Provisional summer 2026 Biology entries and grades at five Islington schools, and one-to-one online tuition
Book a Free ConsultationLeading Tuition's GCSE Biology tutoring in Islington is one-to-one online teaching for the separate GCSE (9-1) Biology qualification, planned from the Department for Education's provisional summer 2026 school rows. Five Islington schools entered 30 or more pupils for it: 306 entries between them, set against a combined year group of 692 pupils at the end of key stage 4.
Those figures count separate Biology only. Combined Science is a Double Award, a different qualification, so a child entered for it is not in these rows. The release is provisional: DfE published it on 15 October 2026 and updated it on 28 October 2026, and approved result amendments that schools requested have not been applied to it.
Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Islington whichever of the five schools below their child attends, working one-to-one online from the child's own target grade and the marks they are losing on each paper.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe first thing to read in any school's Biology figures is how large a share of the year group the entries are, because grade counts from a school that enters 82.6% of its year and grade counts from a school that enters 23.2% describe different groups of pupils. DfE publishes two numbers per school that make the comparison possible: the number of entries in separate GCSE (9-1) Biology, and the number of pupils at the end of key stage 4. The table sets them side by side for the five schools with 30 or more entries.
| School | Type, gender, age range (GIAS) | Biology entries | Pupils at end of KS4 | Entries as share of pupils |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arts and Media School Islington | Foundation school, mixed, 11 to 16 | 119 | 144 | 82.6% (119 / 144) |
| St Mary Magdalene Academy | Academy (sponsor led), mixed, 4 to 19 | 77 | 191 | 40.3% (77 / 191) |
| Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School | Community school, girls, 11 to 16 | 45 | 174 | 25.9% (45 / 174) |
| North Bridge House Senior Canonbury School | Independent school, mixed, 11 to 18 | 33 | 45 | 73.3% (33 / 45) |
| Highbury Fields School | Community school, girls, 11 to 18 | 32 | 138 | 23.2% (32 / 138) |
| Five schools | 306 (119 + 77 + 45 + 33 + 32) | 692 (144 + 191 + 174 + 45 + 138) | 44.2% (306 / 692) |
Source: DfE, Subject school level exam data, summer 2026 exams, provisional; school type, gender and age range from Get Information about Schools (GIAS), read on 2 November 2026. Entries and pupils are DfE's figures for the school; the percentages are our division, shown with its working.
Read across the five rows, the entry share runs from 23.2% to 82.6% across the five. Across all twelve Islington schools that have a separate Biology total in DfE's table, the entries are 379 against 1,448 pupils, or 26.2%. The other seven schools are named further down.
What this changes in our programme. A school's grade counts are a record of the pupils that school chose to enter, not a forecast for one child. So the first call with a family does not start from the school's results. It starts from the child's last mock paper, the target grade the family has in mind and the tier the school has entered them for, which the family confirms with the school. The entry share is there so that nobody reads another school's grade counts as if they applied to their own child.
The table gives DfE's count of entries at each grade 9 to 1, then the two derived columns we use when we talk about targets: entries at grade 4 or above (the sum of grades 4 to 9) and entries at grade 7 or above (the sum of grades 7 to 9). A dash means DfE returns no row for that grade at that school. The rows that DfE does return, with U and X, add up to the school's total entries, so a dash is no entries at that grade.
| School | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | U | X | Total entries | Grade 4+ | Grade 7+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arts and Media School Islington | 4 | 1 | 6 | 9 | 19 | 23 | 31 | 19 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 119 | 62 | 11 |
| St Mary Magdalene Academy | 17 | 14 | 17 | 14 | 11 | 2 | 1 | – | – | – | 1 | 77 | 75 | 48 |
| Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School | 6 | 4 | 13 | 15 | 6 | 1 | – | – | – | – | – | 45 | 45 | 23 |
| North Bridge House Senior Canonbury School | 6 | 6 | 6 | 10 | 3 | 1 | 1 | – | – | – | – | 33 | 32 | 18 |
| Highbury Fields School | 10 | 12 | 4 | 5 | – | – | – | 1 | – | – | – | 32 | 31 | 26 |
Source: DfE, Subject school level exam data, GCSE (9-1) Full Course, Biology, number of entries at grade, summer 2026, provisional. U is DfE's grade for results that are ungraded or unclassified; X is DfE's grade for pupils who were absent or whose results are pending.
