GCSE Statistics Tutors in Birmingham 2026: School by School

GCSE Statistics is an optional extra GCSE, and in Birmingham it is a school-by-school decision rather than a citywide one. Of the 87 state-funded mainstream schools and colleges in Birmingham that published 2024/25 GCSE entries, Department for Education figures show 23 entered at least one pupil for GCSE Statistics and 64 entered none. Those 23 schools account for all 884 of the city's state-funded entries that year.

Which Birmingham schools entered pupils for GCSE Statistics in 2024/25?

The Department for Education publishes a subject-by-subject entry count for every school in its Subject school level exam data, and for Birmingham that file lists 130 schools with at least one GCSE (9-1) Full Course entry row in 2024/25. Classified against the school-type field in Compare's Key Stage 4 download for local authority 330, they are 87 state-funded mainstream schools and colleges, 33 independent and 10 state-funded special. Twenty-five of the 130 published a Statistics row.

Those 25 rows total 887 entries. Two of the 25 are independent schools — Riverside Education, with 2 entries, and Redstone Academy for Boys, with 1 — and independent schools sit outside the local-authority dataset. Take those two schools and their 3 entries out and 23 state-funded schools remain, totalling 884 — exactly the figure the local-authority dataset gives for Birmingham GCSE Statistics in 2024/25.

The table below rests on the query itself: filtered to Birmingham and to GCSE (9-1) Full Course Statistics, that file returns 25 rows and no more. The 884 matching the local-authority total corroborates that none has been missed, but it does not prove it. The same two files do not agree for GCSE Mathematics, where Birmingham's state-funded school rows sum to 14,580 against the local-authority dataset's 14,536, and DfE publishes no footnote explaining the difference. Two files that can differ in one subject are not on an identical basis, so an exact match in another is consistent with a complete list rather than proof of one.

The table was built a second way too, which does not depend on the two files sharing a basis: every state-funded school record in Birmingham's Key Stage 4 download was opened individually on Compare and its own subjects-entered list read. That route returned the same 23 schools and the same 884 entries.

Source: DfE Subject school level exam data, 2024/25, filtered to local authority Birmingham; each school name links to its own entry on Compare school and college performance. Establishment status for all 23 confirmed Open on Get Information about Schools, 17 September 2026.

Eighteen further Birmingham schools in the same Key Stage 4 download publish no GCSE (9-1) Full Course entry row at all. Three of them — BOA Digital Technologies Academy, Christ Church, Church of England Secondary Academy and Prince Albert High School — recorded no pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 in 2024/25. Five are state-funded special schools and ten are independent schools. None of the eighteen is a published zero: DfE publishes no row for them at all, which is not the same as a school deciding against the subject.

The independent side is less complete. The 33 independent schools in the statistics file are a subset of the 43 independent records Compare carries for Birmingham in 2024/25, and 11 of the 43 publish no subjects list there at all, so the 3 entries above are what has been published rather than a full count.

Why do three E-ACT academies supply nearly half of Birmingham's GCSE Statistics entries?

Three schools in one academy trust account for 420 of the 884 entries, or 47.5% of everything Birmingham's state-funded schools entered. E-ACT North Birmingham Academy recorded 165 Statistics entries against a cohort of 173 pupils finishing Key Stage 4. E-ACT Shenley Academy recorded 130 against 139, and E-ACT Heartlands Academy 125 against 146. Between them that is 420 entries against 458 pupils finishing Key Stage 4. At those three schools GCSE Statistics is not an option a handful of pupils choose; it is close to an entire year group sitting an additional GCSE.

Nothing else in the city looks like that. Fortis Academy, the fourth-largest entrant, recorded 106 entries from a cohort of 277. Ninestiles, an Academy has the largest Key Stage 4 cohort in the table at 288 pupils and recorded 17 entries. Six schools — Archbishop Ilsley Catholic School, The Arthur Terry School, Bournville School, Hodge Hill College, King Edward VI Handsworth School and Saltley Academy — recorded exactly one entry each, in year groups running from 110 to 270. The eight largest entrants account for 744 of the 884 between them.

Those single entries are worth taking at face value, and the dataset says so in its own notation. It marks a withheld figure rather than hiding it: of the 2,113 GCSE (9-1) Full Course rows it returns for Birmingham, 2,097 carry a number and 13 carry the suppression marker c — all 13 belonging to one school, Birchfield Independent Girls' School. Where DfE withholds a figure here it prints c, so a row reading 1 is a published count of one entry rather than a small number masked for disclosure. 289 Birmingham rows carry that value.

What that distribution means in practice is that the useful question is not whether Birmingham teaches GCSE Statistics, but whether one particular school does. E-ACT North Birmingham Academy published 165 Statistics entries against 173 pupils finishing Key Stage 4 in 2024/25. Sixty-four of the 87 schools published none. At six more, the qualification appears on the school's published list with a single entry against it. The table above is the fastest way to find out which of those three positions a family is in, and each school name links to the page DfE publishes for it.

Has GCSE Statistics entry in Birmingham really risen, and which years can be compared?

Birmingham's seven-year series runs 193, 306, 148, 96, 467, 852, 884. It zigzags, and most of that shape is not a story about Birmingham schools changing their minds. DfE published three of the seven years on a different basis from the rest, and says so itself.

Source: DfE Subject pupil level local authority data, entries for Birmingham; third column from DfE's own key stage 4 methodology and its 2024/25 key stage 4 release.

