GCSE Biology Tutor Guildford: 2026 Grade Counts by School

Leading Tuition's GCSE Biology tutors in Guildford are expert one-to-one online teachers who prepare pupils for the separate GCSE (9-1) in Biology. DfE's provisional summer 2026 table counts 246 Biology entries at the three Guildford-town schools with 30 or more entries, from 691 pupils at the end of Key Stage 4, with 245 entries at grade 4 or above and 187 at grade 7 or above.

Those three schools are George Abbot School, Guildford County School and St Peter's Catholic School. Their figures sit in DfE's table for Surrey, the local authority that holds Guildford, so this page cuts them out by their GIAS address and never quotes a county total as if it described a town. Every count below is provisional, and each data section ends by saying what it changes in the way we plan a Guildford pupil's lessons. The wider Guildford tuition hub covers the other levels we teach in the town.

How was the Guildford set drawn from Surrey's table?

DfE publishes one table of school-level exam data for the whole of England, and it does not carry a town field. Surrey's rows cover schools from many towns, so we used the Get Information About Schools register (GIAS, the Department for Education's own list of establishments) to place each one. The town set is every state school whose GIAS town is Guildford and whose postcode begins GU1 or GU2. Five schools meet that test and have a separate-Biology row in DfE's file.

We then applied a minimum of 30 Biology entries before showing any grade split. Three schools clear it. Two do not, and we name them rather than quietly dropping them.

Source: DfE, Subject school level exam data, summer 2026 (provisional), GCSE (9-1) Full Course, Biology, retrieved 2 November 2026; school addresses from GIAS, file dated 31 October 2026. For Kings College Guildford and Christ's College we show the two totals and nothing more. A small Biology total is a count of entries in this one qualification and says nothing else about the school.

Schools in Guildford borough that sit outside the town postcodes are in their own section further down, and their figures are never added to the town figures. DfE's Key Stage 4 release was published on 15 October 2026 and last updated on 28 October 2026, and it states that the data is provisional. DfE's release also says Progress 8 cannot be calculated for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26, so no Progress 8 figure appears on this page.

What this changes in our programme. A family's first question to us is which course the child is on. The rows tell us that in Guildford town, separate Biology is a choice made for a minority of the cohort, so we ask at the first call whether the child sits separate Biology or Combined Science before we plan a single lesson. The rest of this page assumes the separate qualification.

How many Guildford pupils sit separate GCSE Biology?

Separate Biology is a subset of each year group, and the file counts entries, not pupils. An entry is one pupil's entry for the qualification, so the ratio of entries to pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 is a guide to how common the route is and not an exact share of children.

At George Abbot School, 112 entries sit beside 299 pupils; at Guildford County School 69 sit beside 182; at St Peter's Catholic School 65 sit beside 210. The last column is simple subtraction (299 less 112 is 187, 182 less 69 is 113, 210 less 65 is 145, and 187 plus 113 plus 145 is 445). What those 445 pupils sat is not in these rows. Combined Science is a different qualification with its own rows, and the file does not say which route each pupil took.

The three ratios are close but not the same, as the column shows.

What this changes in our programme. We do not assume a Guildford child sits the same course as the child next door. For a pupil on separate Biology we plan towards two full papers; for a pupil on Combined Science we say plainly that this page's rows do not describe that route. Our GCSE Biology tuition page sets out the national programme. We also ask the school how the Biology group is taught, because the pace of the class sets what we need to cover on top.

What grades did the Guildford entries earn?

For the three schools above the 30-entry cut, DfE lists entries at each grade from 9 down to 1, plus U and X. Every grade row we quote adds back to the school's total, so a grade with no row in the file has no entries. The table gives each grade as a count of entries.

The one entry below grade 4 at St Peter's Catholic School is a grade 3. The columns add up: 30 plus 35 plus 24 plus 16 plus 6 plus 1 is 112 at George Abbot School; 18 plus 17 plus 16 plus 14 plus 3 plus 1 is 69 at Guildford County School; 12 plus 21 plus 14 plus 12 plus 4 plus 1 plus 1 is 65 at St Peter's Catholic School.

Two thresholds do most of the work, and we show both with their sums.

These are shares of Biology entries, not of the cohort, and these entries are a self-selected group at each school. Nothing here compares the teaching in the three schools, and a higher share at one of them is not a verdict on it. What the numbers do show is where the entries sit. Across the three schools, 245 of 246 entries reached grade 4. 187 reached grade 7 or above, and 133 of those are an 8 or a 9, including 60 entries at grade 9.

What this changes in our programme. When almost every entry at a school is already at grade 4 or above, a Guildford pupil's tutoring is not about clearing the pass line. In these three schools 58 of 246 entries sit at grades 4 to 6 (3 + 13 + 42), and those are the pupils whose gap is secure knowledge across both papers. For the 187 at grade 7 or above, the work is different: longer extended-answer questions, data interpretation and the practical-skills items. So we open with a short diagnostic and a conversation about the target grade, then split the plan into one of those two jobs.

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What do the three Guildford schools' counts look like one at a time?

George Abbot School has the largest Biology count in the town set: 112 entries against 299 pupils at the end of Key Stage 4. The grade rows run 30 at grade 9, 35 at grade 8, 24 at grade 7, 16 at grade 6, 6 at grade 5 and 1 at grade 4, with no entry below grade 4. With 65 of 112 entries at an 8 or a 9, the work for a pupil there is mostly extended answers and unfamiliar experiments.

