Eight of Reading's sixth forms entered a student for A-level Further Maths in 2024/25, on three different exam boards and three different sets of optional papers, while DfE's own 2024/25 progress data finds no significant score for any of them.
Book a Free ConsultationA-level Further Maths in Reading is entered at eight of the city's thirteen DfE-listed sixth forms, and not entered at all at the other five, according to the Department for Education's 2024/25 subjects-entered data. Reading School made 64 A-level Further Mathematics entries, the largest in the city; seven other Reading sixth forms also entered students, across OCR, AQA and Pearson Edexcel.
Our expert A-level Further Maths tutors help students across Reading work to their own sixth form's board and optional papers, whether that is the Decision Mathematics route at Blessed Hugh Faringdon, the Mechanics or Statistics option at Highdown, or the choices set by Reading School, Kendrick School, King's Academy Prospect and UTC Reading.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe Department for Education's institution-level subject value added dataset lists thirteen Reading local-authority institutions for 2024/25, identified by an laEstab code beginning 870 and matched here on URN rather than name. Eight of the thirteen carry a 2024/25 A-level Further Mathematics entry: Reading School with 64, Kendrick School with 29, UTC Reading with 14, Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre with 10, Leighton Park School with 6, The Abbey School Reading with 5, St Joseph's College with 4 and Queen Anne's School with 3 - a total of 135 entries across the city. Reading School alone accounts for 47.4% of them; Reading School and Kendrick School together account for 68.9%.
The remaining five of the thirteen recorded no A-level Further Mathematics entry in 2024/25: The WREN School, Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School, King's Academy Prospect, John Madejski Academy and OneSchool Global Reading Senior Campus. Unlike Leeds's Luminate Education Group row, which pools seven member colleges into a single line of data, no Reading row in this dataset pools more than one institution, so every figure above describes a single named sixth form.
| Reading sixth form | Exam board published | Optional papers or route published | Minimum GCSE grade published | 2024/25 A-level FM entries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading School | OCR (H245) | not named as a route | 9 | 64 |
| Kendrick School | not published | not published | not published | 29 |
| UTC Reading | not named | 2 of 4: Decision, Further Statistics, Further Mechanics, Further Pure | 7 | 14 |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | AQA | Mechanics or Statistics | 8 | 10 |
| Leighton Park School | not published | not published | 8 | 6 |
| The Abbey School Reading | not published | not published | not published | 5 |
| St Joseph's College (closed 10 July 2026) | not published | not published | not published | 4 |
| Queen Anne's School | not published | not published | not published | 3 |
| Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School | Pearson Edexcel | Route K: Decision Mathematics | 7 | 0 recorded |
| King's Academy Prospect | Pearson Edexcel | 2 of 4: Pure, Statistics, Mechanics, Decision | 7 | 0 recorded |
| The WREN School | no Further Maths course published | - | - | 0 |
| John Madejski Academy (closed 31 Dec 2024) | no Further Maths course published | - | - | 0 |
Two providers checked have no 16-to-18 subject data at all and are not in this table: Hartland High School, which opened 1 January 2025 as John Madejski Academy's GIAS-recorded successor, and OneSchool Global Reading Senior Campus, whose own Subjects entered at 16 to 18 page carries no subject rows.
Board and specification detail for the A-level itself - the four national exam boards, Ofqual's content requirements and national entry and results figures - is covered on our A-level Further Maths hub, and this page does not repeat it. Reading's own headline A-level Mathematics figures, including progress scores and points per entry across all twelve of the city's A-level providers, are covered on our A-level Maths tutors in Reading page.
Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School publishes the most specific Further Maths provision of any Reading sixth form, despite recording no A-level Further Mathematics entry in the 2024/25 subjects-entered data. Its own course page states it follows "the Edexcel A Level Further Mathematics (2017) syllabus" and uses "the Decision Mathematics option papers which follows "Route K"". Pearson Edexcel's own specification, Issue 4, June 2023, sets out ten possible routes through the qualification; Route K is Paper 1 Core Pure Mathematics 1, Paper 2 Core Pure Mathematics 2, Paper 3 Decision Mathematics 1 and Paper 4 Decision Mathematics 2, with Decision Mathematics making up 50% of the course across its two papers.
