The free, open-source alternative to ALPs

See where your students can reach — long before results day.

Himalayas turns prior GCSE attainment into fast, evidence-based A-level predictions — a clear grade and tolerance band for every subject, drawn from 3.1 million real results. Built for teachers, heads of department and senior leaders. Free forever, with every formula published in the open.

Predict grades →
✓ 100% free ✓ No sign-up ✓ Runs in your browser ✓ MIT licensed
The Predictor

Enter a student, get their forecast

Add a student's prior attainment to model their likely A-level outcomes. Nothing you type leaves your device — want to explore first? Load a random student in one click.

1 · GCSE prior attainment

9 = top · 1 = low

Tap +/− to set a grade. Leave subjects you didn't take blank.

{{ g.name }}
{{ g.label }}
Mean GCSE score {{ meanLabel }}

2 · A-level choices

Select the subjects the student is taking.

3 · Context — optional

Contextual factors nudge the model, exactly as published.

Disadvantaged / Pupil Premium
English as an Additional Language
Month of birth
Prior attendance {{ attLabel }}

{{ errorMsg }}

Running the model…

The forecast

Based on a mean GCSE of {{ meanLabel }}. Bands show the range within which each grade is most likely to land — a guide for target-setting, not a guarantee.

{{ r.name }}
likely range {{ r.rangeLabel }} · {{ r.conf }}% confidence
{{ r.grade }}
UEDCBAA*
Best-guess A-level profile
{{ summaryGrades }}
Roughly {{ overallConf }}% average confidence across the subjects. Predictions update the moment you tweak an input — recalculate any time.
Whole class

Predict a whole cohort at once

Upload a spreadsheet of students and get every forecast in one table. Download the sample, replace the rows with your own, and drop it back in.

⬇ Download sample spreadsheet {{ batchFileName }}

Columns: Name · GCSE Grades · Subject 1–4 · Disadvantaged · EAL · Birth Month · Attendance

Running the model on your cohort…

{{ batchError }}

{{ batchCount }} students forecast

Student
Prior band
Predicted grades
Profile
Conf.
{{ r.name }}
{{ r.band }}
{{ s.label }}
{{ r.profile }}
{{ r.conf }}
The method

How the forecast is built

No black box, no proprietary score. Every prediction is read straight from real national results — here's the whole pipeline, start to finish.

01

Prior attainment

Average the student's GCSEs into one 9–1 score — the same measure Ofqual uses as the A-level starting point.

02

Attainment band

That score drops the student into a national band — from <1 up to 9+ — the rows of the matrix below.

03

Empirical lookup

For each subject, read the real grade distribution for students who started in that band — pooled over four years, cohort-weighted.

04

Forecast

The distribution's centre is the predicted grade; its spread sets the tolerance band and confidence. Context factors nudge the result.

The data

Built on 3.1 million real results

Every forecast is read from 3,113,847 real A-level results in the DfE's official 16–18 transition matrices — the grades actually achieved across England over four years, grouped by the level students started from. The grid shows one real slice: A-level Biology. Read across a row for the likely spread of grades in that band; the bright diagonal is prior attainment carrying through to results.

3.1M results 63 A-level subjects 2022–2025 Official DfE data
less likely more likely
A*
A
B
C
D
E
U
4–5
·
0.8
3.4
11
24
32
28
5–6
·
2.0
9.6
24
31
24
9.5
6–7
0.7
8.1
24
33
23
9.4
2.2
7–8
5.7
30
35
20
7.1
1.8
·
8–9
36
43
16
3.6
0.8
·
·
9+
69
21
5.9
2.4
·
0.6
·
A-level Biology · % achieving each grade, by GCSE prior-attainment band · DfE 2025
The context factors

Every factor, grounded in published research

The core forecast is built on prior attainment alone. On top, four optional context factors refine it — and unlike the black-box products, every one is anchored to a published national statistic, no invented weightings. Here is each factor, with its source:

Factor
Adjustment
Anchored to
Disadvantaged / PP
−0.11 grade
DfE 2024/25 A-level disadvantage gap of 4.6 pts (≈0.46 grade). Most of that is prior attainment — already captured — so only the within-band residual is applied.
EAL
+0.06 grade
FFT: EAL pupils average Progress 8 of +0.55 vs −0.09 for first-language English. Attenuated for A-level to a modest positive.
Summer-born
−0.02 grade
Near-zero on purpose: the relative-age effect largely washes out by A-level (Cambridge Assessment review), and the DfE prior-attainment measure is already age-standardised.
Attendance
+0.01 / point
DfE 2025: moving up one 5% attendance band raises the chance of the expected outcome ~10% at KS4. Extrapolated to A-level — the weakest-evidenced of the four.

Every coefficient, derivation and source is served openly at /model — audit it, question it, improve it. And this is just the foundation: our roadmap takes prediction further with pupil-level research data. See where we're headed →

Why open source?

Grade prediction shapes real futures. Teachers deserve to see — and question — the maths behind every target they set.

🔍

Fully transparent

Every coefficient, benchmark and formula is published. No proprietary scoring, no hidden weightings.

🎓

Free for everyone

Students, tutors, teachers and whole schools — no licence fees, no per-seat pricing, no demo calls.

🛠️

Yours to improve

Fork it, audit it, recalibrate it on your own results. Contributions make the model better for all.

The roadmap

From national averages to true personalisation

Today's model reads the best free national data. The next leap comes from pupil-level records — and we have a clear, legitimate path to get there.

● Live today

Free national data

3.1M real A-level results from the DfE transition matrices, plus context factors anchored to published research. Free for every school, forever.

◆ Next

University research partnership

A public-benefit project with a leading education faculty, analysing the National Pupil Database inside the ONS Secure Research Service — the only legitimate route to pupil-level data.

◇ Then

Richer, published matrices

Predictions conditioned on subject-specific GCSEs, school type and deprivation decile — disclosure-checked, published as open aggregates, and free for anyone to build on.

🎓

Our goal: a research partnership with the University of Cambridge

We aim to work with the University of Cambridge's education researchers on the question that matters most — what predicts A-level outcomes beyond mean GCSE? The National Pupil Database can answer it: GCSE-to-A-level linkage alongside free-school-meals, ethnicity, SEN, deprivation and school type. It can't be used commercially, but a university public-benefit project can study it and publish the results openly — so richer predictions reach every school, college and local authority for free. Slower, but legitimate, and built to last.

Help every school climb higher

Himalayas is built and maintained in the open. Star the repo, open an issue, or send a pull request — and if you're a school with historical results, help us calibrate.

git clone https://github.com/learnanything1234/himalayas