Birmingham's own Department for Education results for GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature — two separate exams, compared school by school.
Book a Free ConsultationBirmingham's 2024/25 GCSE English results, from Department for Education data, show the city above the England average in both GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature — two separate qualifications with different specifications and different results, not one combined ‘GCSE English’ outcome. 71% of Birmingham pupils reached grade 4 or above in English Language against England's 70%, and 75% reached grade 4 or above in English Literature against England's 73%.
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Our expert GCSE English tutors help students across Birmingham with both Language and Literature, across AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas — because Birmingham's own results show the two exams do not move together, and a programme aimed at only one of them leaves half the grade unaddressed.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppGCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature are separate qualifications, set and graded independently, and Department for Education data treats them that way. In England's state-funded schools in 2024/25, 70% of pupils reached grade 4 or above in English Language against 73% in English Literature, and 54% against 57% at grade 5 or above. The two subjects have moved within a point or two of each other for three years running, but never at the same level — Literature consistently outscores Language nationally, not because it sits on an easier syllabus, but because the two exams are not graded to match one another.
Grade boundaries for both exams are set under what exam boards call comparable outcomes. OCR's assessment standards team explained the approach in a blog published on 10 August 2026: "Comparable outcomes is the approach used by all awarding organisations when setting grade boundaries for general qualifications (GCSEs, AS and A Levels)... This is used to create predicted outcomes for the cohort being awarded for each qualification." Each qualification is awarded against its own cohort's prior attainment, not against an assumption that Language and Literature should land in the same place — which is exactly why a student who is strong at close reading of a set text and weaker at the directed, timed writing tasks in Language, or the reverse, can walk away with two different grades from what a parent may think of as one subject.
One further figure gets attributed to English more often than any other, and it should not be: "the percentage of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs" — 45.4% in Birmingham in 2024/25, exactly level with England's 45.4%. That is a joint pass measure. A pupil only counts towards it if they clear grade 5 in maths as well as in English, so it says nothing about how Birmingham pupils perform in English Language or English Literature on their own — a school with strong English results but weaker maths results can post a mediocre combined figure that its English department did not cause.
Birmingham's own 2024/25 figures sit above England's in both subjects. 71% of Birmingham pupils reached grade 4 or above in English Language, against 70% in England's state-funded schools, and 55% reached grade 5 or above, against 54% nationally. In English Literature the gap is wider: 75% of Birmingham pupils reached grade 4 or above, against England's 73%, and 60% reached grade 5 or above, against England's 57%. Birmingham's Literature lead over England — two points at grade 4, three points at grade 5 — is larger than its Language lead of one point at each threshold. Full figures sit in the Department for Education's own subject-level table.
A second DfE measure tells the same story a different way. The Attainment 8 score for the English element specifically — the points a pupil's best English GCSE contributes to the wider Attainment 8 calculation, not a percentage — stood at 10.1 for Birmingham pupils in 2024/25, against 9.8 for England. That is a genuinely English-specific figure, unlike the whole-school Attainment 8 average or a progress score, both of which cover every subject a pupil takes and say nothing about English on its own. The Department for Education has in any case not published a Progress 8 score for 2024/25 or 2025/26 at all, because pupils in these cohorts sat no Key Stage 2 tests to provide a starting baseline.
Three years of data show the two subjects moving differently rather than together. Birmingham's English Language grade-5-or-above rate ran 54% in 2022/23, rose to 57% in 2023/24, then eased back to 55% in 2024/25. English Literature's grade-5-or-above rate took the opposite shape: 59%, a dip to 58%, then a rise to a three-year high of 60% in 2024/25. A parent reading only the most recent year would miss that Language's 2024/25 figure is a partial retreat from a better year, while Literature's is a genuine high point.
| Measure, 2024/25 | Birmingham | England (state-funded) |
|---|---|---|
| GCSE English Language, grade 4 or above | 71% | 70% |
| GCSE English Language, grade 5 or above | 55% | 54% |
| GCSE English Literature, grade 4 or above | 75% | 73% |
| GCSE English Literature, grade 5 or above | 60% | 57% |
| Attainment 8, English element | 10.1 | 9.8 |
| English & maths GCSEs combined, grade 5 or above (joint measure, not an English result) | 45.4% | 45.4% |
Every local-authority row above covers Birmingham's state-funded schools only, following Department for Education convention, and excludes the city's independent schools. The joint English-and-maths row is included for completeness because it is the figure most often mistaken for an English result, not because it belongs beside the subject-specific rows above it.
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Our expert GCSE English tutors help students across Birmingham build a plan around both papers separately — marking practice essays against each exam board's own criteria rather than treating the two GCSEs as one subject.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBirmingham's citywide averages sit above England's, but they cover 89 open, state-funded secondary schools, and the spread between them is far wider than the one-to-three-point city-versus-country gap above suggests. Two schools inside the King Edward VI Foundation in Handsworth make the point without needing a grammar-versus-comprehensive comparison at all: King Edward VI Handsworth School and King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy share a trust, a gender intake — both are girls' schools — and a neighbourhood, which leaves admissions policy as close to the only variable left standing between them.
King Edward VI Handsworth School is selective and took 192 pupils through to the end of Key Stage 4 in 2024/25, of whom 26.2% were eligible for free school meals. 189 of those 192 pupils (98%) reached grade 4 or above in English Language and 186 (97%) reached grade 5 or above; in English Literature, 191 (99%) reached grade 4 or above and 186 (97%) reached grade 5 or above. King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy, in the same trust and the same part of the city, is non-selective, with 160 pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 and 55.9% eligible for free school meals. 128 of its 160 pupils (80%) reached grade 4 or above in English Language and 97 (61%) reached grade 5 or above; in English Literature, 132 (83%) reached grade 4 or above and 100 (63%) reached grade 5 or above.
