This statistical release focuses on the A level and other results of students at the end of 16-18 study in 2024/25 in schools and colleges in England. This provisional release includes student characteristic breakdowns such as disadvantage status, Special Educational Needs status and ethnicity.
Comparisons are made to revised data for 2023/24.
B-
No change in average grade from 2023/24 (35.55 points to 35.94 points)
Merit+
No change in average grade from 2023/24 (29.17 points to 29.95 points)
Merit+
No change in average grade from 2023/24 (28.14 points to 28.84 points)
L2Merit-
No change in average grade from 2022/23 (5.63 to 5.60 points)
View tables that we have built for you, or create your own tables from open data using our table tool
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Download all data available in this release as a compressed ZIP file
All supporting files from this release are listed for individual download below:
Transition matrices data used for visualising the progress of pupils aged 16 to 18 from key stage 4 (KS4) to key stage 5 (KS5).
Instructions to accompany the transition matrices data.
Statistics in this release for 2024/25 include grades received by students as announced on 14th August 2025. The exam grades have been matched to students to enable student level analyses.
Breakdowns of the A/AS level grades achieved in summer 2025 were previously published on results day by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) (opens in new tab). These statistics were at exam entry level for students of all ages in England and the UK. However, data in this statistical release covers exam entries by 16 to 18 year olds in schools and colleges in England.
T Level outcomes are not included in this statistical release, but provisional results for 2024/25 were published by DfE in August for students who had started a T Level in England in 2023/24.
In addition, Ofqual (opens in new tab) also routinely publish statistics on results day for students in England.
Performance measures are based on grades awarded throughout a student’s 16-18 study. In 2025, all performance data is based on externally assessed exams.
Where time series data is presented, comparisons are made to revised data for previous years (with the exception of 2019/20 and 2020/21 where no checking exercise took place; those data are labelled ‘final’ reflecting the opportunity students unhappy with grades awarded through the CAG and TAG awarding processes had to sit an exam in autumn 2020 (opens in new tab)and 2021 (opens in new tab)).
Students are eligible to be included in 16 to 18 performance measures if they are of academic age 16, 17 or 18 at the start of the 2024/25 academic year (31 August 2024) and at the end of their 16-18 studies. They are identified as being at the end of 16-18 study when they first meet at least one of the following criteria:
a) they have entered at least 2 qualifications, each of which is at least the size of an A level, or they have entered at least 1 qualification the size of at least 2 A levels, in the reporting year; OR
b) they have entered for both a T Level core and T Level occupational specialism during 16-18 study OR
c) they are 18 at the start of the reporting year and have not been reported in 16 to 18 performance measures at their current allocated school or college.
Schools or colleges are still able to defer students who meet criteria a) or b) but who are continuing their 16-18 study, as part of the checking exercise, as long as the student has not reached age 18 before the start of the reporting year. Requests for deferred reporting are reflected in ‘revised’ data.
Note, a student eligible for reporting in 16 to 18 performance measures will still also need to meet criteria for each performance measure to be included in that measure. For example, to be included in the average point score per A level entry, the student must have been entered for at least an AS qualification.
Unless stated otherwise, statistics reported here refer to 16 to 18 year olds in England:
- who reached the end of their 16-18 study in 2024/25. Students typically spend either two or three years in the 16 to 18 phase. Usually, attainment includes results from qualifications entered during all those years. However, for data labelled 2022/23 and 2021/22, attainment excludes results from qualifications that were awarded between January 2020 and August 2021.
- who entered qualifications approved for reporting in 2025 school and college performance tables, set out in the 16 to 18 qualifications, discount codes and point scores (opens in new tab) guidance.
- at state-funded schools and colleges or independent schools in England; more details set out in Annex A of the Methodology.
