Three schools within about half a mile of each other in Birmingham's Small Heath area show three completely different pictures of who actually sits GCSE French.
Book a Free ConsultationSmall Heath Leadership Academy, in Birmingham's Small Heath, entered 115 of its roughly 225 Year 11 pupils for GCSE French in 2024/25 — about 51% of its cohort, and comfortably its largest modern language, ahead of Spanish's 45. Roughly half a mile away, Al-Burhan Grammar School entered just 1 pupil out of roughly 31, and Darul Uloom Islamic High School entered none at all, teaching Arabic and Urdu instead.
Whichever way your child's Birmingham school leans on French, the tuition should match it.
Our specialist GCSE French tutors support students across Birmingham through every AQA and Pearson Edexcel paper — listening, the speaking assessment, reading and writing — whether a school enters its whole cohort or just a handful of pupils.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppDepartment for Education Key Stage 4 subject-entry figures for 2024/25 name every pupil entered for every GCSE subject at every school, school by school. Read closely for one small part of east Birmingham, they show something no citywide average could: three schools within roughly half a mile of one another, each with an entirely different relationship to GCSE French. All three are confirmed open on GIAS, the Department for Education's own register of schools, as checked on 7 September 2026.
Al-Burhan Grammar School is an independent girls' school on Spring Road in Tyseley, teaching ages 11 to 16. Its core-subject entries — Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics all show 31 — put its Year 11 cohort at roughly 31 pupils. Of those, just 1 was entered for GCSE French in 2024/25. The school's real language strength lies elsewhere: 12 pupils sat GCSE Arabic and 11 sat GCSE Urdu that year, with no entries at all in German or Spanish.
Darul Uloom Islamic High School, an independent boys' school on Coventry Road in Small Heath, also teaching ages 11 to 16, enters no pupils for GCSE French, German or Spanish at all. Its published 2024/25 language entries are Arabic (22) and Urdu (5) only. Nothing in the Department for Education's subjects-entered data for this school gives an overall Key Stage 4 cohort figure comparable to Al-Burhan's core-subject count, so this page reports the language entries themselves rather than guessing at a percentage of a cohort it cannot confirm.
Small Heath Leadership Academy, a mixed, sponsor-led academy on Muntz Street, sits at the opposite end of the picture. Its English Language and Mathematics entries both show 225, putting its Year 11 cohort at roughly that size. Against that cohort, 115 pupils were entered for GCSE French in 2024/25 — comfortably ahead of Spanish (45), Arabic (9), Italian (4) and Portuguese (1). Dividing 115 by 225 gives approximately 51% — a figure this page has calculated from the published entry counts, not one the Department for Education states directly.
| School, 2024/25 | Type | KS4 cohort | GCSE French entries | Other languages entered |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al-Burhan Grammar School (Tyseley) | Independent, girls, 11–16 | ~31 | 1 | Arabic 12, Urdu 11 |
| Darul Uloom Islamic High School (Small Heath) | Independent, boys, 11–16 | Not confirmed | 0 | Arabic 22, Urdu 5 |
| Small Heath Leadership Academy (Small Heath) | Academy, mixed, sponsor-led | ~225 | 115 (~51%) | Spanish 45, Arabic 9, Italian 4, Portuguese 1 |
The distance between these three schools is measured in hundreds of metres, not miles, and none of it is explained by borough-level averages. A family whose child attends Al-Burhan or Darul Uloom is not looking at a school that teaches a little less French than average; they are looking at a school where French is either a minority pursuit or entirely absent, while a family half a mile away at Small Heath Leadership Academy has a school where French is the default choice for the majority of the year group. Birmingham's own GCSE Spanish page covers a different set of fourteen schools across the wider city; none of the three named here appears on it.
115 classmates or none at all — either way, French tuition has to start from that pupil's actual classroom.
Our GCSE French tutors in Birmingham don't teach a fixed course: lessons are set against the tier, board and pace of the school a student is actually enrolled at, not a standard syllabus.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppAQA's current GCSE French specification is coded 8652, for first teaching from September 2024, superseding AQA's previous GCSE French specification, now retired. The qualification is assessed across four equally weighted papers, each worth 25% of the final grade, and a candidate sits every paper at the same tier — Foundation or Higher — throughout.
