GCSE History Tutors in Cambridge: The School That Enters Nobody at All

Cambridge’s eight state secondary schools enter between 0 and 141 pupils each for GCSE History, and the gap is not random. Department for Education data for 2024/25 shows Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology enters none of its 104-pupil cohort, while St Bede’s Inter-Church School enters 141 of its 180 pupils — more than four in five. History and Geography compete for the same English Baccalaureate humanities slot at every school in the city.

GCSE History and Geography Compete for One EBacc Slot, Not Two

The English Baccalaureate, or EBacc, is the Department for Education’s own performance measure covering English, maths, the sciences, a language and one humanity — and for that last pillar, the choice is narrower than parents often assume. Gov.uk’s own EBacc guidance lists the five components as “English language and literature”, “maths”, “the sciences”, “geography or history” and “a language”. The Department’s separate KS4 performance methodology confirms the same rule in almost identical words: “The EBacc consists of English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography.” Not religious studies, not classical civilisation, not sociology — only these two subjects count toward the humanities pillar, which makes History and Geography direct substitutes for the same EBacc slot at every one of Cambridge’s eight state secondaries, not two independent subject choices.

GCSE History is examined by four boards in England, and Cambridge’s own schools are not confined to just one of them. AQA’s specification carries the code 8145, confirmed directly on AQA’s own GCSE History specification page. Pearson Edexcel’s equivalent is 1HI0, confirmed inside Pearson’s own hosted specification PDF — the code sits on the document’s cover page, not in the surrounding HTML, the same pattern the sibling Physics page found for Pearson’s science codes. OCR offers two distinct routes under its own 9-1 History banner: History A, Explaining the Modern World, coded J410, and History B, the Schools History Project, coded J411 — both confirmed directly on OCR’s own qualification pages. WJEC’s Eduqas version is registered on Eduqas’s own qualifications page with the Qual Code C100QS, not the bare “C100” sometimes quoted — QS is part of the actual published code, not a suffix to drop.

Unlike GCSE Maths and the three separate sciences, History carries no Foundation or Higher tier split on either AQA’s or OCR’s own specification pages — neither page mentions a tier anywhere, where their Maths and Science equivalents set both out explicitly. Every GCSE History pupil in Cambridge, regardless of school or board, sits the same papers and is graded on the full 9 to 1 scale; there is no tier-choice conversation to have for History the way there is for Maths or Combined Science. GCSE History is also a different qualification entirely from GCSE Ancient History or Classical Civilisation, which carry their own separate Department for Education subject codes and do not appear anywhere in this page’s figures.

How Many Cambridge Pupils Actually Sit GCSE History?

Department for Education school performance data publishes each Cambridge secondary’s own subject entry numbers — the actual count of pupils entered for each GCSE, not a rate. Applied to GCSE History specifically for the 2024/25 cohort, sorted from the highest count to the lowest, and set alongside each school’s Geography entries for direct comparison:

The range runs from 141 pupils at St Bede’s Inter-Church School down to zero at Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology — a wider spread than either subject shows on its own at any single school. Summed across all eight schools, History entries (503) and Geography entries (493) sit almost level citywide, just ten pupils apart, even though no individual school is anywhere near an even split between the two. That aggregate closeness is a citywide coincidence, not a school-level pattern; it hides the fact that six of the eight schools lean clearly toward one subject or the other, sometimes by a factor of four or five.

Which Humanity Does Each Cambridge School Actually Push?

Because History and Geography compete for the same EBacc slot, the ratio between them at each school is a genuine signal of which subject that school has built its timetable and staffing around — and Cambridge’s eight schools split in both directions, not just one. At St Bede’s Inter-Church School, History accounts for 141 of the school’s combined 171 History-and-Geography entries, or 82.5% — the strongest lean toward either subject anywhere in the city. The Netherhall School leans the same way by a smaller margin: 117 of its combined 199 entries, or 58.8%, are History.

