Whose results are these?

The population can change between GCSE and A level

Set a school’s GCSE and A-level results from the same summer side by side and they look like a story and its sequel. They aren’t. Different year groups sat them, and even one intake followed on to A level needn’t stay the same pupils, since some leave after GCSEs, others join for the sixth form and the subjects change. Subtract one headline percentage from the other, however tempting the arithmetic, and you learn nothing about how much anyone improved.

Westminster’s own pages show how this happens. Its account of school life describes a sixth form that brings together pupils moving up from the lower school and pupils arriving from elsewhere, and its 16+ page describes the examinations and interviews by which the newcomers are chosen. The later results want reading with that additional selection in mind (the inference is ours). Reading any one year properly would mean knowing which pupils joined it, what they had already achieved and which subjects they took, and a page describing entry as it works today can’t reach back that far.

Westminster: School Life — continuing pupils and external sixth-form entrants

Westminster: 16+ entry — the published selection process

Keep an institutional change attached to its date

Winchester’s 16+ page, when we read it on 21 September 2026, described day and boarding places for boys and girls, including girls’ boarding from September 2026, with school information, assessments, interviews and GCSE conditions as parts of entry. We read it, as it happens, in the very month the girls’ boarding was due to begin, and whatever the change does to the school’s results, if anything, can only be examined once the pupils who take up those places have finished their courses. New heads are owed the same patience. The dates will show which pupils and policies fell within a head’s time, but the results alone can’t separate what one person contributed from changes in the intake, in the subjects taken or in the exams themselves.

Winchester: 16+ entry — current day, boarding and assessment arrangements

A documented process is useful evidence in its own right

Winchester’s page about Div is an odd one for a site about exam results to be reading, since it describes timetabled study beyond the examined subjects. The school’s Futures page – plural, as is only fair to a sixth-former who has yet to choose one – sets out advice on universities, applications, apprenticeships, gap years and careers. These are the school’s words, not an inspector’s, but they give a family particulars to ask about beyond the destination totals, and a visit can follow the threads, to see how pupils use the advice or how a discussion in Div develops. No count of university places can say how much either helped a pupil to a place, since the pupil’s earlier attainment, interests and subject choices all had a hand in it, and so, of course, did the university.

Winchester: Div — the school’s account of its non-examined curriculum

Winchester: Exam Results & Futures — published scope of careers and university adviceOpen the original ↗

The pupils first, then their education

The questions themselves are simple enough to put to a school. Does a figure include the newcomers at 16, and can the school tell them apart from those who stayed on after GCSEs? Do its university applications include former pupils? A bursary scheme tells a family that help is offered and who may apply, but not who attends, which would take knowing who receives the help, in what amounts and with what effect on entry. Then comes the education – the subjects pupils chose, the support on offer and the use they made of it – and the results and the school’s account can each make sense of the other while both keep their dates and year groups attached. Where an answer is missing, you have found your next question.

Where these figures come from

• These pages tell us what each school said about its arrangements when we read them. On how well those arrangements worked, they are no independent witness.
• A school-wide result cannot say how much of it was owed to teaching, selection, leadership, financial support or university preparation.
• Today’s admissions information cannot tell you who made up a past year’s results cohort. For anything that has changed since, the school’s current page is the place to look.