Blessed Hugh Faringdon requires a grade 7 minimum in GCSE Mathematics, states a student must already be studying A-level Mathematics, and adds that "in most cases, A Level Further Mathematics should be a fourth A Level option". It is the only Reading sixth form whose own site names both a specification year and a lettered route, rather than a bare subject listing or a choice of applied topics.
Reading School's own Sixth Form Booklet names OCR as its board for both Mathematics and Further Mathematics, under the codes "A-level Mathematics (H240)" and "A-level Further Mathematics (H245)"; OCR's own qualifications page confirms "AS and A Level - Further Mathematics A - H235, H245". The booklet adds that Further Maths "is a popular option at Reading School with around half of A-level Maths students opting to study this course", and states plainly that "No student will be obliged to study Further Maths".
Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre's sixth-form course guide names AQA, with "Three 2 hour papers to be taken at the end of Year 13" and a choice between "Mechanics" and "Statistics" for the applied content, alongside a minimum GCSE grade of 8 in Mathematics.
King's Academy Prospect's course sheet names Pearson Edexcel and describes a different option structure: "Students take two optional papers. With the options available being Pure Mathematics, Statistics, Mechanics and Decision Mathematics", assessed across "four 1 hour 30 mins exams", with a minimum grade 7 in GCSE Mathematics.
UTC Reading's own course page names no exam board at all, but does name the paper structure: "four papers, the first two covering the compulsory Core Pure topics with the final two papers allowing students to focus their studies on a combination of Decision Mathematics, Further Statistics, Further Mechanics or Further Pure Mathematics", requiring a grade 7 at GCSE against the grade 6 the same school asks for A-level Maths and the sciences.
Four Reading sixth forms therefore publish a Further Maths course structure, and they name three different exam boards between them: Pearson Edexcel at Blessed Hugh Faringdon and King's Academy Prospect, AQA at Highdown, and OCR at Reading School - while UTC Reading names its papers but no board at all.
Already know which board your child's sixth form teaches? Our A-level Further Maths tutors build a programme around that specification and a student's current working grade, whether they are on Route K, the Mechanics or Statistics option, or preparing without a school place in the subject at all.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBeside the A-level, DfE's 2024/25 data records a second, smaller line of Further Maths entries: the one-year AS-level. Four Reading sixth forms entered a candidate: Kendrick School with 5, The Abbey School Reading with 4, Reading School with 2 and Queen Anne's School with 1, a total of 12 across the city. Kendrick School's own curriculum page names the qualification directly, offering Year 13 students "the opportunity to take the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) or 1 year AS Further Mathematics qualification in Year 13" as alternatives. Kendrick also lists Further Mathematics among its full A-level subjects, alongside Mathematics itself. None of the pages ranking for this search, and no other Leading Tuition page for Reading, reports these AS-level figures.
Every Reading sixth form that publishes a Further Maths entry requirement sets it above the general A-level Maths floor. Reading School asks for "a GCSE grade 9 ... required for either option" of its one- or two-option-block routes, and names OCR's FSMQ (Additional Maths, 6993/01) or AQA's Level 2 Further Mathematics (8365) as "highly desirable", though not required, for the more demanding single-block route. Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre and Leighton Park School both ask for a grade 8; Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School and King's Academy Prospect both ask for a grade 7, as does UTC Reading, whose own page sets a grade 6 for A-level Maths and the sciences at the same school - a full grade lower than its Further Maths floor.
Grade requirements are not the only condition attached. The Abbey School Reading states that "All students who wish to study Maths and Further Maths at A Level must take two other A Level subjects", so a student there needs four subjects in total. Leighton Park School reaches a similar shape from its own rule: "Students usually study for three qualifications, but if one of your three subjects is Maths, then Further Maths can be taken as a fourth." Every Reading school that publishes a requirement also expects a student to be studying A-level Mathematics at the same time; none of the five accepts Further Maths as a stand-alone A-level.
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Five of Reading's thirteen DfE-listed institutions show no 2024/25 Further Maths entry, and two of them say plainly on their own site that they do not teach it. The WREN School's sixth-form curriculum page names an exam board for every A-level it lists - Mathematics on AQA, Biology on AQA, English Literature and Language on OCR, Geography and Politics on Edexcel among them - and lists no Further Mathematics course. Hartland High School's Courses and Overview pages describe its sixth-form offer, including a Level 3 BTEC Sport Extended Certificate, and name no Further Mathematics course either. OneSchool Global Reading Senior Campus's own Subjects entered at 16 to 18 page loads but carries no subject rows of any kind.