Three schools lean the other way, toward Geography. Chesterton Community College enters 121 of its combined 184 History-and-Geography pupils for Geography, 65.8%, against 63 for History — 34.2% — and Trumpington Community College lands at almost the identical share: 52 of its 79 combined entries are Geography, also 65.8% by coincidence of rounding, against 27 for History. Coleridge Community College leans hardest toward Geography of any school still offering both subjects: 76 of its 106 combined entries, 71.7%, are Geography, against 30 for History, 28.3%. Parkside Community College leans mildly toward History at 56.3% (81 of 144), and North Cambridge Academy is the closest thing to an even split in the city: 44 History against 41 Geography out of 85 combined entries, 51.8% to 48.2%.

Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology sits outside this whole spread rather than at one end of it: with zero History entries against 28 for Geography, it does not have a lean, because it does not appear to offer both subjects for a pupil to choose between in the first place — the next section sets out what the school’s own published curriculum says.

Why Does Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology Enter Zero Pupils for GCSE History?

Department for Education data lists a Geography entry for Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology (CAST) but no History row at all for 2024/25 — the same pattern the sibling Cambridge GCSE Physics page found for CAST’s science entries, where subjects with genuinely zero pupils are omitted from the DfE table entirely rather than shown as a zero. CAST’s own Years 9-11 curriculum page, checked directly, confirms why: it lists Geography among the school’s GCSE options, alongside Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, Construction and the Built Environment, English, Health and Social Care, Information Technology, Maths, PE, Psychology, PSHE and Sports Science — fourteen subjects in total, and History is not among them. This is the school’s own published options list, not an inference from the absence of an entry figure.

The gap fits a wider pattern in CAST’s own DfE figures. Its published humanities entry rate — pupils entering History or Geography or both — is 26.9% of its 104-pupil cohort, against 78.4% for Cambridgeshire and 81.2% for England, both figures repeated identically across every one of Cambridge’s eight schools’ own DfE pages because they are the same county and national comparators throughout. CAST’s overall EBacc entry rate, covering all five pillars together, is lower still: 1.9%, against 45.6% for Cambridgeshire and 40.5% for England. CAST is a University Technical College with a STEM specialism, and its curriculum leans toward the sciences and vocational subjects its own options list shows — Construction, Health and Social Care and Sports Science among them — rather than the full EBacc suite most of Cambridge’s other seven schools offer.

Does a School’s Humanities Entry Rate Reveal Its History Entry Rate?

No, and the two measures should never be substituted for each other. A school’s humanities entry rate, published on the same Department for Education page as its EBacc figures, counts the share of pupils entering History OR Geography — each pupil counted once, even if they sit both subjects. It says nothing about how that entering group splits between the two subjects, because DfE does not publish that split as a single figure; it has to be read off the separate History and Geography entry counts instead, the way the table above does.

Trumpington Community College demonstrates exactly how easy this is to get wrong. Its published humanities entry rate is 75.3% of its 89-pupil cohort, and its overall EBacc entry rate — all five pillars together — is also published as 75.3%, on the very same cohort. At an 89-pupil cohort, only one whole number of pupils, 67, rounds to 75.3%, so the two rates describe the identical 67 pupils: at Trumpington, every pupil who enters a humanity also enters the complete EBacc, and humanities is the single binding constraint on full EBacc entry at that school. What neither rate tells you is Trumpington’s own History-Geography split — that only appears in the school’s separate subject entry figures, 27 for History against 52 for Geography, which is a completely different question from the 75.3% headline.

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Is There an Attainment 8 Element for History, and Where Does Progress 8 Fit?