Already know the grade your child is aiming for in Biology? Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Islington build a one-to-one online programme around the topics where their paper marks are being lost, at either tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppTaking each school in turn, in counts only:
Arts and Media School Islington has 119 entries: 2 at grade 1, 19 at grade 2, 31 at grade 3, 23 at grade 4, 19 at grade 5, 9 at grade 6, 6 at grade 7, 1 at grade 8 and 4 at grade 9, with 2 U and 3 X. Grades 1 to 3 add to 52 (2 + 19 + 31) and grades 4 to 9 add to 62, so 52 + 62 + 2 + 3 = 119. Grade 3, with 31 entries, is the single largest row.
St Mary Magdalene Academy has 77 entries: 1 at grade 3, 2 at grade 4, 11 at grade 5, 14 at grade 6, 17 at grade 7, 14 at grade 8 and 17 at grade 9, with 1 X. That is 75 at grade 4 or above and 48 at grade 7 or above; the 76 graded entries plus the 1 X make 77.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School has 45 entries: 1 at grade 4, 6 at grade 5, 15 at grade 6, 13 at grade 7, 4 at grade 8 and 6 at grade 9. All 45 are at grade 4 or above, and 23 (13 + 4 + 6) are at grade 7 or above.
North Bridge House Senior Canonbury School has 33 entries: 1 at grade 3, 1 at grade 4, 3 at grade 5, 10 at grade 6, 6 at grade 7, 6 at grade 8 and 6 at grade 9. That is 32 at grade 4 or above and 18 at grade 7 or above. Its 33 entries sit against a year group of 45 pupils, the smallest of the five.
Highbury Fields School has 32 entries: 1 at grade 2, 5 at grade 6, 4 at grade 7, 12 at grade 8 and 10 at grade 9. That is 31 at grade 4 or above and 26 (4 + 12 + 10) at grade 7 or above.
Added together, the five schools have 245 entries at grade 4 or above (62 + 75 + 45 + 32 + 31), which is 80.1% of their 306 entries, and 126 at grade 7 or above (11 + 48 + 23 + 18 + 26), which is 41.2%. Those two totals mix schools that enter very different shares of their year, as the first table shows, so we do not use them as a benchmark for any single school and nothing here ranks one school against another. DfE's Progress 8 is not available either: DfE states that it is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for 2024/25 and 2025/26, because no key stage 2 prior attainment data exists for those cohorts.
What this changes in our programme. The rows show which grades pupils at a given school were actually awarded in the summer 2026 papers, and that sets the vocabulary for the first conversation. Where a school's entries cluster at grades 7 to 9, the first question to a family is how to secure those grades; where entries run from grade 1 to grade 9, the first question is often how to reach grade 4. In both cases the student's own paper marks decide the plan, and the school row only frames the target. We write the programme against the child's target, not against the school's average.
The cut for the two tables above is 30 separate Biology entries. DfE's table carries twelve Islington schools with a Biology total, so seven fall below the cut. Each is listed here with the numbers DfE publishes for it, because a family at one of them is counted in DfE's data and is not missing from this page by accident.
| School | Biology entries | Pupils at end of KS4 | Grade breakdown in DfE's table |
|---|---|---|---|
| Central Foundation Boys' School | 25 | 167 | Published |
| City of London Academy Highbury Grove | 17 | 162 | Published |
| St Aloysius' College | 16 | 57 | Published |
| Beacon High | 6 | 76 | Published |
| The Bridge Keystone | 5 | 12 | Withheld |
| City of London Academy, Highgate Hill | 2 | 133 | Withheld |
| City of London Academy Islington | 2 | 149 | Withheld |
The seven schools together have 73 entries (25 + 17 + 16 + 6 + 5 + 2 + 2), and the five schools above the cut have 306, which makes the 379 for all twelve. We do not put a share-of-year figure or a description beside any of the seven. The rows here are separate Biology only, so a small total is a count of entries and not a statement about the school.