On the two cancelled-exam years, DfE's key stage 4 methodology is explicit: “2020 and 2021 data should not be compared to previous years' attainment data for the purposes of measuring changes in pupil performance.” It also records that the rule deciding which entries count changed for those two years: “the return of first entry discounting rules after the use of best entry discounting in 2019/20 and 2020/21”. Elsewhere: “only a pupil's first attempt at a qualification has counted. The only exception to this was in 2020 and 2021 when a pupil's best entry in grades awarded were counted.” A count assembled under a different counting rule is not a lower or higher version of the same measurement.

The 2021/22 figure of 96 is not a clean comparator either, even though summer exams returned that year. The same methodology records that “results achieved between January 2020 and August 2021 by pupils included in this year's measures are not included in the calculations” — so anything that cohort banked during the pandemic window is absent from its entry count by design.

DfE applies the same logic to its own commentary. The 2024/25 key stage 4 release states that “throughout this release, comparisons are made with 2024 and with 2019”, choosing 2019 “because it was the last year that summer exams were taken before the COVID-19 pandemic”. Summer 2019 falls in the 2018/19 academic year and DfE's “2024” is 2023/24, so on DfE's own two comparison points Birmingham's state-funded schools entered 193 pupils for GCSE Statistics in 2018/19, 852 in 2023/24 and 884 in 2024/25. That is the rise, and it is a large one — more than four and a half times the 2018/19 figure. The three years in between are not evidence for it or against it.

Is Birmingham above or below England on GCSE Statistics uptake?

Raw entry counts cannot be compared between a city and a country, so the useful measure is Statistics entries against GCSE Mathematics entries in the same place, the same year and the same dataset. On that measure Birmingham and England have swapped places over the period the data covers.

Source: DfE Subject pupil level local authority data. Percentages derived from the entry counts in the rows above, not from any published percentage.

In 2018/19, Birmingham entered 193 pupils for GCSE Statistics against 12,665 for GCSE Mathematics, a ratio of 1.5%, while England entered 12,680 against 529,857, a ratio of 2.4%. By 2024/25 Birmingham was at 884 against 14,536, or 6.1%, and England at 31,402 against 606,761, or 5.2%. The city started below the national ratio and finished above it.

Two things to be precise about. These are entries, not pupils: the local-authority figure counts entries across every state-funded school in the local authority, so a ratio of Statistics entries to Mathematics entries is a comparison of two entry counts and not a participation rate among Birmingham pupils. And the ratios above are worked out from the raw counts in the table, not from a rounded percentage, because rounding first and dividing afterwards is how a small difference turns into a wrong headline.

Do Birmingham's GCSE Statistics entrants match the city's GCSE maths grades?

They do not. In 2024/25, 577 of Birmingham's 884 GCSE Statistics entries reached grade 9 to 4 — DfE publishes that as 65%. Its GCSE Mathematics entries in the same year reached grade 9 to 4 at 10,178 out of 14,536, which DfE publishes as 70%. Across England, GCSE Statistics entries reached grade 9 to 4 at 21,705 out of 31,402, published as 69%.

So Birmingham's Statistics entrants clear a grade 4 less often than Birmingham's maths entrants, and less often than Statistics entrants nationally. Both comparisons use the same measure, the same year and the same dataset. They sit alongside the uptake figures in the section above rather than explaining them: a rising share of entries and a below-average pass rate are two separate readings of the same tables, and nothing DfE publishes connects the two. DfE publishes the counts, not the reason.

One scope note matters here. These are DfE's figures for pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 in state-funded schools in England. The entry and attainment figures on our GCSE Statistics guide come from JCQ, which counts a different population: every school type, independent schools included, and candidates of every age. The two tell you different things and should not be read as versions of one number.

Does GCSE Statistics count towards a Birmingham school's EBacc?

No, and it never has. DfE publishes the list of qualifications counting in the English Baccalaureate, and its 2026 edition carries no Statistics qualification on any tab. Its maths tab lists four GCSEs, every one of them GCSE Mathematics. The measure itself is also being withdrawn: the same workbook states that “from academic year 2025 to 2026 onwards, English Baccalaureate (EBacc) headline and additional measures are being removed from key stage 4 performance measures”, while that list “still determines whether qualifications are eligible for inclusion in some of the Progress 8 and Attainment 8 slots”.

That does not make it invisible in a school's figures. DfE's performance points workbook for the 2026 tables gives both GCSE Statistics qualifications a full grade scale — a grade 9 is worth 9 points, down the grades like any other GCSE — so a Statistics result carries Attainment 8 points, in the open slots rather than an EBacc one.

Nor does it cost a school its Maths entry. DfE's key stage 4 qualifications and discount codes workbook for the 2026 tables puts both GCSE Statistics qualifications under discount code RB71 and the GCSE Mathematics qualifications under RB1. The workbook states the rule: “a qualification will discount another qualification only when they share the same discount code. There are some exceptions to this rule”, pointing to its own discounting and early entry guidance. On these codes, Statistics does not displace Maths.

The teaching answer comes from the board. AQA's own GCSE Statistics specification, code 8382, describes the qualification as “fully co-teachable alongside our GCSE Maths, helping you teach GCSE Statistics students in the same class” — AQA's own claim about the specification; DfE's data says nothing about how any Birmingham school teaches it. For the papers, the tiers, the grade boundaries and the route when no school nearby offers it, our GCSE Statistics guide and our AQA GCSE Statistics guide cover the specification in full.

Frequently Asked Questions About GCSE Statistics in Birmingham