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A-level English in Reading is not one subject but three separate qualifications: English Language, English Literature, and English Language & Literature. Department for Education data for 2024/25 shows ten of Reading’s twelve sixth forms entered candidates for at least one of the three, led by Kendrick School’s 17 English Literature entries; only The Abbey School Reading entered candidates for standalone Language, and only Highdown entered the combined course.
Already know which of the three courses your child’s Reading sixth form has entered them for? Our expert A-level English tutors build every programme around that provider’s own board, specification and set texts — never a generic scheme of work.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppWhich Reading Sixth Forms Entered A-Level English in 2024/25, and for Which of the Three Courses?
All twelve institutions DfE lists for Reading local authority at 16–18 level are the same twelve already compared on this site’s A-level Chemistry page. Of the twelve, ten entered candidates for at least one A-level English subject in 2024/25; two did not. Kendrick School’s 17 English Literature entries is the largest single English cohort any Reading provider entered that year. Only The Abbey School Reading entered candidates for standalone English Language (8); only Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre entered candidates for the combined English Language and Literature course (15), alongside 11 for standalone Literature. Not one of the twelve entered candidates for all three qualifications.
| Sixth Form | English Language | English Literature | English Language & Literature | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading School | — | 11 | — | — |
| Kendrick School | — | 17 | — | Plus 2 AS-level (not A-level) Literature entries |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | — | 11 | 15 | Only Reading provider entering the combined course |
| The Abbey School Reading | 8 | 13 | — | Only Reading provider entering standalone Language |
| King’s Academy Prospect | — | 13 | — | — |
| Leighton Park School | — | 7 | — | — |
| Queen Anne’s School | — | 7 | — | — |
| Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School | — | 5 | — | — |
| The WREN School | — | 4 | — | — |
| St Joseph’s College | — | 4 | — | Closed 10 July 2026 — last published figures |
| UTC Reading | — | — | — | No English A-level entries in 2024/25 |
| John Madejski Academy | — | — | — | Closed 31 Dec 2024; successor Hartland High School |
Source: DfE 16-to-18 subjects-entered data, Compare School and College Performance, read institution by institution on 24 September 2026. St Joseph’s College and John Madejski Academy have both closed; their rows are last-published figures, not somewhere a family can currently apply — our A-level Chemistry page above covers both closures in full.
UTC Reading and John Madejski Academy entered no A-level English candidates of any kind in 2024/25. A provider can still teach a course and enter nobody in a particular year, so this describes DfE’s 2024/25 entries only, not necessarily what every Reading sixth form currently offers.
Whichever of Reading’s twelve sixth forms your child attends, our expert A-level English tutors start from that provider’s own 2024/25 entries, board and course — standalone Literature, standalone Language, or the combined qualification — never a citywide average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBoard and Specification: Why a Reading School Student and a Kendrick Student Aren’t Sitting the Same Exam
Reading’s two largest English Literature cohorts sit different exams entirely. Reading School teaches OCR’s A-level English Literature, specification H472, confirmed on both OCR’s own qualification page and Reading School’s Sixth Form admissions page: a two-year linear course assessed through two 150-minute examinations, each worth 40% of the overall qualification, plus a 3,000-word non-examined-assessment folder worth the remaining 20%.
Kendrick School’s own English department page names a different board entirely: Pearson Edexcel. Pearson publishes its numeric specification code only inside a PDF specification document, which this page’s research could not open and verify against a live HTML page, so the code is withheld here rather than stated on trust.
The national board-by-board comparison for English Language, and the difference between AQA’s Literature A and B specifications, is covered in full on our A-level English Literature and A-level English Language pages and is not repeated here.
What GCSE Grade Does a Reading Sixth Form Ask Before Admitting a Student to A-Level English?
Entry requirements are set school by school, and Reading’s providers do not all ask for the same thing — nor, at Highdown, is the bar different between its two structurally different English courses.
| Sixth Form | A-Level English Entry Requirement |
|---|---|
| Reading School | Grade 6 in both GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature (for English Literature; Reading School enters no other English A-level) |
| Kendrick School | Grade 6 or B, the school’s general AS/A-level entry bar. Only Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics are set higher, at grade 7 or A |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | Grade 5+ in both GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature — the identical bar for both its standalone Literature course and its combined Language and Literature course |
Highdown’s entry bar is worth reading twice: it sets the same GCSE requirement, 5+ in both English GCSEs, for two structurally different A-levels — the standalone Literature course and the combined Language and Literature course. A family choosing between the two at Highdown is not choosing on entry grade; the choice is about which course content the student wants. Highdown’s own admissions page also sets a whole-school Sixth Form baseline that sits alongside this subject-specific bar: 5+ GCSEs graded 4–9, including at least a 4 in both Maths and English, before any subject-level requirement is even considered.
