A level outcomes by centre type



These interactive charts and tables show summaries of A level grades by centre (school or college) type in England.


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This visualisation shows A level outcomes at selected grade thresholds by centre type (the type of school or college) for individual subjects. Outcomes are presented as cumulative percentages. For example, selecting the grade threshold "A and above" will display the percentage of students achieving grades A or A*. The data covers the years from 2019 to 2025.

You can use the menu to change the data shown in the charts and tables. You can also view the data as a chart or table.

When you hover over the chart, a pop-up box appears showing the percentage of students achieving the selected grade threshold, along with the number of centres and results used to calculate that percentage.

This interactive visualisation includes data on A level qualifications only. AS qualifications are not included.

Schools and colleges in England are included.

You can choose which schools and colleges to include in the visualisation. If you select ‘Centres with entries in all years covered’ option, your chosen subject category will only include schools and colleges which had grades awarded in all years covered by the visualisation. Comparisons between years are more meaningful when grades from the same schools and colleges are compared.

If you select ‘All centres’ option, your chosen subject category will include all the schools and colleges which had grades awarded in each year. The number of schools and colleges with awarded grades may therefore vary from year to year.

We applied the same criteria for ‘All subjects combined‘ subject group. This means that, if a school or college only offered subjects in recent years, its results will only appear in ‘All subjects combined‘ category when the ‘All centres’ option is selected.

If you select the ‘Centre types’ option, the visualisation will show 9 school and college types, as categorised in the National Centre Number (NCN) register. Centre types are self-reported by schools, colleges, and other exam centres according to the following categories:

  • Academies
  • Further education establishment
  • Free schools
  • Independent school
  • Secondary comprehensive or middle school
  • Secondary modern school
  • Secondary selective school
  • Sixth form college
  • Other (e.g. college of higher education, university department, tutorial college, language school, special school, pupil referral unit, HM Young Offender Institute, HM Prison, training centre)

The visualision reports the centre types as defined in the NCN register, with one exception. Some selective schools listed in other categories on the NCN register were moved to the ‘Secondary selective school’ category to improve the accuracy of this centre type.

We have used the centre type reported for the summer 2025 awards and applied this categorisation across all years in the visualisation. This may introduce a small proportion of classification errors for earlier years where schools or colleges changed categories before 2025.

If you select ‘State-funded vs Independent’ option, the visualisation will show the following three centre (school or college) types:

  • All state-funded
  • Independent school
  • Other (e.g. college of higher education, university department, tutorial college, language school, special school, pupil referral unit, HM Young Offender Institute, HM Prison, training centre)

Independent and Other categories are the same NCN categories shown in the list above. All state-funded category includes schools and colleges from the remaining NCN categories: Academies, Further education establishment, Free schools, Independent school, Secondary comprehensive or middle school, Secondary modern school, Secondary selective school, Sixth form college.

We have included A level subject groups where:

  • there were centres with results issued in all years covered by the visualisation
  • there were centre types which had at least 10 centres and 100 results issued in all years covered by the visualisation
  • after applying these criteria, the visualisation contained at least one third of all results issued for all years covered by the visualisation.

All the subjects are grouped using the subject groupings established by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ). Most groupings contain a single subject, but some groupings contain multiple subjects. For example, classical subjects include Biblical Hebrew, ancient history, classical civilisation, classical Greek and Latin.

‘All subjects combined‘ is a subject group that includes all subjects. We applied the same inclusion criteria to this group as we did to the other subject groups in the visualisation.

All valid qualification-level results issued on results days which include passing grades and Fails (U) are included.

Students of all ages from centres (schools and colleges) in England who took at least one A level are included.

Grading in summer 2025 and 2024 continued as normal following the return to pre-pandemic standards in summer 2023. Further information for 2025 is available in the Ofqual guide for schools and colleges, the Ofqual student guide 2025 and the Understanding grading: toolkit for schools and colleges. Further information for 2024 is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2024. In summer 2023 the aim was to return to pre-pandemic grading. As in any year, grade boundaries were set based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence. The return to pre-pandemic grading means that national results were lower than in summer 2022. Further information for 2023 is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, summer 2023.

Awarding in summer 2022 was at a midway point between summer 2019 and summer 2021. As in any year, grade boundaries were set based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence. Further information is available in our Guide to AS and A level results in England, summer 2022.

Ahead of summer 2021, the government determined that many exams and assessments could not be held fairly because of the disruption students had faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers were asked instead to submit grades to the exam boards, based on their assessment of what students have shown they know and can do, enabling progression to the next stage of education, training, or employment. Further information is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, 2021.

The summer 2020 exam series was cancelled due to the measures put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Students were awarded either their centre assessment grade or the calculated grade, whichever was the higher. Further information about the alternative arrangements for awarding in summer 2020 is available in our Guide to AS and A level results for England, 2020.

In 2020 and 2021, when GCSE, AS and A level grades were determined by teachers, national outcomes were higher than prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Outcomes were also higher than pre-pandemic in 2022 when grading was at a midway point between summer 2019 and summer 2021. For more information see Ofqual’s approach to grading exams and assessments in summer 2022 and autumn 2021.

To reduce the impact of individual candidates as well as schools and colleges on results, especially where numbers are small, we set minimum thresholds for inclusion. For each subject, a given centre (school or college) type must have at least 100 grades awarded in at least 10 schools or colleges to appear in the charts and tables.

Where subject-centre (school or college) type combinations still involve relatively few schools and colleges, the charts may reflect individual school or college patterns more than broader trends. Such cases should be interpreted with extra caution.

Some subjects may include only a limited proportion of the total grades awarded because of the inclusion criteria outlined above. Where the chart includes less than two-thirds of all grades issued in any given year, the results may not be fully representative and should be interpreted with caution.

For subjects where the visualisation would include less than one-third of all results issued in any given year, charts and tables are omitted.

Data is sent to Ofqual by awarding organisations prior to results day. When Ofqual receives the data, some results may not have been fully processed.

The results issued on results days are provisional and may be changed, for example following a review or appeal initiated by the student or their school or college. Because results are provisional when this visualisation is published, figures may differ from figures that reflect student's final records of achievement.

Our figures may differ slightly from those published by the Department for Education (DfE) and JCQ. There may be differences in data processing, rounding and when data was collected from awarding organisations.

To ensure confidentiality of the data, all figures for the number of results have been rounded to the nearest 5 per Ofqual's rounding policy. Percentages have been calculated based on unrounded values.

We are publishing this data so that students, schools, policy makers and the public can easily access and explore information on qualifications and outcomes.


For any feedback on these graphs, please contact [email protected].

Return to the Ofqual Analytics home page.

If you need an accessible version of this information to meet specific accessibility requirements, please email [email protected] with details of your request.