The East Midlands is home to some great universities, but to make it in, prospective students first have to make it through their A Levels.
That’s why picking the right sixth form college or secondary school to see them through these important exams is vital - laying a strong educational foundation for whatever comes next. But from Derby to Lincoln, and Nottingham to Northampton, the East Midlands is a vast region, and has countless high-performing selective grammar schools, specialist sixth form colleges, and local secondary schools on offer.
We’ve created a league table of state-funded sixth forms, ranking them by their A Level performance point score. This is a scaled score based on the average number of points students managed to achieve across all of the A Level exams they took. Sixty is the highest number possible, equivalent to an A*, but we’ve only selected schools with at at least a B- average.
But grades alone do not a good school make, so we’ve also made sure all of the schools on the list also had an overall Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ before this measure was dropped earlier this month. This means that the quality of education provided, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and student safeguarding were all found to meet or exceed government standards last time the school was inspected.
Here were the 25 schools from across the East Midlands that came out on top:
5. Rushcliffe Spencer Academy
Rushcliffe Spencer is a secondary school and sixth form in West Bridgford, just south of Nottingham. It was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. In the 2022/23 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 39.85 - giving it an average grade of B. | Google
6. Toot Hill School
Toot Hill is a secondary school and sixth form in Bingham, Nottinghamshire. It was formerly rated ‘good’ by Ofsted. In the 2022/23 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 39.54 - giving it an average grade of B. | Google
7. Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School
This is a girls’ secondary school and sixth form in Grantham, Lincolnshire - which works with The King’s School for sixth form (the top performing school on the list). It is selective, meaning students usually need to pass an exam or meet certain entry criteria to get in. It was formerly rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. In the 2022/23 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 39.45 - giving it an average grade of B. | Google
8. Highfields School
Highfields School is an academy in Matlock, Derbyshire. It was formerly rated ‘good’ by Ofsted but has not been rated since it was converted to an academy in 2021. In the 2022/23 academic year, it had an A Level point score of 39.42- giving it an average grade of B. | Google