How far can Winchester’s results be followed from Pre-U into A levels?

Pre-U, 2011–2019

Pre-U grades, with names like M1 and M2 that would look more at home on a road sign, need translating, and the same mapping serves every school. On TSR’s scale D1–D2 corresponds to A* or equivalent, D1–D3 to A*–A or equivalent and D1–M2 to A*–B or equivalent. The bands are cumulative. For each of these years the comparison uses a Winchester Pre-U publication selected for it, and every figure says what its source covers. The selected Pre-U table for 2019 gives 67.4% at D1–D3, and that is the very percentage the comparison uses for A*–A or equivalent that year; only the name of the band changes.

The join, and after

Then comes the join. The teacher-assessed years, 2020 and 2021, stay outside the default comparison, the 2022 figure covers A-level entries only, and the A-level example is the retained final 2023 result table, read at its own A*–A band. For 2025 the publication review – our name for deciding which table speaks for which year – chose the Times percentages, and a source that prints only percentages cannot give us an exact entry total or grade count. We keep the precision it published, and the missing totals stay missing.

What the join can’t say

A school changing qualification may also be changing its subjects, its entry arrangements or the pupils who sit the examinations, so a rise or fall across the join cannot say which change mattered, and the common mapping compares the bands without pretending to know. A*–A or equivalent will carry you across. For anything finer, the separate A-level and Pre-U tables will tell you more about either side of the join than the line through it.

Where these figures come from

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

1. Winchester College, Pre-U 2019: 20.2% of 476 entries at D1

   The Pre-U band used for A*–A or equivalent in the approved comparison series.

   Publications differ on at least one figure here. Checked against the original: 7 figures, including D1, D1–D2 and D1–D3.

2. Winchester College, A level 2023: 42.4% of 481 entries graded A*

   A separate A-level grade band, not a converted Pre-U percentage.

   Checked against the original: 7 figures, including A*, A*–A and A*–B.

• These examples cannot put a number on what changing qualification did to the results.
• Each year in the comparison uses its selected publication. The original records keep the grades, the qualification scope and the history of each source.