Which Set Texts Are Reading School and Kendrick Currently Teaching for A-Level English Literature?
Reading’s two largest Literature departments teach genuinely different texts, a direct consequence of sitting different boards. Reading School’s own Sixth Form course page names, as texts “being studied by the current cohorts” when read on 24 September 2026: Hamlet, The Great Gatsby and Paradise Lost.
Kendrick School’s own English department page names, as “exam texts currently studied (all subject to change)” when read on the same date: in Year 12, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Color Purple, Hard Times and a Poems of the Decade anthology; in Year 13, Romantic poetry, a Shakespeare play (for example Measure for Measure, King Lear or Othello) and Brotherless Night, alongside a comparative coursework component worth 20% of the A-level.
Both schools’ own pages carry the same caveat, in their own words: the list can change. A set-text list is not something to rely on from memory, or from last year’s cohort — it is worth checking directly with the sixth form before a student commits study time to a particular text.
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Not sure which set texts or exam board apply to your own child’s sixth form? Our expert A-level English Literature tutors work from the current specification your child’s own school is teaching, using that board’s own past papers and mark schemes rather than a generic revision plan.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppDfE’s 2024/25 Value-Added Data: Which Reading English Result Actually Clears Its Own Confidence Interval?
DfE publishes a subject-level value-added score for A-level English at institutions with a large enough matched cohort, alongside a 95% confidence interval for every score. Read a score alone and a page could easily present one Reading sixth form’s English teaching as stronger than another’s. Read the interval, and the picture narrows sharply: of the 12 English value-added scores DfE publishes for Reading’s providers in 2024/25, 3 are suppressed for cohorts too small to publish, and of the 9 that remain, only 2 have an interval that does not cross zero.
| Sixth Form | Subject | Value Added | 95% Confidence Interval | Matched Students |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queen Anne’s School | English Literature | +1.33 | 0.59 to 2.08 | 6 |
| The Abbey School Reading | English Language | −1.69 | −2.28 to −1.10 | 8 |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | English Literature | +0.39 | −0.16 to 0.94 | 11 |
| The Abbey School Reading | English Literature | −0.25 | −0.76 to 0.26 | 13 |
| Reading School | English Literature | +0.32 | −0.23 to 0.88 | 11 |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | English Language & Literature | +0.09 | −0.35 to 0.52 | 15 |
| Kendrick School | English Literature | +0.09 | −0.35 to 0.53 | 17 |
| Leighton Park School | English Literature | −0.16 | −0.91 to 0.59 | 6 |
| King’s Academy Prospect | English Literature | −0.26 | −0.77 to 0.25 | 13 |
| Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School | English Literature | Suppressed — cohort too small to publish (5 entries) | ||
| St Joseph’s College | English Literature | Suppressed — cohort too small to publish (4 entries) | ||
| The WREN School | English Literature | Suppressed — cohort too small to publish (4 entries) | ||
Source: DfE ‘Schools and colleges — qualification and subject value added’ dataset, queried live for 2024/25, read on 24 September 2026.
Only two of the nine published scores are statistically distinguishable from the England average: Queen Anne’s School’s English Literature result, on 6 VA-matched students, and The Abbey School Reading’s English Language result, on 8 VA-matched students. Neither is Reading’s “best” or “worst” English department — both figures are stated here beside their entry count, not as a ranking. Abbey is the only Reading provider that entered any standalone English Language candidates in 2024/25, so its score is necessarily both the city’s highest and lowest Language result; there is no other Reading Language cohort to set it against. Neither of the city’s two largest English cohorts — Kendrick’s 17-entry and Reading School’s 11-entry Literature departments — produces a score whose interval clears zero.
The matched-student count in this table is not always the same as the subjects-entered count in the first table on this page, and the gap is worth flagging rather than smoothing over: Queen Anne’s School entered 7 A-level English Literature candidates in 2024/25, but DfE’s value-added dataset could match only 6 of them to prior attainment; Leighton Park School shows the same pattern, 7 entries against 6 matched students. Value-added entries and subjects-entered are two different counts, published in two different DfE datasets, and a page that used them interchangeably would be quietly wrong.