Some of this year’s 2024/25 cohort’s prior attainment was impacted by changes to grading approaches during the pandemic
The majority of the students included in this release finished within two years of study. This means the majority reached the end of key stage 4 when grading approach had returned to normal. However, some students who remained into their third year of study would have ended their key stage 4 study in 2021/22 when the approach to grading broadly reflected a midpoint between results in 2018/19 and 2020/21. Larger proportions of students remain into their third year of study in the applied general (18%), tech level (34%) and below Level 3 English and maths cohorts (89% and 83% respectively) than A level students (5%). This should be taken into account when comparing to 2018/19 and earlier when students were not impacted by changes to grading approaches in either their prior attainment or 16 to 18 attainment.
Qualifications are grouped into A level (subset of Academic), applied general, and tech level exam cohorts at level 3, and technical certificates at level 2. Applied general, tech level and technical certificates are ‘vocational and technical qualifications’ (VTQs). Students can be reported in more than one exam cohort. Further detail on the cohorts is available in 16 to 18 accountability headline measures: technical guide (opens in new tab).
The number of students in the level 3 cohort has fallen
Compared to 2023/24, the number of students at the end of 16-18 study has increased by 3.0%, however the number of students in the level 3 cohort has fallen by 1.9%. This decrease is largely driven by the tech level cohort, which like last year, has continued to reduce, falling by 9.1%.
The A level cohort, which includes some students who just enter AS levels, has remained relatively level, unlike in previous years which has seen a steady rise. This was following an initial decline when A and AS levels were decoupled during A level reform (opens in new tab).
The increase in the A level cohort size in 2021/22 and 2022/23 coincided with more students getting higher GCSE grades at KS4 two years earlier when students received centre-assessment and teacher assessed grades (CAGs and TAGs).
In 2024/25 the technical certificate cohort (who generally enter the qualification in their first year of their 16 to 18 study) has increased compared to last year (4.9%). Lower student numbers in 2021/22 and 2022/23 were due to removing grades awarded through CAG/TAG, where the pattern of early entries meant this cohort was more strongly impacted (see section ‘Changes introduced in the 2021/22 release’ of the Methodology).
Disadvantaged status at 16 to 18 is as recorded at the end of Key Stage 4. Pupils are defined as disadvantaged at Key Stage 4 if they are known to have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the past six years (from year 6 to year 11), if they are recorded as having been looked after for at least one day or if they are recorded as having been adopted from care.
Disadvantage measures do not include students who were not reported at the end of KS4 – for example, because they came from overseas. Students who were known to be at independent schools in their last year of KS4 are treated as non-disadvantaged.
Disadvantage measures cover students in state-funded schools or colleges during 16-18 study.
At the end of 16-18 study, 22.7% of state-funded students were recorded as being disadvantaged in 2024/25. Disadvantaged students continue to be overrepresented in the technical certificate cohort and underrepresented in the A level cohort, with 30.8% and 13.4% respectively being disadvantaged.
Prior attainment is a measure of the average points attained per qualification at Key Stage 4. Simple discounting rules apply, with the best result in any subject used when calculating the average point score at KS4. Any GCSE resits or additional qualifications gained during 16 to 18 study are ignored. For the vast majority of students, prior attainment is between 0-9, reflecting the range of possible grades at GCSE (where 9 is the highest grade).
Note, whilst results from January 2020 to August 2021 are removed from calculation of performance measures, for the purposes of this statistical release they will be retained when calculating a student’s prior attainment to explain outcomes in performance measures, in the same way that outcomes nationally are broken down by sex, disadvantage, etc.
In 2024/25, 15.1% of students at the end of their 16-18 study had the highest prior attainment (grade 7+). This year is the second consecutive year the proportion of students with the highest prior attainment has decreased since 2019/20 (when this prior attainment data was introduced). The drop observed in the last two years, however, is expected in response to the changes to awarding processes at KS4. The majority of the 2024/25 16-18 cohort completed KS4 in 2022/23, which was the first year of the return to pre-pandemic grading. Similarly, the majority of the 2023/24 16-18 cohort completed KS4 in 2021/22, when the approach to grading broadly reflected a midpoint between results in 2018/19 and 2020/21. As a result, the expected prior attainment at KS4 will generally be lower than seen in previous years and this is reflected in the prior attainment proportions.
