GCSE Biology Tutor Croydon 2026: Entries and Grades at 14 Schools

Leading Tuition's GCSE Biology tutoring in Croydon is one-to-one online teaching planned from the pupil's own school. DfE's provisional summer 2026 file records 790 separate GCSE Biology entries from 2,558 pupils at the 14 Croydon schools with 30 or more entries, and our expert tutors start from the grade counts of the school the child attends.

How many pupils at each Croydon school sit separate Biology?

The table below uses the DfE “Subject school level exam data” file for summer 2026, filtered to the separate GCSE (9-1) full course in Biology. It counts entries beside the number of pupils at the end of KS4, because separate Biology is a subset of a year group: pupils who take Combined Science are not in these rows at all. We set the cut at 30 entries, which leaves 14 of the 30 Croydon schools that have a Biology row. DfE published the file on 15 October 2026 and describes it as provisional.

Working: the 14 schools' entries sum to 790 and their pupils to 2,558, so 790 ÷ 2,558 = 30.9% of those pupils were entered for the separate qualification. The share runs from 16.3% to 91.2% across the 14 schools. Postal town, intake and sixth-form status come from the DfE Get Information about Schools register of schools (GIAS). Three of the 14, The Archbishop Lanfranc Academy, Orchard Park High School and Oasis Academy Coulsdon, have no sixth form on that register, so a pupil there who wants A-level Biology moves to another school after GCSE; our A-level Biology tutors in Croydon page covers that next stage.

What this changes in our programme: the first question on the call is whether the child is entered for separate Biology or for Combined Science, because the two have different papers and the Biology tutor plans against the papers the child will actually sit. The share column tells a parent how much of the child's year group the row describes, which is the first thing to know before reading any grade count beside it.

Why Norbury's row covers a different share of its year

Norbury High School for Girls has 208 entries against 228 pupils at the end of KS4. The other thirteen schools have 582 entries against 2,330 pupils between them. The two groups cover very different shares of their year groups:

Working: 790 − 208 = 582 entries and 2,558 − 228 = 2,330 pupils for the thirteen, and 582 ÷ 2,330 = 25.0%. Because Norbury's row covers 91.2% of its year and the thirteen rows cover 25.0% of theirs, a grade count taken from one is a count about a different group of pupils than a grade count taken from the other. We therefore give counts, not a ranking, and the tables here make no claim about any school's teaching. The practical use is narrower: a parent can see how many pupils at the child's own school sat the paper, and the tutor plans from the grades that school's pupils reached.

Grade by grade: where each school's Biology entries fall

DfE records a count of entries at each grade from 9 to 1, plus U. The columns below are those counts exactly as published; “Grade 4+” and “Grade 7+” are our sums of the grade 4 to 9 and grade 7 to 9 columns. Across the 14 schools, 662 of 790 entries are at grade 4 or above (83.8%) and 308 are at grade 7 or above (39.0%); 92 entries are grade 9.

Working: grade 4+ is the sum of the grade 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 columns, so for Riddlesdown Collegiate it is 0+1+10+13+15+13 = 52, and the whole table sums to 662. Entries below grade 4 are the total less grade 4+, so 790 − 662 = 128 across the 14 schools. Each school's row also reconciles: its nine grade columns, the U column and any entries not graded add up to its Entries total.

How our tutors use the shape of a row. Where a child's own mock sits mainly at grades 3 to 5, sessions secure grade 4 and then grade 5 on required practicals, calculations and written explanations. Where it sits at 7 to 9, sessions move to extended answers, unfamiliar data and the top mark bands. A school's row describes its pupils as a group, and the individual child's mock paper decides the starting point.

What Parents Say

DP

Deborah Prior

★★★★★

Confidence and progress

My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.

NI

Nicola

★★★★★

Amazing tutors!

We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.

S

Saifan Khan

★★★★★

Great Teaching and Focused Learning

I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.

See more reviews on Trustpilot

Croydon schools below the 30-entry cut

Sixteen Croydon schools have a separate Biology row with fewer than 30 entries. Together they account for 178 entries, so the 30 schools with a row total 968 entries. The table shows each school's entries beside its pupils at the end of KS4. A small total beside a large year group means only that this qualification accounts for a small part of that school's GCSE entries in the file; Combined Science is not in these rows, and nothing here describes a school's results or teaching.

DfE states the suppression rule in its data set notes: “Individual grade breakdowns are suppressed (not shown) where the total number of entries (per school/qualification/discount code/subject description) is 5 or fewer.” That is why Thomas More Catholic School (1 entry), Croydon Metropolitan College (1), The Quest Academy (2) and Olympus (3) show a total but no grade rows. A missing grade row is withheld, not zero, and we do not read a count of 0 into it.

If the child's school is in this table, the plan does not change: the tutor works from the child's own mock results and the exam board the school enters, which the first call establishes.

What AQA's two Biology papers ask, and how sessions follow them

Boards differ by school, so we take AQA's GCSE Biology (8461) as the worked example and confirm the child's own board on the first call. According to AQA's assessment page, the qualification has two written papers, each 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks and 50% of the GCSE, with a total scaled mark of 200 and both Foundation and Higher Tier. Paper 1 assesses topics 1 to 4 (Cell biology; Organisation; Infection and response; Bioenergetics) and Paper 2 assesses topics 5 to 7 (Homeostasis and response; Inheritance, variation and evolution; Ecology).

AQA gives the assessment objective weightings as approximately 40% AO1, 40% AO2 and 20% AO3 overall, with each paper carrying 37 to 43% AO1, 37 to 43% AO2 and 17 to 23% AO3. It also states that questions drawing on the required practical activities count for at least 15% of the overall marks, and that a minimum of eight experiments are required for single science qualifications. Time per mark is 105 ÷ 100 = 1.05 minutes, a pace our tutors rehearse with timed questions.

Our sessions follow that structure. Topics 1 to 4 and topics 5 to 7 are taught in separate blocks, so each practice paper matches what the child has covered, practicals are rehearsed as exam questions, and every paper is marked against the board's mark scheme so the child sees where the marks went.

How final are these numbers?

The key stage 4 release was published on 15 October 2026 and last updated on 28 October 2026, and DfE says the data in it is provisional. We retrieved the Biology rows by query on 2 November 2026 and the school lists from GIAS on the same day; the evidence file behind this page records each query. DfE also states that it is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26, so no Progress 8 figure is quoted anywhere on this page. Treat every count here as the file stood on that date, and treat a school's own results page as the final word once it appears. For the wider picture of GCSE support in the borough, our Croydon tuition hub lists every subject we cover, and GCSE Biology tuition explains the online programme in more detail.

Other GCSE subjects have their own Croydon data pages: GCSE maths tutors in Croydon and GCSE English tutors in Croydon each set DfE's school figures beside the cohort in the same way.

Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 59 reviews, read on 3 October 2026, and 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviewed November 2026: DfE Subject school level exam data (version 2.0, provisional, published 15 October 2026), GIAS and AQA specification 8461, retrieved 2 November 2026.