A Level Maths Tutors in Reading: The DfE Sixth-Form Data

Reading is a single-tier Berkshire local authority whose 754 A-level students in state-funded schools averaged grade B- (37.73 points per entry) in 2024/25, against 35 across England's state-funded sector and 36.1 across all English schools and colleges. Twelve Reading schools entered A-level candidates. Reading School recorded 166 A-level Mathematics entries and averaged grade A; The WREN School averaged D+. Reading School and Kendrick School select by entrance examination, so intake explains part of that gap.

How Many A Level Maths Entries Does Each Reading Sixth Form Make?

Reading's sixth forms do not enter A-level Mathematics in anything like equal numbers, and the subject-level data is where a borough average stops being useful. The Department for Education publishes a subjects-entered table for every provider, and the column it counts is headed Number of exam entries, not students. A student who sits both Mathematics and Further Mathematics appears in both columns, so the figures below describe qualifications rather than people, and they cannot be added together to get a headcount.

Reading School made 166 A-level Mathematics entries in 2024/25 and a further 64 in Further Mathematics, from a cohort of 194 students with an A-level entry. Kendrick School made 112 and 29 from a cohort of 147. Every one of the twelve providers that entered A-level candidates is in the table below, which is the whole borough rather than a sample of it.

Source: Department for Education, Compare School and College Performance, subjects entered, read for each of the twelve providers, 16-to-18 results for 2024/25, read on 27 August 2026. "None recorded" means the provider's subjects-entered table carries no row for that qualification.

The Abbey School Reading is the one row where that last note needs a sentence of its own. Its table does show Mathematical Studies — 9 entries at Higher level and 12 at Standard level — but those are International Baccalaureate components, not the Level 3 Core Maths qualification the column counts, so the school appears as "None recorded" for Core Maths and is not being short-changed by it.

Further Mathematics is not an extra paper bolted onto the same qualification. AQA reports it under its own specification code, 7367, against 7357 for A-level Mathematics, so the two columns describe two qualifications rather than one course counted twice. A sixth form making 64 Further Mathematics entries is running a second timetabled course, with its own teaching time, alongside the first.

One result in that table cuts against the reputational order of the borough. Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre has the largest non-selective state sixth form in Reading by cohort size, 141 students against 70 at the next largest, but it does not make the most maths entries outside the two grammar schools: UTC Reading made 61 A-level Mathematics entries and 14 in Further Mathematics from a cohort of 67, against Highdown's 51 and 10 from 141. A technical college with under half Highdown's cohort makes more A-level Mathematics entries than any Reading provider outside the two state grammar schools.

Reading's Twelve Post-16 Providers, Ranked on 2024/25 A Level Results

The Department for Education lists nineteen schools and colleges in Reading. Twelve entered A-level candidates in 2024/25 — eight state-funded and four independent — and a thirteenth, OneSchool Global Reading Senior Campus, is recorded as NE, no entries, in every A-level column. No further-education college appears anywhere in the list: filter the same table to providers of type College and it returns none, so for A-levels the borough is its schools.

Two of these columns are meant to be read together rather than separately. Average points per entry is a raw attainment figure, and it credits whoever a provider admitted as much as what it then taught them. The progress score beside it is the Department for Education's own banded measure, running from WELL BELOW AVERAGE to WELL ABOVE AVERAGE, and it is the column where the borough's order changes.

Neither of the last two columns is reliably taken over the students column beside it, so the table names the base for each in the cell. The AAB rate is calculated over the students the Department for Education includes in that measure, and retention over the number a provider enrolled to study mainly A levels. At John Madejski Academy those are two different numbers entirely: 32 students in the AAB measure, 10 enrolled for retention, 36 with an A-level exam entry.

Source: Department for Education, Compare School and College Performance, all schools and colleges in Reading, 16-to-18 results for 2024/25, read on 27 August 2026.

NA is the Department for Education's own not-applicable marker, which is what it prints for retention at all four Reading independent schools and for the local authority's progress score. "Not shown" means the service displays no value in that cell. The Reading local-authority row is a state-funded aggregate, not a borough-wide one: DfE labels the same comparator on each school's own page as "Reading average (local authority) - state-funded schools / colleges".

Reading School's 48.96 points per entry — an average grade of A — is the highest in the borough by a clear margin, and 62.9% of the 194 students in the measure reached AAB or higher including at least two facilitating subjects, against an England state-funded rate of 17.5%. Its best-three-A-levels figure, 48.45, sits just below its per-entry figure rather than above it, which looks wrong until you read the definition: the best-three measure adds a student's best three A-levels and divides by three whether or not that student sat three, so a cohort with any two-subject students is pulled down. Kendrick School follows at 44.47 points per entry, 44.73 across a student's best three, and 51.4% at AAB or higher from a base of 146.