A figure quoted for a Cambridge school’s “Attainment 8 History element” is describing something that does not exist as its own slot. Attainment 8 measures a pupil’s average achievement across eight qualification slots, and the Department for Education’s own methodology sets out exactly what they are: English language; English literature, double-weighted with English language; maths, double-weighted; three further qualifications that count in the EBacc; and three further qualifications that can be GCSEs or other approved qualifications. History has no dedicated double-weighted slot the way English and maths do — a History result can only count inside the three EBacc slots, alongside English, maths, science and a language, or inside the three open slots.

None of the figures on this page are Progress 8 scores, because none exist for this cohort. The Department for Education has not calculated Progress 8 — for any school, in any local authority — for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 academic years, because the relevant cohorts sat no Key Stage 2 assessments: these were cancelled nationally in academic years 2019/20 and 2020/21 because of Covid-19 disruption, so no baseline exists from which to measure progress. In April 2024 the previous government confirmed there would be no replacement measure for either year. A Progress 8 figure quoted for a Cambridge school in 2025/26 is an older, pre-2024 number, not a current one.

What This Means for Choosing GCSE History Support in Cambridge

The entries-based picture above changes what sensible History support looks like, and it depends heavily on which of Cambridge’s eight schools a child attends. At St Bede’s Inter-Church School or The Netherhall School, where History is the dominant humanity by a wide margin, a pupil is one of well over a hundred classmates on the same specification, and cohort-wide mock and past-paper resources are likely to exist for that school’s own board. At Chesterton, Trumpington or Coleridge, where Geography is the stronger subject, a History pupil is part of a smaller group, and support built around a generic national average risks missing the exam board and period options that school has actually chosen.

We have not independently verified which specific period and depth options — Nazi Germany, Elizabethan England, Medicine Through Time and similar — each of Cambridge’s eight schools has selected within its chosen board’s specification, nor which single exam board each school uses for History; Department for Education entry data does not publish either, and confirming both for all eight schools individually was beyond what this page could verify at source. A family should treat any specific board or topic claim for their own child’s school as a question for the school directly, not an assumption from citywide averages. What the DfE data does support directly is the entries picture above: which schools have built History into a large, well-resourced cohort, and which have built it into a minority option alongside a stronger Geography offer, or in CAST’s case, not offered it as a GCSE option at all.

Cambridge’s Eight State Secondaries in the Wider County

Cambridge itself is not a separate local authority for education purposes; every one of its eight state secondaries files its Department for Education data under Cambridgeshire County Council, the same authority that also covers a much larger area beyond the city boundary. The same DfE pages used above also publish Cambridgeshire’s county-wide cohort for the humanities measure: 6,836 pupils reached the end of Key Stage 4 in 2024/25. Cambridge’s own eight state secondaries — St Bede’s Inter-Church School, The Netherhall School, Parkside Community College, Chesterton Community College, North Cambridge Academy, Coleridge Community College, Trumpington Community College and Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology — together account for 1,104 of those 6,836 pupils, or 16.1% of the county’s entire Year 11 cohort; the remaining 84% sit in schools spread across the rest of Cambridgeshire, in towns such as Ely, Huntingdon and Wisbech that are not part of the city itself.

Castle School, Cambridge, sits inside the city itself but is a state-funded special school rather than a mainstream secondary, according to the Department for Education’s own school-search listing, so it falls outside the eight-school comparison on this page.

Leading Tuition builds a GCSE History programme around a child’s own school, board and cohort, rather than assuming every Cambridge pupil sits the same subject in the same numbers. For the exam’s own mechanics in more depth — specification codes, grade boundaries and national entry figures — our GCSE History results and boundaries guide covers that ground, and our History tuition and Geography tuition pages set out what a programme looks like for each humanity in its own right. Our guide to 16+ tuition in Cambridge covers what comes after GCSE for a pupil moving on to A-level Humanities subjects. If your child is also weighing up other GCSE subjects, our GCSE English tutors in Cambridge, GCSE maths tutors in Cambridge and GCSE Biology tutors in Cambridge pages cover those subjects in their own right, and our guide to tutoring across Cambridge covers the city as a whole.

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