The proportion of students with high prior attainment within each cohort has fallen this year when compared to last year. The A level cohort has the highest proportion of students with high prior attainment, at 29.8%, and the technical certificate cohort has the highest proportion of students with low prior attainment (65.2% of the cohort). This is the first increase in the proportion of technical certificate students with low prior attainment seen since this prior attainment data was introduced.
These figures give the average points and average result that students achieved throughout their 16 to 18 study. Points are given to all qualifications so we can compare qualifications of different size and grading structures. A maximum of 60 points are available for A level, 50 points for applied general and tech level and 8 points for technical certificates.
The concept of qualifications approved for reporting has been applied since 2015/16 following Professor Alison Wolf's Review of Vocational Education (opens in new tab). From 2017/18 at level 3 and from 2018/19 for technical certificates, the quality threshold for vocational and technical qualifications to be included in performance measures further increased. The later reforms include criteria relating to the size, content, and assessment, including a requirement that a proportion of a qualification's content is subject to external assessment.
More information on points, average point score bands and grade boundaries can be found in the 16 to 18 accountability headline measures: technical guide (opens in new tab).
The A level average point score per entry (APS) has risen from 35.55 to 35.94 when compared to last year. (NB, for all level 3 qualifications a change in 1pt corresponds to a change of 1/10th of a grade; meaning this slight annual increase in A level attainment of 0.4 pts translates into an increase of just 4/100ths of a grade).
Across the applied general and tech level cohorts the APS has risen slightly when compared to last year, by 0.8pts and 0.7pts respectively.
The A level average point score (APS) has increased slightly when compared to last year for most major institution types, except for ‘All independent schools’ which fell by 0.2pts. The greatest rise was for ‘Sixth form colleges’, with a small increase of 0.6pts compared to last year. Further detail is provided in the table for different types of state-funded schools showing some variation in the size of the increases in A level APS seen this year. Note that data for some institution types is based on small numbers of students.
‘Sixth form colleges’ also saw the largest increase in APS across the four major institution types for the applied general and tech level cohorts, with increases of 1.0pts and 1.6pts respectively.
At regional level, London and the South East have consistently achieved the highest average point scores (APS) within the A level cohort over the last 5 years, and that continues to be the case this year. All regions have seen a rise in A level APS this year compared to last year, except the North East, which has fallen by 0.3pts from last year.
The North West and the South West have the highest average attainment for the applied general and tech level cohorts this year respectively. For the applied general cohort, the APS has increased across all regions compared to last year. The largest increase is seen in London, with a rise of 1.1pts compared to 2023/24. The APS for the tech level cohort has also increased across all regions. The North East saw the largest increase in APS at 1.3pts.
These regional aggregations, however, mask much more varied APS at the level of local authorities. For this reason, users should exercise caution when making geographical generalisations.
Disadvantage status at 16-18 is as recorded at the end of Key Stage 4. Pupils are defined as disadvantaged at Key Stage 4 if they are known to have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the past six years (from year 6 to year 11), if they are recorded as having been looked after for at least one day or if they are recorded as having been adopted from care.
Disadvantage measures do not include students who were not reported at the end of KS4 – for example, because they came from overseas. Students who were known to be at independent schools in their last year of KS4 are treated as non-disadvantaged.
Disadvantage measures, and all breakdowns including disadvantage status, cover students in state-funded schools or colleges only.
In 2024/25, the average point scores (APS) for both disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students have increased slightly compared to last year for each of the A level, applied general, and tech level cohorts.
The A level cohort disadvantage gap has narrowed to 4.6pts, 0.3pts lower than last year. The applied general cohort disadvantage gap has also slightly decreased by 0.2pts from last year, now at 2.1pts, however the tech level disadvantage gap has remained almost level at 3.0 pts this year.