For three of the seven, DfE publishes the total but withholds the grades. DfE's data notes say: "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 the position for The Bridge Keystone (5 entries) and the two City of London Academy schools at Highgate Hill and Islington (2 entries each). A withheld breakdown is a figure DfE has chosen not to show; it is not a count of nothing and we do not turn it into one. The grade rows for the other four schools exist in DfE's table, but they fall below our 30-entry cut and the page leaves them out.
What this changes in our programme. A child at one of these seven schools gets the same service: the plan starts from their own marks and target grade. What they do not get from this page is a school-level grade count, and we would rather say that than stretch a handful of entries into a pattern. If your child attends one of these schools, the free consultation covers the same ground, and the DfE rows above tell you how many pupils at the school were entered for separate Biology at all.
Our expert Islington GCSE Biology tutors teach one-to-one online, sequencing the programme by the paper and topics where your child's marks are being lost, for either AQA tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppDfE defines grade U as a result that is ungraded or unclassified, and grade X as a pupil who was absent or whose result is pending. Both are counted in a school's total entries but are not grades 1 to 9. In this data they appear at two of the five schools: Arts and Media School Islington has 2 U and 3 X, and St Mary Magdalene Academy has 1 X. A pending result is, by DfE's definition, not yet a grade, and DfE says the amendments schools requested have not been applied to this release.
We therefore quote the X figures where they exist and keep them out of the grade 4 or above and grade 7 or above counts. That is the reason the totals in the table do not always equal the sum of grades 9 to 1: Arts and Media School Islington's grades 9 to 1 add to 114, and the other 5 entries are the 2 U and 3 X.
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DfE's rows do not say which exam board any Islington school entered its pupils with, so the family should confirm the board with the school. The specification we describe here is AQA GCSE Biology 8461. On AQA's own assessments page it is examined in two written papers, each 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks and 50% of the GCSE, available at Foundation Tier and Higher Tier, with question types running from multiple choice to structured, closed short answer and open response.
Paper 1 assesses topics 1 to 4: Cell biology; Organisation; Infection and response; and Bioenergetics. Paper 2 assesses topics 5 to 7: Homeostasis and response; Inheritance, variation and evolution; and Ecology. That is 4 topics in the first paper and 3 in the second, 7 in all.
Some arithmetic that matters in the exam room: 1 hour 45 minutes is 105 minutes, and 105 minutes for 100 marks is 1.05 minutes per mark. Across the two papers that is 200 marks and 210 minutes of writing. Pacing is a skill that is built in timed practice papers, not in revision notes.
AQA also states that questions in the written exams draw on the practical activities students carry out, and that these questions will count for at least 15% of the overall marks. It sets a minimum of eight experiments for single science qualifications and 16 for double science qualifications. AQA gives assessment objective 3 an overall weighting of approximately 20%.
What this changes in our programme. Because the two papers split the seven topics 4 and 3, our programme for an Islington student is sequenced by the paper on which that student's marks are being lost, not by the order the school taught the topics in. A student losing marks on Paper 1 topics such as Bioenergetics and a student losing marks on Paper 2 topics such as Ecology start in different places, and both work through past papers timed against the 1.05 minutes per mark so that the pacing is tested before the real paper. For the specification itself, the exam board's AQA GCSE Biology 8461 assessments page is the source to read.
It begins with a free consultation, booked through the button on this page or by WhatsApp. We ask for the school, the exam board and tier, the child's most recent paper marks and the grade the family wants. From that a programme is built: one-to-one sessions online with a shared whiteboard, working through the student's own past papers and marking them against the real mark scheme. For more on how we teach the subject across the country, see our GCSE Biology tuition page.
