Sixth form results explained: 16 to 18
How to read sixth form results: A level average grades and points, best 3 A levels, AAB, value added progress scores and bands, and retention.
Checked 18 October 2026 against the official sources listed at the end.
For schools with a sixth form, the Department for Education (DfE) publishes 16 to 18 results. ABC Edu shows the 2024/25 results.
Average grades and points
Attainment is “the average point score (APS) per entry, also expressed as an average grade”. It is given separately for A levels, academic, applied general and tech level qualifications — for example an A level average of “B-”, or “Merit+” for applied general qualifications.
The best 3 A levels average, and the percentage of students achieving AAB or better with at least two facilitating subjects, are also published.
Value added (progress)
Value added scores “show how well students did in their qualifications compared to other students with similar prior attainment nationally”. Zero means about the same as similar students nationally.
Each school gets a banding that takes the confidence interval into account: well above average, above average, average, below average or well below average. For example, an A level score of 0.38 or more, with the whole confidence interval above 0, is “well above average”; the DfE’s guidance says this band covers about 5% of schools and colleges.
The DfE files give these bands as numbers from 1 to 5. We show them in words (1 well above average … 5 well below average). The wording was matched by our data research to the DfE’s banding rules, because the file’s notes don’t spell the codes out — see About the data.
Retention
“The percentage of students retained to the end of the core aim of their study programme.”
English and maths progress
For students who didn’t get a grade 4 in English or maths GCSE, this shows “how much grade improvement students made”.
Things to keep in mind
- Small sixth forms can see big swings from year to year, and small numbers are hidden.
- “No entries” means no students took that type of qualification.
- England figures, where shown, are the DfE’s own for state-funded schools in the same year.