Academic Excellence

At St. Mary’s College, academic excellence comes as standard and we have a proud tradition of outstanding academic achievement.

Our 2024 examination results were extremely pleasing:

Continuing the high standards of previous years the ‘Class of 2024’ saw an impressive 40% of A Level students achieve three or more A*, A or B grades, up from 30% last year.

A third of all A Level passes (34%) were at the highest A*/A grades and almost two thirds (64%) were A*, A or B grades.

This year’s A Level candidates also included a significant proportion of ‘straight A’ students with a fifth of the cohort (20%) achieving three or more A* or A grades.

Meanwhile, a third of all GCSE passes (32%) were at the highest 9-7 grades and a fifth of candidates (21%) achieved seven or more 9-7 grades.

More than half of students (56%) celebrated ten or more GCSE passes, with many achieving 11 or even 12 GCSEs. This reflects the broad and balanced curriculum at St. Mary’s and the fact that we do not restrict the number of GCSE subjects students can take.

St. Mary’s College finishes top of the GCSE results table for Sefton most years and last year was no exception:

Our Attainment 8 score of 60.3 is higher than all other state and independent schools in Sefton. This official top ranking reflects the breadth and quality of our curriculum and the excellent academic achievements of our pupils.

St. Mary’s has a great track record in improving students’ performance. We are regularly in the top 5% nationally for ‘value added’, a measure of quality reflecting the extent to which the educational experience enhances pupils’ knowledge, abilities, skills and performance at public examinations beyond predicted levels.

The Mathematics Department annually enters the UKMT Maths Challenge and achieves a range of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals.

St. Mary’s College has been honoured as an Associate School by the Royal Society in recognition of the high quality of science teaching at St. Mary’s over many years.

The vast majority of our students achieve their first choice of university with many of them going to Russell Group universities including Oxford and Cambridge.