Harrogate A level results: 105 A*s at Ripon Grammar

Sixth formers across Harrogate, Knaresborough and Ripon collected their A level results on Thursday 13 August, and the three schools in the district that published their own figures all reported more than half their grades at A* to B.

Ripon Grammar School’s 164 students took 105 A grades between them. More than 70 per cent of all grades at the school were at A to B and more than 40 per cent at A or A, with eight students scoring four As or more, the school said. Nine students are heading to Oxford and Cambridge, and courses taken up across the year group run from aerospace engineering and architecture to cosmetic science, law, medicine, music, physics, philosophy and sports psychology.

“It is particularly pleasing to see students achieving the very highest grades alongside the many different individual successes across the year group,” said headmaster Jonathan Webb.

Harrogate Grammar: 294 students, 93 per cent placed

Harrogate Grammar School entered the largest cohort of the three, 294 students, and reported 59 per cent of grades at A to B with more than a quarter of all grades at A or A. Twenty seven students achieved four grades at A or A, six of them four As, according to the school.

The destinations figure is the one worth reading twice. Of 259 students who applied to university, 88 per cent of the year group, more than 73 per cent have places at their first choice and 93 per cent have a place of some kind. Others have taken degree apprenticeships at Rolls-Royce, BDO, Grant Thornton and RSM.

“Today we not only celebrate such impressive results, but also a year group who embraced opportunities, supported one another, and demonstrated the ambition and resilience needed to succeed,” said headteacher Neil Renton. The director of sixth form, Ben Twitchin, added: “They challenged themselves, supported their peers and approached their studies with determination and maturity.”

King James’s, Knaresborough: 90 per cent of applicants placed

At King James’s School in Knaresborough, more than half of grades were at A* to B and 90 per cent of students who applied to university secured a place, North Yorkshire Council reported on results day. Headteacher Miriam Oakley called them “a fantastic set of results and a real testimony to their hard work”.

Two things are worth saying before anyone reads the chart above as a league table. Ripon Grammar is a selective school: students sit an entrance test in early September of Year 6, covering verbal reasoning, English comprehension, spelling and grammar, non-verbal reasoning and maths, and strict oversubscription criteria apply. Its grade profile reflects a different intake from a school that admits everyone in its catchment. And the three schools have published different measures: only two of them gave an A* to A figure, and cohort sizes range from 164 to 294.

How the district compares with the country

Nationally, 28.3 per cent of A levels were awarded at A* or A this summer, up from 28.2 per cent last year, across 835,950 A levels taken by 320,505 students at 2,835 schools and colleges, Ofqual said on results day. Its verdict on the national picture was that “A Level outcomes are stable, with small changes only, largely driven by subject entry patterns”.

Against that benchmark, Ripon Grammar’s “more than 40 per cent” at A* or A sits well clear of the national rate, and Harrogate Grammar’s “more than a quarter” sits close to it. Entries grew 2.7 per cent on last year, which Ofqual notes is slower than the 4.3 per cent growth in the 18 year old population, so A level take-up did not keep pace with the size of the year group.

What it means for you

If a grade looks wrong, the clock is already running, and the school has to act rather than the student. For internal candidates, exam boards “will only accept requests for reviews of marking from centres and not from candidates or their parents”, JCQ rules state. Two deadlines apply this year:

• 20 August 2026 for the priority service, which exists for students whose university place depends on the outcome. This is the one to ring the school about now.
• 24 September 2026 for a standard review of marking.

A review needs the candidate’s written consent, given after results are published, and consent has to be informed: a mark can go down as well as up, and so can the grade. The school’s exams office is the route in for anyone still holding an offer that hinges on a grade boundary.

For students who did not get the grades they needed, the place to start is the school’s own sixth form team, which has the Ucas track record and the direct lines to admissions offices. North Yorkshire Council’s corporate director for children and young people’s services, El Mayhew, congratulated “thousands of pupils across the county” in the council’s results day statement.

We have covered the schools that published their own results. If your school, college or sixth form in the Harrogate district has figures it wants on the record, send them to the newsdesk and we will add them.