To get a fuller picture on the impact of disadvantaged status, this data should be looked at in conjunction with data on retention rates (the percentage of students who have completed their main study programme at a provider). In 2023/24, 92.7% of non-disadvantaged A level students were retained and assessed compared to 84.7% of disadvantaged students. Students can only be included in the APS measure if they are entered for examination i.e. if they are retained and assessed. More information on 2023/24 retention can be found in the 2023/24 version of this statistical release. An update to this statistical release with 2024/25 retention figures is expected to be released in March/April 2026.
Within the A level and applied general cohort, female students continue to achieve higher average point scores (APS) compared to male students, as has been the trend for the past five years. For A level students, the gap has decreased in comparison to last year, with a difference of 0.9pts in favour of females from 1.2pts. For applied general students the gap is slightly narrower, falling from 2.6pts last year to 2.4pts this year.
For the second consecutive year, the attainment gap between female and male tech level students is in favour of male students. The gap has widened slightly to 0.5pts in favour of males from 0.3pts last year.
The proportion of male students who are disadvantaged (12.5%) and female students who are disadvantaged (14.2%) is broadly similar at A level.
The disadvantage gap is similar for female and male A level students (4.6pts and 4.7pts respectively). The female and male disadvantage gaps have been gradually closing for the past 4 years, and they are narrower than last year where the disadvantage gaps were 5.0pts and 4.9pts for female and male students respectively.
For applied general and tech level students, the disadvantage gaps for female and male students are lower than for A level students, however for both cohorts the disadvantage gaps are wider for female students than for male students. Within the applied general cohort, the disadvantage gaps are 2.4pts and 2.0pts for female and male students respectively, and for tech level students the disadvantage gaps are 3.7pts and 2.2pts for female and male students respectively.
Ethnicity is as reported at the end of Key Stage 4. Not all student characteristics are reported for students at independent schools; in this case ethnicity is recorded as unknown. In 2023/24 ethnicity groupings were harmonised to align with Government Statistical Service (GSS) standards (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab) such that the Chinese ethnicity fell within the Asian or Asian British group.
At A level, most ethnicities had broadly similar attainment except for Black or Black British students, which had an average points score (APS) at least 2.2pts lower than that of any other major ethnic group. White students achieved the highest APS, 3.4pts higher than that of Black or Black British students.
The rank order of attainment by ethnicity has remained almost unchanged at A level for the past five years, including through the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes to the grading processes.
Asian or Asian British students achieved the highest APS within the applied general and tech level cohorts (30.6pts and 29.7pts respectively).
At A level, 9.5% of White students, 18.2% of Asian or Asian British students, 20.6% of Mixed Dual background students, 33.6% of Black or Black British students, and 34.9% of ‘any other ethnic group’ students had disadvantage status. This ordering has changed slightly from previous years, where Black or Black British students had the highest proportion of disadvantaged students. The proportion of disadvantaged students will impact on each ethnic group’s overall APS.
Across all level 3 cohorts, non-disadvantaged students attained a higher APS than disadvantaged students across all ethnicity groups.
At A level, the disadvantaged gap is largest for students from the White ethnic group (5.2pts) and smallest for students from the Black or Black British ethnic group (1.7pts). For the ‘any other ethnic group’ students, the disadvantage gap has widened slightly this year compared to last year by0.3pts. The disadvantage gap for students within the remaining ethnic major groups have narrowed by 0.1pts for Asian or Asian British students, 0.2pts for White students, and 0.4pts for Black or Black British, and Mixed Dual background students.
The A level attainment gap has decreased this year by 0.6pts to 26.4pts, from 27.0pts in 2023/24. However, this still remains higher than in previous years.
Note that the number of students in each cohort from each prior attainment band varies between cohorts. At A level, 29.8%, 64.4% and 2.9% of students had a prior attainment of 7+, 4 to 7 and 0 to 4, respectively.
This year, the percentage of the A level cohort with an EHC plan is 0.6%, and the percentage with SEN support is 4.6%. The number of A level students with an EHC plan has increased by 9.2% compared to last year, and the number of students with SEN support has increased by 6.3%. The number of students with no identified SEN has fallen by 0.7%.
