AS and A level Physics 2015’, confirms the same code. NUAST's course profile states plainly, “Exam Board: AQA”; AQA's own specification page lists its A-level Physics code as 7408. Nottingham College records its qualification simply as “AQA A Level Physics” — the same 7408 product, since AQA publishes only one A-level Physics specification.

Our national A-level Physics guide sets out how AQA, OCR, Edexcel and CIE differ nationally, including the ESAT; our AQA A-level Physics guide and Edexcel A-level Physics guide cover what each specification assesses paper by paper, including the practical endorsement all three providers' students must complete alongside the written papers.

The endorsement itself is the one requirement all three share, whichever board sets the written papers. Nottingham College's own course page spells out the mechanics for its cohort: twelve required practicals, six in each year of the course, “awarded at either ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’ … independently of the A Level”, with the college noting that “some universities require a ‘Pass’ as part of the entry requirements.” A grade on the A-level certificate and a Pass on the endorsement are reported separately, so a strong exam result does not itself confirm the laboratory work has been signed off, and a student applying to a course that names the endorsement as a condition needs both.

Where does Nottingham's 2024/25 Physics value added clear zero — and which side?

Two things are worth saying before any score below. Value added compares a school's students against others with similar prior GCSE attainment nationally — it is not a raw grade average, and a negative score is not, on its own, a verdict on a department's teaching. And because DfE suppresses the figure below a handful of matched students, six of Nottingham's thirteen Physics provider rows carry no published score at all, so what follows is a partial picture by construction, not a complete one. Our Nottingham A-level English guide sets out the same caution in fuller detail for its own subject.

A value-added figure is only a finding where its confidence interval sits entirely on one side of zero. Of Nottingham's seven published 2024/25 Physics rows, three clear zero — and all three are negative.

The three significant figures are Bilborough College at -0.26 (confidence interval -0.48 to -0.04, on 112 matched students of 116 entered), Bluecoat Aspley Academy at -1.28 (-1.86 to -0.70, on 16 students) and The Nottingham Emmanuel School at -0.92 (-1.80 to -0.05, on 7 students of 9 entered). Bluecoat Aspley's interval is the widest of the three and its score the most negative in the city; Emmanuel's clears zero by the smallest margin of any provider here, on the smallest cohort measured. The other four — Nottingham High School (0.39), Nottingham College (0.09), The Trinity Catholic School (0.29) and NUAST (0.02) — are not statistically distinguishable from the national average once prior attainment is accounted for.

How Leading Tuition supports A-level Physics students across Nottingham

The three questions this page answers — which providers run Physics at a workable scale, whether A-level Maths is a condition of taking it, and which board sets the papers — are the three a family needs settled before a programme can start. None of them can be answered the same way twice across Bilborough, NUAST and Nottingham College, which is exactly why a generic Physics revision plan fits none of the three cleanly.

Whichever of Nottingham's Physics routes a student is on, our expert A-level Physics tutors build a programme around their own specification from the first session — Edexcel 9PH0 at Bilborough, AQA 7408 at NUAST or Nottingham College, or another board at a smaller sixth form — rather than teaching to a generic syllabus.

For a student at NUAST, where A-level Maths runs alongside Physics as a condition of the course, sessions keep the two subjects moving together instead of treating the maths as a separate problem to solve later. For a student in one of the city's smallest Physics cohorts — a single student at Nottingham Free School, or two at Djanogly City Academy or Nottingham Girls' Academy — a tutor is often the only other person working through the same material at the same pace.

Across all subjects and levels, 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews. Book a free consultation and tell us which Nottingham sixth form or college your child attends, and we will confirm their specification before the first session.

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