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| Measure, 2024/25 | King Edward VI Handsworth School | King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy |
|---|---|---|
| Admissions policy | Selective | Non-selective |
| Pupils at end of Key Stage 4 | 192 | 160 |
| Eligible for free school meals | 26.2% | 55.9% |
| English Language, grade 4 or above | 98% | 80% |
| English Language, grade 5 or above | 97% | 61% |
| English Literature, grade 4 or above | 99% | 83% |
| English Literature, grade 5 or above | 97% | 63% |
The grade-5-or-above gap between the two schools runs to 36 points in English Language and 34 points in English Literature — wider than the entire city-versus-England gap in either subject, inside two schools in the same trust. Neither result is inflated by a smaller pool of stronger entrants sitting one exam and not the other: DfE's subject entry counts show every one of Handsworth School's 192 pupils and every one of Handsworth Wood's 160 pupils was entered for both English Language and English Literature.
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Our expert GCSE English tutors help students across Birmingham regardless of which of the city's 89 state secondary schools they attend, building a programme around a student's own starting point rather than their school's average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBecause English Language and English Literature are graded independently, a programme aimed at "English" in general risks doing enough for one exam and not enough for the other. Our expert GCSE English tutors help students across Birmingham with both Language and Literature, across AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas — building each programme around whichever exam board a student's school has entered them for, and around the two subjects' separate mark schemes rather than a single blended target grade.
That starts with identifying which of the two exams is holding a student's overall English grade back — Birmingham's own data above shows plenty of students where that answer is not obvious in advance — and building the tuition plan around exam technique specific to that paper: non-fiction and fiction extract analysis and the two directed-writing tasks in Language, and the set-text essay work in Literature that draws on close knowledge of the specific novel, play and poetry anthology a student's school has chosen. 91% of Leading Tuition students go on to achieve their desired grades.
Free material that sits alongside paid tuition rather than replacing it is available in our GCSE resources for parents, and families comparing subjects across the city may also find our Birmingham GCSE maths results page useful — Birmingham's picture in maths is a more mixed one than in English.
No. They are two separate GCSEs with separate specifications, separate exam papers and separate results, even though most Birmingham schools teach and enter students for both. AQA, one of the four exam boards used in England, lists English Language as specification 8700 and English Literature as specification 8702 — two different codes for two different qualifications, not two papers of one course. A student's Language grade and Literature grade can differ by more than one full grade, and Birmingham's own 2024/25 figures show exactly that: 55% of pupils reached grade 5 or above in Language against 60% in Literature.
55% of pupils in Birmingham's state-funded schools reached grade 5 or above in GCSE English Language in 2024/25, according to Department for Education local authority data, against 54% across England as a whole. That is up from 54% in 2022/23 but down from a three-year high of 57% in 2023/24, so the current figure sits between a genuine improvement and a partial retreat from it, not a straightforward upward trend.
60% of pupils in Birmingham's state-funded schools reached grade 5 or above in GCSE English Literature in 2024/25, against 57% across England — Birmingham's largest lead over the national figure in either English subject. The Birmingham figure has followed a broadly rising path over three years: 59% in 2022/23, a dip to 58% in 2023/24, then 60% in 2024/25, a three-year high that widened the gap with England rather than narrowing it.
No, and this is one of the most commonly misread figures in Department for Education data. ‘Percentage of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs’ was 45.4% in Birmingham in 2024/25, exactly level with England's 45.4% — but a pupil only counts if they reach grade 5 in both maths and English at once. It cannot be read as an English result on its own: a school with strong English GCSE results but weaker maths results will show a lower combined figure than either subject achieved alone.
King Edward VI Handsworth School, a selective girls' school in the King Edward VI Foundation, recorded 97% of its 192 Key Stage 4 pupils reaching grade 5 or above in English Language and 97% in English Literature in 2024/25 — 98% and 99% respectively reached grade 4 or above. Every one of its 192 pupils was entered for both English GCSEs.
King Edward VI Handsworth School is selective, with 26.2% of its pupils eligible for free school meals; its trust sibling, King Edward VI Handsworth Wood Girls' Academy, is non-selective, with 55.9% eligible. The grade-5-or-above gap between them runs to 36 points in English Language and 34 points in English Literature — evidence that a school's admissions policy and intake, not the trust running it or the exam boards it uses, is doing most of the work behind results this different.
Birmingham's own results make the case for subject-specific preparation rather than a general one: even at Birmingham's strongest state school for English, King Edward VI Handsworth School, 3% of pupils still did not reach grade 5 or above in either English GCSE in 2024/25, while citywide the shortfall runs to 45% in Language and 40% in Literature. Because English Language and English Literature are graded independently, a student who is already strong in one exam may still need focused preparation for the other, which a tutor working across both, rather than ‘English’ in general, can target directly.
Third-party tutoring marketplaces active in Birmingham list a wide range: Superprof advertised private English tutors from around £15 an hour, and Tutorful listed individual GCSE English tutors up to around £54 an hour, both in listings live in August 2026. Rates vary with a tutor's experience, whether sessions are online or in person, and whether a student needs support in English Language, English Literature, or both — worth clarifying before comparing quotes.
Whether your child's school sits closer to Birmingham's 55–60% average or to King Edward VI Handsworth School's high 90s, our Birmingham GCSE English tutors build a programme around the exam that needs the most attention — Language, Literature, or both. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades. See also our Birmingham tuition guide, our GCSE English Language tutoring and our GCSE English Literature tutoring pages, and our wider GCSE tuition guide.
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