At the other end of the same table, John Madejski Academy recorded 18.9 points per entry and 0.0% at AAB or higher, and UTC Reading, The WREN School and King's Academy Prospect all sat in the D+ band, at 23.2, 24.97 and 24.94. The four independent schools land in the upper middle on raw points — 44.06, 42.47, 40.84 and 39.95 — and all four publish an AAB rate too, between 20.0% at Queen Anne's School and 35.9% at The Abbey School Reading.

Why Reading's Best Grades and Its Best Progress Scores Belong to Different Schools

Rank Reading's providers on raw grades and Reading School is first. Rank them on the Department for Education's progress score and it is not. St Joseph's College, at +0.5, is the only Reading institution banded WELL ABOVE AVERAGE. Queen Anne's School follows at +0.37 and Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre at +0.16, both ABOVE AVERAGE. Leighton Park School is next at +0.09 and Reading School fifth at +0.06, both banded AVERAGE. Kendrick School's is -0.13, banded BELOW AVERAGE. The England state-funded average is -0.03.

That inversion is the most useful thing on this page, and it is worth saying plainly why it happens. Reading School and Kendrick School are Reading's two state grammar schools and admit by entrance examination. A cohort selected on academic ability before it arrives will post high A-level grades, and those grades are not on their own evidence about the teaching it then received. We would expect selection to shape A-level figures the way it shapes GCSE ones, since the same cohort is still in the building two years further on — our reading of the data, not a published finding. The progress measure exists to separate intake from teaching, and on it neither grammar school leads Reading.

The same caution runs in the other direction, and it is the more practical half. Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre averages 34.39 points per entry, a grade C+, which places it seventh on the raw table; its progress score of +0.16 places it third. Highdown does not select its intake, so the gap between those two positions is the part of its record raw grades never show, and a parent choosing on published grades alone would draw the wrong conclusion about it.

One thing in the progress column looks like an error until you read the Department for Education's own rule. The WREN School's -0.16 is banded AVERAGE while Kendrick School's better -0.13 is banded BELOW AVERAGE. The band is set not by the score but by its confidence interval: a provider is below average only if the whole interval sits below zero, and DfE says the interval narrows as the cohort grows. Kendrick's 147 students give a tighter interval than The WREN School's 70, so two scores three-hundredths apart land in different bands. Reading School's runs from -0.02 to 0.15.

Two honest caveats about the progress column itself. The scores rest on cohorts that vary more than fivefold across the borough, from 36 students at John Madejski Academy to 194 at Reading School, and the Department for Education's own guidance is that the smaller the cohort, the wider the interval and the more one student's year moves the score — as true of Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School at 38 as of the independent schools at 43 and 48. And this is one year of data: +0.06 at Reading School and -0.13 at Kendrick School are too close together to read as a ranking between them.

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How Many Reading Students Finish the A Level Course They Start?

The column families rarely look at changes how every other column should be read. The Department for Education publishes, for each state-funded provider, the share of students retained to the end of the core aim of their study programme. Its denominator is the number of students a provider enrolled to study mainly A levels, not the number who ended up with an exam entry, and at all eight Reading schools that publish a rate those are two different figures. Across Reading local authority the retention rate was 95.3% in 2024/25, against 93.1% across England's state-funded providers.

Within Reading, Reading School recorded 99.0% from 195 enrolled and Kendrick School 98.6% from 148. Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School reached 97.2% from 36, The WREN School 97.1% from 68, King's Academy Prospect 96.6% from 59 and Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre 95.8% from 143. Two providers sit a long way below that group: UTC Reading at 82.3% from 62, and John Madejski Academy at 20.0% from 10. Weight those eight rates by the enrolled figure printed beside each and they reproduce the 95.3% local-authority average; weight them by the students column instead and they do not come close.

A retention figure of 20.0% is not a footnote to that row; it is the context for it. John Madejski Academy enrolled ten students to study mainly A levels and two completed the programme — one in five — while thirty-six students there ended up with an A-level exam entry, most carrying A-levels alongside a different main course. An average of 18.9 points per entry and 0.0% at AAB or higher belong to that, and such a row is not comparable with Reading School's 99.0% from 195. The Department for Education records NA for retention at all four Reading independent schools, so the column compares state-funded providers only.

Retention is the measure closest to what families actually worry about in A-level maths: not the final grade, but whether a student is still on the course in the spring of the second year. A student who drops the subject in the first year never appears in the 166 or the 112 entries above, nor in any grade average — and that decision is usually made in the first term, on the jump from GCSE algebra to the Pure content.

