Destinations and university progression
What we could actually verify about where maths-school leavers go next — and the DfE dataset that no longer breaks this out officially.
University destinations are the number families care most about, and the number schools are most eager to publish a favourable version of. Here's what we found school by school, and — just as importantly — what the government's own data can and can't currently confirm.
By school
| School | Latest destinations data |
|---|---|
| Exeter Maths School | For 2025, the school's own results page cites 9 students securing Oxbridge places, while a separate source puts it at 4% of the cohort — the two don't reconcile from what we could find, so both are reported rather than one being picked. Separately, 93% of leavers progress to higher education or training, including 66% to Russell Group universities (year not fully confirmed). |
| KCL Maths School | 39% (school's figure) or 42% (King's news coverage) of the 2025 cohort progressed to Oxford or Cambridge; other named destinations include Warwick, Durham, Bath and UCL. In 2024, over 38% went to Oxbridge, with Imperial, UCL, Warwick, Durham, Bristol and Edinburgh also regular destinations. Nine students secured Cambridge places via STEP performance in 2025. |
| Liverpool Maths School | 12% of 2025 leavers progressed to Oxford or Cambridge. The school says the majority of students go on to research-intensive/Russell Group universities to study maths, physics, engineering, computer science or economics, with a growing number choosing degree apprenticeships instead. |
| Cambridge Maths School | Named individual destinations include the University of Cambridge, Bath, Durham, Warwick, Edinburgh and UCL, studying maths, computer science, engineering and natural sciences. No aggregate Oxbridge or Russell Group percentage has been published. |
| Imperial Maths School | 11.6% of the 2025 cohort went to Oxford or Cambridge and 11.6% to Imperial itself; 37 of 43 students got their first-choice university. Other named destinations include Warwick, Bristol, King's College London, Leeds, Nagoya University and L'École Polytechnique. |
| Leeds Maths School | 100% of 2025 leavers secured a university place; 93% at Russell Group or Guardian Top-30 universities; 85% got their first-choice university; 37 students stayed in Yorkshire or the North. Top destinations: Durham (11 places), Leeds (6), York (5), Manchester (4), Warwick (4). No Oxbridge-specific figure was published — Oxbridge doesn't appear among the named top-5 destinations. |
The gap in official data
Tracks sustained destinations (employment, further study) for students who completed 16-18 study, with an 18-month-plus lag — the latest edition covers 2022/23 leavers.
In practice, that means every Oxbridge percentage or Russell Group percentage you'll see on this site — including our own school pages — is sourced from the individual school's own reporting or from network-wide U-Maths figures, not from an official DfE dataset that uses the same categories. We've labelled these as such throughout rather than implying government verification that doesn't currently exist for this specific breakdown.
The network-wide claim
U-Maths' own impact page states that 2024 leavers across the network achieved:
| Figure | What it measures |
|---|---|
| 22% | of 2024 leavers went to Oxford or Cambridge |
| 91% | of 2024 leavers went to a Russell Group or Sutton Trust 30 university |
These are U-Maths' own compiled statistics, not an independent government dataset. DfE's official destination-measures statistics stopped publishing an Oxbridge/Russell Group breakdown in 2020 (they moved to a "top third of higher education institutions by tariff" measure instead), so the 22%/91% figures can't currently be cross-checked against an equivalent government release using the same categories — see our sources page for exactly what DfE does and doesn't publish.
See also: Oxbridge progression rates in detail.