In 2024/25, the A level average points score (APS) has risen by 1.3pts for students with an EHC plan compared with 2023/24, while the APS has risen by 0.9pts for students with SEN support. Students with no identified SEN have also seen an increase in APS by 0.5pts.
Breakdowns of other student characteristics such as first language, free school meals status, and detailed ethnicity and SEN breakdowns, including these broken down further by disadvantage status, are available in the create your own tables sections of this statistical release: Create your own tables, Table Tool – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)
The English and maths progress measure has returned this year following a period of absence since 2021/22 due to the impact of excluding CAG/TAG grades on this performance measure. Since August 2014, students on 16-19 study programmes of 150 hours or more who do not hold a GCSE grade 9-4 (or equivalent qualification) in English and/or maths, are required to study these subjects under Condition of Funding rules.
The 2024/25 English and maths cohort is still impacted by changes to grading approaches during the pandemic
In 2019/20, grades were awarded via centre assessed grades (CAGs), in 2020/21 via teacher assessed grades (TAGs), and in 2021/22, whilst exams returned, the approach to grading broadly reflected a midpoint between results in 2018/19 and 2020/21.
The majority of the students included in this release finished within two years of study. This means the majority reached the end of key stage 4 when grading approach had returned to normal.
However, a large proportion of students (89% and 83% respectively) that take below Level 3 English or maths remain into their third year of study and so would have ended their key stage 4 study in 2021/22. CAGs and TAGs resulted in higher prior attainment and as none of the 2024/25 cohort were awarded these at key stage 4, below Level 3 entries have increased as more have needed to resit. However, many of the 2024/25 English and maths cohort would still have had their key stage 4 attainment adjusted by the mid-point approach and so they are not yet a comparable cohort to pre-pandemic.
Of the students in scope for the measure, 81.1% of students entered an approved English qualification, and 82.3% of students entered an approved maths qualification. Of these students, a higher proportion of the cohort improved their point score (38.7% and 33.2% for English and maths respectively) whilst 27.3% (English) and 33.5% (maths) remained the same and 15.1% (English) and 15.6% (maths) scored lower.
A higher proportion of non-disadvantaged students entered an approved English or maths qualification compared to disadvantaged students. The average progress of disadvantaged students was generally lower than non-disadvantaged students too, with those studying English achieving an average of 0pts progress and those studying maths achieving an average of -0.1pts progress.
Most students in scope for the measure are studying at either ‘All state-funded schools’ or ‘Other FE sector colleges’. The proportion of students studying an approved English or maths qualification is highest at ‘Sixth form colleges’ (88.7% and 89.4% for English and Maths respectively) and lowest at ‘All independent schools’ (36.1% and 46.3% for English and Maths respectively). ‘Sixth form colleges’ also have the highest average progress points made in each respective subject whilst also having the highest average prior attainment for students in scope for the measure.
These data are available through the ‘Explore data and files used in this release’ section in the files called ‘Time series – APS entry by institution type’ and ‘Time series – A level subject entries and grade by sex.
In addition, all the data is accessible through the dashboard linked below. The dashboard combines provisional data for 2024/25 from this statistical release with selected historical data compiled from previous versions of the ‘A level and other 16 to 18 results’ statistical release:
16-18 Time-series attainment and single year entries (opens in new tab)
The transition matrices (TM) are available through the dashboard 16-18 Transition Matrices (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab) and in the ‘Additional supporting files' section of this release, along with instructions for their use.
Transition matrices are a useful tool to help visualise the progression from different groups of attainment at key stage 4 (KS4) to outcomes achieved during 16 to 18 for a range of different subjects.
The ready reckoner (RR) is available through the dashboard 16-18 Ready Reckoner (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab).
The 16-18 ready reckoner is a tool that can be used to both understand the value added model better, and to manipulate student data and inform target setting.
Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics.
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