Paper 1, Listening, is a written exam: 35 minutes and 40 marks at Foundation tier, 45 minutes and 50 marks at Higher tier. Its Section B is a dictation task, in which candidates transcribe short spoken sentences, including a small number of words drawn from outside the specification's prescribed vocabulary list — a component few generic tutoring pages mention because it does not appear in every language GCSE.
Paper 2, Speaking, is non-exam assessment, 50 marks at each tier, worth 25% of the GCSE. It runs to three parts: a role-play worth 10 marks and recommended to last between 1 and 1.5 minutes, a reading-aloud task and short conversation worth 15 marks, and a photo card and discussion for the remaining marks. Foundation tier candidates are timed at 7 to 9 minutes, Higher tier at 10 to 12 minutes, both with 15 minutes' supervised preparation beforehand. A candidate's own teacher conducts and records the assessment; an AQA examiner marks it.
Paper 3, Reading, is a written exam of 45 minutes at Foundation tier and 1 hour at Higher tier, 50 marks at each tier, worth 25% of the GCSE. Its Section B is a French-to-English translation, a minimum of 35 words at Foundation tier and 50 words at Higher tier, worth 10 marks.
Paper 4, Writing, runs 1 hour 10 minutes at Foundation tier and 1 hour 15 minutes at Higher tier, and includes a translation from English into French alongside free writing tasks. AQA's specification-at-a-glance summary gives timings for this paper but does not itemise its mark allocation the way it does for the other three, so this page reports only what that summary states.
| Paper | Skill | Format | Foundation time | Higher time | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Listening (incl. dictation) | Written exam | 35 min / 40 marks | 45 min / 50 marks | 25% |
| 2 | Speaking | Non-exam assessment | 7–9 min + 15 min prep / 50 marks | 10–12 min + 15 min prep / 50 marks | 25% |
| 3 | Reading (incl. translation) | Written exam | 45 min / 50 marks | 1 hr / 50 marks | 25% |
| 4 | Writing (incl. translation) | Written exam | 1 hr 10 min | 1 hr 15 min | 25% |
Pearson Edexcel runs a parallel current specification, code 1FR1, also first taught from September 2024. Edexcel confirms on its own qualification page that first teaching is 2024 and first assessment is 2026 — the same first-award timeline as AQA's 8652, even though the two boards structure their papers differently.
Rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot
Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews, and 91% of our students go on to achieve their desired grades.
Not directly, and the reason is the specification code, not the grading standard. AQA's 8652 and Pearson Edexcel's 1FR1 were both first taught from September 2024, which makes summer 2026 the first series of results issued under either code. Any earlier GCSE French result at either board sat under a previous specification code — a different accredited qualification, with grade boundaries set against different papers. Reading the first boundary under a new code against a boundary set under the old one therefore compares two different qualifications rather than two results from the same one, and there is no result under the new codes yet to measure a future year against.
This is a separate question from the grading-standards adjustment Ofqual made to French and German in the past. That decision was published 5 November 2019 and was intended for the 2020 exam series, with Ofqual's own notice stating the change could be phased over more than one year, and it aligned French and German's grading standard with Spanish's — not the reverse. Our separate guide, why GCSE French and German grades rose, covers that adjustment and its results-day effects in full; it is not the same story as the 2024 re-specification covered here.
This page has personally verified two boards' current GCSE French specifications, each with a URL and a checked date: AQA's 8652, confirmed at aqa.org.uk on 7 September 2026, and Pearson Edexcel's 1FR1, confirmed at qualifications.pearson.com on 7 September 2026. Both list first teaching as 2024. This page does not state how many exam boards offer GCSE French in total, and does not claim any other board has withdrawn from the subject — only what these two boards' own current specification pages say.
No past boundaries exist yet for the 2024 French specification — preparation has to be built from the papers themselves.
Our GCSE French tutors in Birmingham drill the AQA 8652 and Pearson Edexcel 1FR1 papers directly: the listening dictation section, the recorded speaking assessment, and the translation tasks inside reading and writing.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppSchool-level entry figures above come from the Department for Education's Compare School and College Performance service, checked school by school on 7 September 2026, with establishment status confirmed at the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register on the same date. Exam-board specification detail is drawn from AQA's own current GCSE French specification and from Pearson Edexcel's GCSE French (2024) qualification page. The 2019 grading-standards decision is Ofqual's own published notice, Inter-subject comparability in GCSE modern foreign languages. Families needing support in a related subject can see our separate guides to GCSE Spanish tutors in Birmingham and our wider Birmingham tuition guide. For GCSE tuition across every subject, see our GCSE tuition hub.