Queen Anne's School is the harder case: its Academic Excellence, 16+ Entry and Curriculum Innovation pages contain neither the phrase "Further Math" nor the name of any awarding body, yet DfE's data records 3 A-level and 1 AS-level Further Mathematics entry there in 2024/25. A prospective family cannot take a school's own website as proof either way here; the DfE entry count and the school's public curriculum pages disagree, and only the school itself can currently resolve which is right. Even at Reading School, which does teach the subject, entry is not automatic for every A-level Maths student: the school's own booklet states plainly that "No student will be obliged to study Further Maths."
Whichever Reading sixth form your child attends, our expert A-level Further Maths tutors build every programme around that school's own board, optional papers and current working grade - including where a school's own course list does not name a board at all.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe Department for Education also publishes an institution-level value added score for A-level Further Mathematics for 2024/25. This is DfE's value-added progress measure for 2024/25 entrants, not a measure of teaching quality, and DfE's own rule is that a score counts as a finding only when its whole confidence interval sits entirely above zero or entirely below it.
Four Reading institutions have a published score, listed here by cohort size rather than by score. Reading School's score is 0.18, with a 95% confidence interval of -0.11 to 0.46 across 64 matched entries. Kendrick School's score is 0.14, with a 95% confidence interval of -0.28 to 0.57 across 29 matched entries. UTC Reading's score is 0.33, with a 95% confidence interval of -0.39 to 1.06 across 10 matched entries. Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre's score is -0.11, with a 95% confidence interval of -0.83 to 0.62 across 10 matched entries. Every one of these four intervals crosses zero. As DfE's own methodology sets out, this progress measure describes entrants' outcomes against their prior attainment; it is not a measure of teaching quality, and none of the four scores above is a significant finding on DfE's own test.
Four further Reading institutions with a Further Maths value added row - Leighton Park School, Queen Anne's School, St Joseph's College and The Abbey School Reading - each returned a suppressed value for 2024/25; DfE publishes no figure for any of them. No Reading provider's 2024/25 Further Maths value added separates from the national average in either direction, on DfE's own intervals, checked 26 September 2026.
The published cohorts run from 10 to 64 matched entries, with a median of 19.5 across the four scored institutions - small enough, on DfE's own guidance, that a single student's result can move a score. UTC Reading's own subjects-entered table separately records 14 A-level Further Mathematics exam entries for 2024/25, against the 10 matched entries behind its value added score; the two datasets count different things - all exam entries, against the subset DfE could match to prior attainment - and neither figure is wrong.
Two of the eight Reading institutions with a 2024/25 Further Maths entry have since changed status, and DfE's dataset does not say so - a reader would need to check GIAS, the Department for Education's own register, separately. St Joseph's College, URN 110111, made 4 A-level Further Mathematics entries in 2024/25; GIAS records it as closed, with a closed date of 10 July 2026 and the reason recorded as "Closure". Re-checked at GIAS on 27 September 2026, the day this page was published, its status is unchanged.
John Madejski Academy, URN 130247, recorded no 2024/25 Further Mathematics entry of its own; GIAS records it as closed, with a closed date of 31 December 2024 and the reason recorded as "Fresh Start". GIAS's own linked-establishments table names Hartland High School, URN 151631, as its successor, linked from 1 January 2025. Hartland is open, has a sixth form and 589 pupils recorded, but carries no 2024/25 16-to-18 subject data of its own, because it did not yet exist during the year that data covers. Re-checked at GIAS on 27 September 2026, all three facts are unchanged from the research reading taken the day before.
A Reading student's A-level Further Maths programme is set before a tutor ever meets them: their own sixth form has already chosen the exam board, and in most cases the optional papers too. Leading Tuition builds a programme around that choice rather than a generic specification - Pearson Edexcel's Route K papers for a Blessed Hugh Faringdon student, the Mechanics or Statistics option for a Highdown student, OCR's H245 papers for a Reading School student, or the board-and-option combination a King's Academy Prospect or UTC Reading student is already working through.
