The North East's 22 best sixth form schools and colleges - based on students' A Level performance

Students across England will be back at school before they know it, in what will be for many the final years of their secondary education.

The two years of study that make up the sixth form can be very important to a young person’s future. Whether they stick with their past secondary school or switch to a specialist sixth form college, this school will need to prepare them for their A Level exams, the results of which can have a big impact on the university they attend - and in some cases on their future career prospects.

With that in mind, we’ve taken a look at some of the best performing state-funded schools that offer a sixth form education across the North East. We have created a league table based on the government’s A Level performance data for the 2022/23 school year, the most recent available.

More specifically, the schools are ranked by their A Level performance point score. This is a scaled score based on the average number of points that its students managed to achieve across all of the A Level exams they took, with 60 being the highest number possible (equivalent to an A*). The schools also have average letter grades for all A Levels taken, with no school on the list below a B- average.

All of the schools on the list are also rated either ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, meaning that the quality of education provided, student behaviour and attitudes, school leadership and management, and student safeguarding have all been found to either meet or exceed government standards.

Here were the 22 schools that came out on top, from across the North East: