Who is counted in a school percentage?

Two percentages, two totals

In 2018 King’s published a GCSE headline for its wider entry and, beside it, a smaller table confined to the subjects already graded 9–1, and the two are easily taken for rival answers to the same question. They aren’t. The headline brings letter and number grades together in a combined band, while the table’s percentages have a total of their own, the numbered entries alone. Our record of the year shows which entries used letters and which used numbers, and why Additional Mathematics is left out.

Ten entries, one child

A pupil sitting ten subjects contributes ten examination entries and remains one child, so entries outnumber pupils in the way a library’s loans outnumber its readers, and a candidate total is the one that counts the children. The arithmetic tangles further when a pupil on one sixth-form route also takes a qualification from another. Each question needs the total that belongs with its result, so King’s numbered-grade subset can’t stand for its whole GCSE entry and stays out of any comparison that requires whole-school numbered grades, though the narrower table remains on the page for what it does show.

No borrowed totals

The 2025 example counts Oxford and Cambridge places among the leavers on King’s destination list, places taken up rather than offers, and its rate rests on that same list’s total of leavers; an offer count, an examination candidate total or university applications would each describe something else. The published count and percentage belong together. Where another school or year gives a count but no matching total of leavers, we report the count and leave the rate blank, however easy it would be to borrow one, since a rate worked out on a borrowed total looks every bit as authoritative as the real thing.

Where these figures come from

Each record gives the full definition, the documents it came from and what we checked.

1. King’s College School, Wimbledon: GCSE results, 2018, transition

   The headline includes subjects on both the letter and numbered grade scales.

   Checked against the original: top two bands and top three bands. Not yet checked: 5 figures, including additional Mathematics entries, candidates and entries.

2. King’s College School, Wimbledon, GCSE/IGCSE 2018: 58.9% of 1,555 entries at grade 9

   The share concerns only subjects using numbered grades. The denominator of the subset percentage.

   This figure hasn’t been fully checked against the original yet.

3. King’s College School, Wimbledon: Leaver destinations, 2025

   Leaver-list places taken up, not offers. The publication’s own share, out of the leavers on its destination list.

   We have not yet identified this figure’s source well enough to check the original. The research references are available in Record details.

• A headline that mixes letter and number grades is not a strict numbered-grade series.
• A denominator found in a different publication is never assumed to belong to the numerator.