Our expert A-level Further Maths tutors help students across Reading at whichever stage they are at, from building the Core Pure foundations after GCSE to preparing for a specific applied paper in the final months before the exam. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026.
Ready to start? Book a free consultation and we'll put your child with an A-level Further Maths tutor who already understands their sixth form's board and optional papers, from Route K at Blessed Hugh Faringdon to the H245 papers at Reading School.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppFour Reading sixth forms publish a Further Maths course description on their own site: Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School (Pearson Edexcel, Route K), Reading School (OCR, H245), Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre (AQA) and King's Academy Prospect (Pearson Edexcel). UTC Reading's course page names the paper structure without naming a board. DfE's 2024/25 data separately records an A-level Further Mathematics entry at eight Reading institutions in total, including Kendrick School, Leighton Park School, The Abbey School Reading and St Joseph's College, some of which do not publish course detail on their own site.
Reading School's Sixth Form Booklet names OCR, under the codes A-level Mathematics (H240) and A-level Further Mathematics (H245); OCR's own qualifications page confirms “AS and A Level - Further Mathematics A - H235, H245”. The booklet states that Further Maths is a popular option, taken by around half of the school's A-level Maths students, and that no student is obliged to take it. Reading School made 64 A-level and 2 AS-level Further Mathematics entries in 2024/25, the largest of any Reading sixth form.
Requirements vary by school and range from grade 7 to grade 9. Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School, King's Academy Prospect and UTC Reading each ask for a grade 7 in GCSE Mathematics; Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre and Leighton Park School both ask for a grade 8; and Reading School asks for a grade 9 on either of its two option-block routes. Every school that publishes a requirement also expects the student to be studying A-level Mathematics at the same time, and The Abbey School Reading and Leighton Park School both require it alongside two or three other A-levels respectively.
Route K is one of ten routes through Pearson Edexcel's A-level Further Mathematics specification (Issue 4, June 2023): two Core Pure Mathematics papers plus two Decision Mathematics papers, with Decision Mathematics making up 50% of the course. Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School is the only Reading sixth form whose own site names a specific route, stating it uses the Decision Mathematics option papers which follows Route K. It requires a grade 7 minimum in GCSE Mathematics and expects Further Maths usually to be taken as a fourth A-level alongside A-level Mathematics.
Usually not. Reading School, Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School, King's Academy Prospect and UTC Reading all expect Further Maths to sit alongside three other subjects as a fourth, and Leighton Park School states this explicitly: if one of a student's three subjects is Maths, Further Maths can be taken as a fourth. The Abbey School Reading instead requires two further A-levels alongside both Maths and Further Maths, meaning four subjects there too. No Reading school in this data treats Further Maths as a replacement for another subject rather than an addition.
No. Four Reading institutions have a published 2024/25 Further Maths value added score - Reading School (0.18, interval -0.11 to 0.46, 64 entries), Kendrick School (0.14, interval -0.28 to 0.57, 29 entries), UTC Reading (0.33, interval -0.39 to 1.06, 10 entries) and Highdown (-0.11, interval -0.83 to 0.62, 10 entries) - and every one of these four confidence intervals crosses zero, so none is a significant finding on DfE's own test. This is a progress measure for 2024/25 entrants, not a measure of teaching quality, and four further Reading institutions returned a suppressed value entirely.
No. Five of the thirteen Reading institutions DfE lists for 2024/25 recorded no A-level Further Mathematics entry, and The WREN School and Hartland High School both name an exam board for every other A-level they publish while listing none for Further Mathematics. Queen Anne's School is a harder case: its own curriculum pages name no Further Maths course or exam board at all, yet DfE recorded 3 A-level and 1 AS-level entry there in 2024/25, so its website and the national data disagree.
Yes. DfE's 2024/25 data records a one-year AS-level Further Mathematics entry at four Reading sixth forms: Kendrick School (5), The Abbey School Reading (4), Reading School (2) and Queen Anne's School (1), a total of 12 across the city. Kendrick School's own curriculum page names the qualification directly, offering Year 13 students the choice of the EPQ (Extended Project Qualification) or a one year AS Further Mathematics qualification in Year 13. No Reading tutoring page found in the search results for this term reports these AS-level figures.
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