No. Department for Education entry figures for 2024/25 show wide variation even within a small part of the city: Al-Burhan Grammar School in Tyseley entered just 1 pupil out of roughly 31 for GCSE French, Darul Uloom Islamic High School in Small Heath entered none at all, and Small Heath Leadership Academy, roughly half a mile away, entered 115 of its roughly 225 pupils – around 51%. A school's own entry pattern is the only reliable guide to whether a pupil is even being taught French, let alone taught it well.
115, out of a Year 11 cohort of roughly 225 pupils in 2024/25 – about 51% on our own calculation from the school's published entry figures, since the Department for Education does not publish this percentage directly. That makes French comfortably the school's largest modern language, ahead of Spanish's 45 entries, Arabic's 9, Italian's 4 and Portuguese's 1. Small Heath Leadership Academy, on Muntz Street, is confirmed open on the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools register.
Arabic and Urdu. Department for Education figures for 2024/25 show Al-Burhan Grammar School, an independent girls' school in Tyseley, entered 12 pupils for GCSE Arabic and 11 for GCSE Urdu, against just 1 for GCSE French out of a cohort of roughly 31 pupils – and no entries at all for German or Spanish. The school is confirmed open on GIAS. A single French entry does not mean the subject is unavailable, but it does mean a pupil studying it there is very much the exception rather than the rule.
No. Department for Education 2024/25 entry data for Darul Uloom Islamic High School, an independent boys' school in Small Heath, records no entries at all in French, German or Spanish. Its only language GCSEs that year were Arabic, with 22 entries, and Urdu, with 5. The school's overall Key Stage 4 cohort size is not independently confirmed from its published core-subject entries, but its language entries show a school built around Arabic and Urdu rather than any modern European language. GIAS confirms the school as open.
Paper 1 of AQA's current GCSE French specification, 8652, is a written listening exam worth 25% of the GCSE – 35 minutes and 40 marks at Foundation tier, 45 minutes and 50 marks at Higher tier. Section B of the paper is a dictation task, in which pupils transcribe short spoken sentences, including a small number of words from outside the specification's prescribed vocabulary list. This is a distinct skill from general listening comprehension, and one that rarely features in generic tutoring content written for GCSE French nationally rather than for this specific 2024 specification.
As non-exam assessment worth 25% of the GCSE, 50 marks at each tier. It has three parts: a role-play worth 10 marks and recommended to last 1 to 1.5 minutes, a reading-aloud task and short conversation worth 15 marks, and a photo card and discussion for the rest. Foundation tier candidates are timed at 7 to 9 minutes, Higher tier at 10 to 12 minutes, both with 15 minutes' supervised preparation beforehand. The test is conducted and recorded by the pupil's own teacher and marked externally by an AQA examiner.
No. The GCSE French and German grading adjustment is sometimes described as a change made shortly before the new specifications, but Ofqual's actual decision was published on 5 November 2019, for the 2020 exam series, and Ofqual's own notice said the change could be phased over more than one year. It aligned French and German's grading standard with Spanish's, not the other way round. Our separate guide, why GCSE French and German grades rose, covers that adjustment and its results-day effects in full; it is a different story from the 2024 re-specification covered on this page.
Not directly. AQA's current French specification, 8652, and Pearson Edexcel's current specification, 1FR1, were both first taught from September 2024, making summer 2026 the first set of results issued under either code. Any earlier French GCSE result sat under each board's previous specification code, a different accredited qualification with its own grade boundaries. Comparing the first boundary set under a new code against a boundary set under an old one therefore compares two different qualifications, not two results from the same one – there is no result under the new codes yet to measure a future year against.
From Small Heath Leadership Academy, where French carries roughly half the cohort, to Al-Burhan Grammar School and Darul Uloom Islamic High School, where it barely features at all, Birmingham's GCSE French picture turns entirely on which school a pupil attends. Our Birmingham GCSE French tutors work to whichever paper structure, tier and board that school has entered a student for — on AQA's 8652 or Pearson Edexcel's 1FR1. 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 and our GCSE tuition hub.
Book a Free Consultation