Comparison
Cambridge Maths School vs. Imperial Maths School
A prestige pairing between two 2023-opened schools. Full detail, sourcing and caveats are on each school's own page — this table is a starting point for comparison, not a replacement for reading both.
| Cambridge Maths School | Imperial Maths School | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Open | Open |
| Location | Mill Road, Cambridge | Finchley, North London (on the Woodhouse College site) |
| Sponsor | University of Cambridge | Imperial College London |
| Opened | 2023 | 2023 |
| Age range | 16–19 | 16–19 |
| Capacity | 200 | 200 |
| Current roll | 99 students (60 Year 12, 39 Year 13) at the April 2026 Ofsted inspection; 0% FSM-eligible | 104 students at the April 2025 Ofsted visit; a third intake of 66 joined in September 2025 |
| Boarding | No boarding — day school. | No boarding facilities — day school. |
| Catchment | Admissions give sequential priority to applicants living in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Luton, Norfolk, Peterborough or Suffolk (FSM-eligible applicants from those counties first, then state-school applicants from those counties, then any resident of those counties) before falling back to highest applicant score nationally. | No formal priority-county or borough policy found — described only as serving "North London and its surrounds" with no stated hard boundary. |
| GCSE requirements | 7 GCSEs at grade 5+ predicted; Maths grade 8 or 9 predicted; Combined Science 8-8+ predicted (or grade 8+ in the separate science to be studied); English Language grade 5+ predicted. | Grade 8 or 9 in GCSE Maths; Grade 7+ in the relevant science (Physics and/or Chemistry, or Combined Science); Grade 5+ in English Language or Literature; an average of grade 7 across your best six GCSEs (for the 3 A-level route) or 7.5 across your best eight including English and Maths (for the 4 A-level route). |
| Admissions deadline | For 2026 entry: applications opened 16 October 2025 and closed 13 January 2026; aptitude test 7 February 2026; interviews 2–13 March 2026; conditional offers by end of March 2026; enrolment on GCSE results day in August 2026. | The 2026-entry deadline was Thursday 8 January 2026 (now closed); test 18 January 2026; interviews February 2026; offers March–April 2026; enrolment confirmed on GCSE results day in August 2026. |
| Latest results | 2025: 53% A* | 2025: 93.5% A*-A |
| Ofsted | "Exceptional" — the highest available category — across every area assessed under the current framework | Not yet fully inspected — a monitoring visit rated "significant progress" on all three assessed themes |
Cambridge Maths School
Rated "Exceptional" — Ofsted's top category — in every area of its first full inspection, April 2026.
Imperial College London Mathematics School
Opened 2023 — first-ever results ranked 2nd nationally among state schools in The Times' 2025 table.
See also: Cambridge Maths School admissions · Imperial Maths School admissions · all comparisons