The evidence base for a family at one of the five schools above is the table of grade counts, with the cohort beside it. For a family at one of the seven schools below the cut, it is the entries and the pupil count. Neither replaces the child's own marks, and the first sessions go to the topics where those marks show the most to gain. We also work with Islington students on GCSE maths and GCSE English, and a student sitting those alongside Biology can use the same call to plan the three subjects together.
Our own results figure is that 91% of our students achieve their desired grades.
Want an Islington GCSE Biology tutor for your child? Our expert tutors teach AQA 8461 one-to-one online, and a free consultation is the way to start.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppEvery school figure on this page is from one dataset: the Department for Education's Subject school level exam data (dataset version 2.0), summer 2026 exams, published on 15 October 2026. We selected the qualification GCSE (9-1) Full Course, the subject Biology, and the two indicators DfE labels Number of entries at grade and Number of pupils at the end of KS4, for the Islington schools in the table. The query returned 68 rows for 12 schools, and for each school the grade rows, with U and X, add up to that school's total entries. The DfE key stage 4 performance release is the place to read the publisher's own notes.
Three cautions follow from the source. The figures are provisional, so a school's counts can change in a later release. The entries are for separate Biology only, so they are not the whole of a school's science teaching. And neither entries nor grade counts are a measure of teaching quality, which is why this page describes each school with counts and gives no ranking or verdict. Where this page names a school type, gender or age range, it comes from the government's school register (GIAS), not from the school's own prospectus.
No. The rows on this page are GCSE (9-1) Full Course entries in Biology, the separate qualification, and five Islington schools with 30 or more entries made 306 of them in summer 2026. DfE describes Combined Science as a Double Award, which is a different qualification. A child entered for Combined Science is not in these counts, so a family should ask the school which route their child is taking before reading any grade figure here.
No. DfE published the key stage 4 release on 15 October 2026, updated it on 28 October 2026 and labels it provisional: approved result amendments that schools requested have not been applied to it. A school's counts can therefore differ in a later release. We quote the figures as DfE published them, mark them provisional, and re-read them before relying on them for anything beyond planning a first conversation.
DfE lists 379 separate Biology entries at twelve Islington schools against 1,448 pupils at the end of key stage 4, which is 26.2%. At the five schools with 30 or more entries the figures are 306 entries against 692 pupils, or 44.2%. Across the five the share runs from 23.2% to 82.6%.
DfE defines grade U as a result that is ungraded or unclassified, and grade X as a pupil who was absent or whose result is pending. Both count towards a school's total entries but are not grades 1 to 9. Arts and Media School Islington has 2 U and 3 X among its 119 entries, and St Mary Magdalene Academy has 1 X among its 77. We keep them out of the grade 4 and grade 7 counts.
AQA GCSE Biology 8461 has two written papers, each 1 hour 45 minutes, 100 marks and 50% of the GCSE, at Foundation Tier and Higher Tier. Paper 1 covers topics 1 to 4: Cell biology; Organisation; Infection and response; and Bioenergetics. Paper 2 covers topics 5 to 7: Homeostasis and response; Inheritance, variation and evolution; and Ecology. At 105 minutes for 100 marks, that is 1.05 minutes per mark.
DfE's data notes say: "Individual grade breakdowns are suppressed (not shown) where the total number of entries (per school/qualification/discount code/subject description) is 5 or fewer." In Islington that applies to The Bridge Keystone with 5 entries and to City of London Academy, Highgate Hill and City of London Academy Islington with 2 entries each. The breakdown is withheld, not recorded as nothing, so the page shows the total and the pupil count only and draws no conclusion from them.
A family books a free consultation through the button on this page or by WhatsApp. We ask for the school, exam board, tier, the child's latest paper marks and the target grade. Sessions then run one-to-one online with a shared whiteboard, working through the student's own past papers and marking against the real mark scheme. With 2 papers and 7 topics in AQA 8461, the order follows where the marks are lost.
No. DfE states that it is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26, because no key stage 2 prior attainment data is available for those cohorts. The figures on this page are counts of entries and of entries at each grade, with each school's number of pupils at the end of key stage 4 beside them. They are not a measure of how much progress pupils made.
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