The Reading Post-16 Maths Students Who Are Not Taking A Level Maths

The Department for Education publishes one more maths figure for every provider, and it is closer to what a parent is actually asking than any entry count. Its level 3 maths measure takes the students who already held a GCSE maths grade 4 or above at the end of Key Stage 4, and reports the share of them who went on to achieve an approved advanced-level maths qualification. It is not a proportion of the A-level cohort, and its comparators are Reading's state-funded schools and colleges and England's. No league table publishes it school by school, so here it is for all twelve.

Source: Department for Education, Compare School and College Performance, "achieving advanced level maths qualifications", read on each of the twelve providers' 16-to-18 pages, results for 2024/25, read on 27 August 2026. The Reading and England rows are state-funded schools and colleges.

Reading's 58.7% is close to double England's 30.0%: the borough's post-16 population is unusually maths-heavy, which is the real reason a Reading-specific page on this subject is worth writing. The spread inside it is far wider, from 85.5% at Reading School to 14.0% at John Madejski Academy — very different odds that a child arriving with a grade 4 leaves with an advanced maths qualification.

Core Maths sits beside the A-level rather than beneath it. The Department for Education records it as Mathematical Studies, a Level 3 qualification, and four Reading schools entered candidates for it in 2024/25: Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre with 17 entries, The WREN School and King's Academy Prospect with 11 each, and Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School with 4. Neither grammar school records a single one. For a student who wants to keep quantitative work going into a degree in geography, psychology or economics without committing to the full A-level, that is the qualification in question, and only four of the borough's twelve providers entered anyone for it.

Then there is the resit population, which no league table covers. Nationally in 2024/25, among students who had not reached a grade 4 or above in maths at Key Stage 4, 82.3% entered an approved maths qualification during their 16-to-18 study, and 33.3% of those improved their point score. The equivalent English figures were 81.2% entered and 38.8% improved. Continued maths study after a missed grade is therefore the normal route rather than the exception, and the second figure is the one worth planning around: two students in three did not improve on the score they arrived with.

The national backdrop shifted slightly in the same year. The Department for Education's own headline is that the A-level average point score per entry rose from 35.55 to 36.09 against 2023/24, while the number of students in the level 3 cohort fell by 2.2% even as the number of students at the end of 16-to-18 study rose by 2.7%. That 36.09 covers schools and colleges in England as a whole, which is why it sits above the 35 on the state-funded England row of the table above and matches the 36.1 on the all-schools-and-colleges row: the two national figures are different populations, not different years. A rising national average with a shrinking level 3 cohort is worth holding in mind before reading a single provider's year-on-year move as a change in its teaching. Our wider A-level tuition service covers the other subjects a Reading student is likely to be carrying alongside maths.

How Should You Read These Figures Without Being Misled?

Everything above describes cohorts. None of it describes a student. A student at Reading School, inside a cohort averaging a grade A, can be exactly as far from their own target as one at a provider averaging D+, and the gap that matters is between a current working grade and the grade an offer needs. The figures do a different job: they tell you what a provider's record actually is.

Three cautions carry across the whole page. Every percentage here has its own denominator, and at most providers it is not the students column beside it, which is why each base is printed in the cell. Raw grades at Reading School and Kendrick School reflect a selected intake as well as teaching. And retention varies so widely — 99.0% at one Reading provider, 20.0% at another — that two rows in the same table can describe genuinely different populations of students.

Which specification a student is entered for changes the shape of the papers rather than the content behind them, since the Department for Education sets that content centrally for first teaching from 2017. The four an English sixth form is most likely to be using are AQA 7357, Pearson Edexcel 9MA0, OCR H240 and OCR Mathematics B (MEI) H640, each confirmed on its own board's site, and OCR pairs that last code with H630 for the AS. Our A-level maths tuition page covers how they differ. The first thing worth checking is which one a sixth form actually enters, because it is printed in that school's own curriculum booklet and almost never on a tutoring directory.

For students already secure in the A-level content, the next hurdle is often an admissions test rather than more syllabus. Reading School made 64 Further Mathematics entries in 2024/25, more than any other Reading provider and more than twice Kendrick School's 29, and our MAT and STEP preparation covers the papers that sit on top of the A-level rather than inside it. Families earlier in that route will find the borough's entrance tests set out on our 11+ tuition in Reading page, and the Key Stage 4 attainment behind these same sixth forms on our GCSE maths tutors in Reading page. Our Reading tutoring hub covers every level we teach in the borough.

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