Where the data comes from
Every figure on this site is published by the Department for Education, Ofsted or the ONS, and carries the year it describes. This page says exactly which file each number came from, and — more usefully — where the data runs out.
Field by field
| What it is | Source | Years |
|---|---|---|
| School name, address, type, selective status, gender, websiteThe Department for Education's register of every school in England. | Get Information About Schools (GIAS) ↗ | Updated daily |
| A Level grades: A*–A %, A*–B %, and the full distribution, whole-school and by subjectCounts of entries at each grade, per school, per subject. Independent schools are included. | KS5 underlying data, school and college performance tables ↗ | 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 |
| Average points per entry, AAB or better, value added, progress band, cohort sizeValue added compares results against what each student's own GCSEs predicted. | KS5 final performance tables ↗ | 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 |
| University destinations: % to higher education, % to a top-third universityState-funded schools and colleges only. Destinations are counted two years after students finish sixth form. | KS5 student destinations (HE), performance tables ↗ | 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 |
| % to a Russell Group university, % to Oxford or CambridgeWithdrawn by the Department for Education after 2023. See the note below. | KS5 student destinations (HE), performance tables ↗ | 2019, 2022, 2023 only |
| Postcode coordinates and distanceFree and open. Distances here are straight-line; journey links open Google Maps for the real route. | postcodes.io, built on the ONS Postcode Directory ↗ | Current |
| Entry requirements, open events, and where a school says its own leavers wentNo national dataset exists for any of these. They are read and entered by hand, school by school, each with its source link and date. A school with nothing recorded is shown as 'not recorded', never as 'no requirement'. | Each school's own website | Checked September 2026 |
Four things worth knowing before you compare anything
2020 and 2021 are missing, and 2022 runs hot
Exams were cancelled in 2020 and 2021, and no school-level results were published. 2022 did sit real exams, but grading was deliberately set between the inflated 2021 standard and the 2019 one, so results are higher than either side of them. On every chart here, 2022 is marked in red. A “five-year trend” that ignores this is telling you about grading policy, not about a school.
Percentages of entries are not percentages of students
“40% A*–A” here means 40 in every 100 exam entries were graded A* or A. That is a different number from the share of students who got three A*–A grades, which is what some league tables report. Comparing one against the other will mislead you.
The Russell Group and Oxbridge figures stop in 2023
The Department for Education used to publish, for each state school, the share of leavers going to Oxford or Cambridge, to a Russell Group university, and to a “top third” university. It withdrew the first two after 2023, on the grounds that the Russell Group is a paid membership body rather than a measure of quality. Those figures are still shown here for the years they exist, clearly dated. Top third is still published and continues to 2025.
None of this exists for independent schools: the Department only tracks destinations for state-funded schools and colleges. Most independent schools publish their own destination lists, which are worth reading but are school-reported rather than audited.
Small subjects produce wild percentages
A subject with six entries can swing forty points because one student had a bad morning. Entry counts are shown next to every subject percentage, and anything under ten entries is flagged. Treat a single-year figure for a small subject as noise, and look at the row of years instead.
How the ranking is worked out
There is no official ranking of sixth forms, so this one is ours, and you should feel free to disagree with it. Each school is scored on its percentile against every other school on four measures, which are then weighted:
- 40% share of A Level entries graded A*–A
- 30% share of leavers reaching a top-third university
- 20% average points per entry
- 10% share reaching AAB with two facilitating subjects
Where a measure is missing, it is dropped and the rest are reweighted — which means independent schools, having no destination data, are ranked mostly on grades. Sorting the main list by a single measure avoids the whole question, and is often the more honest way to look.
Value added is deliberately left out. It compares results with what students’ own GCSEs predicted, so a selective school with a high-achieving intake sits near zero almost by definition — and mixing that into one number put schools with weaker grades and weaker university destinations above stronger ones, with nothing on the page to explain why. It is still shown on every school page, where there is room to say what it means.
How “schools like this one” works
Every school is compared with every other on six things: the share of entries at A*–A and at A*–B, the share of leavers reaching a top-third university, the share going to Oxford or Cambridge, value added, sixth form size, whether it is selective, and how much of its subject list overlaps. Each is put on a common scale, weighted, and the closest thirty are kept.
Distance is deliberately not part of the match. The point of the feature is that you already like a school you cannot get to, and want to know what resembles it closer to home — so distance belongs in the filter, not the matching.
Where a measure is missing it is dropped and the rest reweighted, which means independent schools are matched mostly on grades and curriculum, having no destination data.
What this site does not have
Parent and student opinion. Mumsnet and The Student Room both prohibit automated collection of their posts, so nothing here is scraped from them. Ofsted’s Parent View survey is a published, structured alternative and is a better guide than a handful of forum posts; adding it is the next job.
Offer rates. No sixth form publishes how many applicants it makes offers to, so this site will not give you a percentage chance of getting in. The shortlist page instead checks the things that can be checked, and says so when it does not know.
Open day dates for most schools. These are published only on each school’s own site, in no consistent place or format, and they move every year. Where one has been recorded you get the detail and a link; everywhere else you get a link to the school and an honest note that nothing has been entered. For the same reason the link matters more than any date — it stays right when a date goes stale.
Live journey times. Distances are straight-line. Journey links open Google Maps with the route filled in, which gives a real public transport time without this site needing an API key or you needing an account.
Your data
Your postcode, predicted grades and shortlist are stored in your own browser and nowhere else. There is no account, no login, and nothing is sent to a server. Clearing your browser data clears them.