Whichever of Reading’s value-added results applies to your child’s own sixth form, our expert A-level English tutors build a programme from their target grade and their school’s actual board — not a citywide average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppHow Leading Tuition Supports A-Level English Students Across Reading
Our expert A-level English tutors help students across Reading with whichever of the three English A-levels their sixth form has entered them for — English Language, English Literature or the combined course — and with whichever board sets it. A programme for a Reading School student starts from OCR’s H472 specification and its current set texts; a programme for a Kendrick student starts from Pearson Edexcel’s structure and coursework component instead; a programme for a Highdown student is built around whichever of its two English courses — standalone Literature or the combined Language and Literature qualification — the student is actually sitting. We build every programme around a student’s actual sixth form, board and set texts, not a generic scheme of work.
For a family still weighing GCSE options ahead of A-level English, our Reading GCSE English tutors page covers the separate Language and Literature GCSEs that feed every entry grade in the tables above. And for a family also considering the sciences alongside English, our Reading A-level Chemistry tutors page runs the same DfE, board and confidence-interval analysis for Chemistry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Reading sixth form entered the most students for a single A-level English subject in 2024/25?
Kendrick School, with 17 A-level English Literature entries in 2024/25, according to the Department for Education’s subjects-entered data — the largest single English cohort any Reading provider entered that year. Counted across both of its courses, Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre entered more English candidates in total: 15 for the combined English Language and Literature course plus 11 for standalone Literature.
Does any Reading sixth form enter students for all three A-level English qualifications?
No. DfE’s 2024/25 entries show ten of Reading’s twelve sixth forms entered candidates for at least one of English Language, English Literature or English Language & Literature, but not one entered candidates for all three. Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre comes closest, entering candidates for two of the three — the combined course and standalone Literature — but not standalone Language.
What exam board does Reading School use for A-level English Literature?
OCR, specification H472, confirmed on both OCR’s own qualification page and Reading School’s Sixth Form admissions page. The course is a two-year linear qualification assessed through two 150-minute examinations, each worth 40% of the overall grade, plus a 3,000-word non-examined-assessment folder worth the remaining 20%. Reading School’s own page names Hamlet, The Great Gatsby and Paradise Lost among the texts its current cohorts are studying, and asks for GCSE grade 6 in both English Language and English Literature before a student can join the course.
What GCSE grade does Kendrick School ask for before admitting a student to A-level English Literature?
Grade 6 or grade B, Kendrick’s general entry bar for AS/A-level subjects. The school sets a higher bar, grade 7 or A, only for Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics; English Literature sits inside the general group alongside most of its other subjects. Kendrick’s whole-school Sixth Form baseline also requires 8 GCSEs at grades 9–5 or A*–B, two of which must be English Language and Mathematics, before any subject-specific bar is even considered.
Does DfE’s value-added data show any Reading English result that clears its own confidence interval?
Yes, but only two. Of the 9 published (non-suppressed) English value-added scores DfE reports for Reading’s providers in 2024/25, Queen Anne’s School’s English Literature score (+1.33, on 6 VA-matched students) and The Abbey School Reading’s English Language score (−1.69, on 8 VA-matched students) both have a 95% confidence interval that does not cross zero. Every other published score, including at Reading’s two largest English departments, sits inside an interval spanning zero.
Is The Abbey School Reading’s English Language value-added score the worst in the city?
It is the only one that exists. The Abbey School Reading is the sole Reading provider that entered any standalone A-level English Language candidates in 2024/25, so its score of −1.69 is necessarily both the city’s highest and lowest Language result — there is no other Reading Language cohort to compare it against. It is a real, statistically distinguishable finding (95% CI −2.28 to −1.10, 8 matched students), not a ranking among peers.
What happened to St Joseph’s College and John Madejski Academy, both listed in Reading’s 2024/25 entries?
Both have closed. St Joseph’s College closed on 10 July 2026 and John Madejski Academy closed on 31 December 2024, with Hartland High School opening as its successor on 1 January 2025, confirmed on each establishment’s own Get Information about Schools record. Their 2024/25 English entries are their final published figures, not somewhere a family can currently apply; our A-level Chemistry page covers both closures in full.
Which A-level English set texts is Reading School currently teaching?
Hamlet, The Great Gatsby and Paradise Lost, named on Reading School’s own Sixth Form course page as texts “being studied by the current cohorts” when read on 24 September 2026. Kendrick School, on a different board, names an entirely different list for the same academic year: A Streetcar Named Desire, The Color Purple, Hard Times and a Poems of the Decade anthology in Year 12 alone. Both schools’ own pages note this list can change between cohorts, so it is worth checking directly before relying on it.