Guildford County School has 69 entries against 182 pupils. Its rows run 18 at grade 9, 17 at grade 8, 16 at grade 7, 14 at grade 6, 3 at grade 5 and 1 at grade 4. Here 14 of the 69 entries sit at grade 6 and 4 sit at grade 5 or 4. For a pupil in that middle band we plan around turning secure 6s into 7s on the questions with the most marks.

St Peter's Catholic School has 65 entries against 210 pupils. Its rows run 12 at grade 9, 21 at grade 8, 14 at grade 7, 12 at grade 6, 4 at grade 5, 1 at grade 4 and 1 at grade 3. It has more entries at grade 8 (21) than at grade 9 (12), a wider gap than at George Abbot School, where grade 8 has 35 entries against 30 at grade 9. For a pupil at an 8 the work is accuracy on the longest questions.

All three sit in the same DfE table, but the counts differ: the grade 7 line is reached by 89 of 112 entries at one school and 47 of 65 at another. That is why our tutors ask for the school's name at the first call, and why we read a child's mock marks against that school's cohort and not a national average. It is not a comparison of the three schools' teaching.

Which borough schools sit outside the town postcodes?

Guildford borough is wider than the town. GIAS lists a number of schools with the district Guildford whose town is a village or a neighbouring town, with postcodes such as GU12, KT24, GU7 and RH5. Some Guildford families weigh these schools too, so we list them in their own table with each school's GIAS town. These are not Guildford-town schools, and none of their figures is included in the town totals above.

Two of the five clear the 30-entry cut. At Ash Manor School, the grade rows run 7 at grade 9, 13 at grade 8, 10 at grade 7, 26 at grade 6, 17 at grade 5, 5 at grade 4, 1 at grade 3 and 2 at grade 2. That gives 78 of 81 entries at grade 4 or above (96.3%) and 30 of 81 at grade 7 or above (37.0%: 7 + 13 + 10). At Howard of Effingham School the rows run 18, 11, 16, 9, 9 and 1 from grade 9 down to grade 4, plus 1 at grade 3, which gives 64 of 65 at grade 4 or above (98.5%) and 45 of 65 at grade 7 or above (69.2%: 18 + 11 + 16). St Teresa's School, Cranmore and Prior's Field School are shown as totals only.

The grade 7 share across the five schools above the cut, three in the town and two in the borough, runs from 37.0% to 79.5%. That is a spread, not a ranking. It reflects who is entered for separate Biology at each school, which the file does not describe, and says nothing about teaching.

What this changes in our programme. A pupil's tutor needs to know which cohort the child's marks are being read against. A grade 6 on a mock at a school where 37.0% of entries reach grade 7 or above is a different signal from a grade 6 at a school where 79.5% do. So for these borough families we ask for the last two mock papers before we set a target, and we set the target from the child's marks, not from the school's totals.

What do the two AQA 8461 papers ask of a student?

The DfE rows do not say which exam board each school uses, and this page does not claim that any Guildford school sits a particular board. To show what a Biology paper demands, we use AQA's published GCSE Biology (8461) specification as one worked example. AQA states two written exams, each 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks and 50% of the GCSE, available at Foundation and Higher Tier.

• AQA 8461 Paper 1 covers cell biology; organisation; infection and response; and bioenergetics.
• AQA 8461 Paper 2 covers homeostasis and response; inheritance, variation and evolution; and ecology.

That is four topics on one paper and three on the other, seven in all. Together the two papers carry 200 marks in 210 minutes (105 minutes for 100 marks is 1.05 minutes per mark). AQA also states that a minimum of eight experiments are required for single science qualifications and 16 for double science, and that questions drawing on those practical activities count for at least 15% of the overall marks. That makes the practical work a scored part of the exam, not an extra.

The source is AQA's own GCSE Biology 8461 assessment page. Other boards publish their own papers, so for a Guildford pupil the first job is to read the school's own paper list.

What this changes in our programme. At 1.05 minutes per mark, a pupil on the AQA 8461 paper has little time to think about a long answer from scratch, so our tutors rehearse timed answers question by question. The seven topics become a checklist in the lesson plan, with the weaker paper taught first. The practical questions get their own short drill each week because they can come from any topic. If the school uses another board, the tutor swaps in that board's paper structure.

How does one-to-one online GCSE Biology tutoring work for a Guildford family?

Every Guildford lesson is one to one and online, so the child does not travel into town after school and the timetable can follow the school's own mock calendar. Our expert GCSE Biology tutors start from the child's last two papers and the school's name, because the DfE rows above show how different the starting points are. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.

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A typical first programme runs in three steps. First, a free consultation to confirm the exam board, tier and the school's Biology group. Second, a diagnostic on the paper the child finds hardest. Third, a weekly lesson plan that alternates content gaps with timed exam-style answers, adjusted after each mock. Families who also want support in other subjects can read about our GCSE maths tutors in Guildford and our GCSE English tutors in Guildford, and pupils planning to continue Biology after GCSE can look at our A-level Biology tutors in Guildford.

For the national picture of how DfE reports these figures, see DfE's Key stage 4 performance release for 2025/26, and for the school addresses used here, the Get Information About Schools register.

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