Leicester's 2025 key-stage-4 entries for separate Biology and Combined Science, school by school.
Book a Free ConsultationLeicester City is a single local education authority, separate from Leicestershire, and the Department for Education's 2025 key-stage-4 data covers 4,523 pupils across the city's 44 secondaries. Of those, 20.6% were entered for Biology, Chemistry and Physics as three separate GCSEs rather than Combined Science, ranging from 82.2% at Fullhurst Community College to 1.5% at New College Leicester, the lowest non-zero rate. Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Leicester with both routes, on AQA, Edexcel and OCR.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppSearch results for GCSE Biology tutoring rarely explain this, but it decides which figures on this page even apply to a given pupil. Separate Biology is one of three individual GCSEs — Biology, Chemistry and Physics — each sat and graded on its own, on the standard 9-1 scale. Combined Science is a different qualification entirely: one double-award course covering all three sciences, examined together and reported as two grades on a 17-point scale running from 9-9 down to 1-1. A pupil who takes Combined Science does not receive a GCSE Biology grade at all — their result blends biology, chemistry and physics content, examined in less depth per subject than the separate-science route covers. Most pupils nationally take Combined Science rather than separate sciences, and Leicester's own data, covered below, follows that pattern at most of the city's schools.
Attainment 8, the headline school-performance measure, does not have a distinct "science element" the way it has named English and maths elements. Attainment 8 is built from four components: English, double-weighted; maths, double-weighted; three "EBacc" slots, which must be filled by subjects including a science, a language, and history or geography; and three further open slots for anything else. The Department for Education's own EBacc guidance states plainly that the science requirement is met one of two ways: "GCSE combined science – pupils take 2 GCSEs that cover the 3 main sciences, biology, chemistry and physics" or "3 single sciences at GCSE – pupils choose 3 subjects from biology, chemistry, physics and computer science." Science sits inside the EBacc bucket alongside those other subjects, not as a bucket of its own — an important distinction, because a page or a parent assuming otherwise will misread what an EBacc science-achievement figure is actually measuring.
One further absence is worth flagging before any results are quoted: the Department for Education states directly, on its own school-comparison service, that it "is not able to calculate Progress 8 scores for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26," because pupils sitting GCSEs in those years had no key stage 2 baseline after primary assessments were cancelled during the Covid-19 pandemic. That applies to every school named on this page and to every school in England — it is not a gap specific to Leicester or to Biology.
All three major exam boards offer both qualifications in England. AQA's GCSE Biology specification carries the code 8461, and its Combined Science: Trilogy specification carries the code 8464 — both confirmed directly on AQA's own website. Edexcel and OCR each publish their own Biology and Combined Science specifications too, under their own codes; which board a Leicester pupil sits depends entirely on their own school's choice, which is why this page names schools rather than assuming one board city-wide.
Before naming individual schools, the honest starting point is the city-wide rate, and getting the geography right matters as much as the qualification. Leicester City is a unitary authority in its own right, entirely separate from Leicestershire, the surrounding county — the Department for Education reports the two areas as distinct rows, and neither figure includes the other. Across Leicester City's 44 secondary schools and colleges, 20.6% of the 4,523 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2025 were entered for Biology, Chemistry and Physics as three separate GCSEs. Leicestershire's rate, from its own 7,862 pupils, was slightly higher at 21.9%. Both sit below England's state-funded average of 23.3%, and below the all-schools average of 22.4%, which includes the independent sector.
| Area (2025) | Pupils at end of KS4 | Entering Biology, Chemistry & Physics |
|---|---|---|
| Leicester City | 4,523 | 20.6% |
| Leicestershire (separate authority) | 7,862 | 21.9% |
| England, state-funded schools | 625,647 | 23.3% |
| England, all schools | 700,688 | 22.4% |
A single city-wide figure of 20.6% is a reasonable starting point, but it is an average across schools whose own rates differ enormously, as the next section shows — some far above the city figure, several far below it, and a handful recording no separate-science entries at all.
The Department for Education publishes a school-by-school breakdown of the same "entering for biology, chemistry and physics" measure. The nine Leicester City secondaries below span from the highest rate recorded across the city's 44 schools and colleges in the 2025 results down to the lowest non-zero rate; eight further schools recorded a 0.0% entry rate that year and are not shown in this ranking.
| School | Pupils at end of KS4 | Entering Biology, Chemistry & Physics |
|---|---|---|
| Fullhurst Community College | 287 | 82.2% |
| English Martyrs' Catholic School | 189 | 34.9% |
| St Crispin's School (independent) | 12 | 33.3% |
| St Paul's Catholic School | 183 | 29.5% |
| Judgemeadow Community College | 236 | 23.7% |
| Rushey Mead Academy | 322 | 22.7% |
| Madani Girls' School | 94 | 22.3% |
| Sir Jonathan North Girls' College | 240 | 22.1% |
| New College Leicester (now The Herewoode Academy) | 205 | 1.5% |
Fullhurst Community College stands well apart from every other Leicester City secondary: 82.2% of its 287 pupils were entered for all three separate sciences, nearly four times the city's own 20.6% average. English Martyrs' Catholic School and St Crispin's School — the latter a small independent school with just 12 pupils at the end of key stage 4, so its 33.3% is exactly 4 of those 12 pupils — sit well behind Fullhurst but still comfortably ahead of most of the city. From St Paul's Catholic School down to Sir Jonathan North Girls' College, five schools cluster within eight percentage points of each other, in the low-to-mid twenties. New College Leicester sits alone at the bottom of this group, at 1.5% — the lowest non-zero rate recorded across Leicester City's 44 secondaries; eight further schools recorded 0.0% that year. That 2025 key-stage-4 record is filed under the school's former name: the Department for Education's own page notes it became an academy — The Herewoode Academy — on 30 April 2025, so a current search for the school by this name will not find it operating under it today.
Whichever end of that table your child's school sits at, our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school, tier and exam board, not a city average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppPercentage entry rates describe a share of each school's cohort, but the Department for Education's own subject-entry tables list the actual number of pupils entered for each qualification, and the gap between "Biology GCSE" entries and "Science: Double Award GCSE" entries — DfE's row label for Combined Science — makes the same point more concretely. Both labels are read exactly as DfE displays them below, since one nearby column can otherwise be mistaken for another.
| School | Biology GCSE | Chemistry GCSE | Physics GCSE | Science: Double Award GCSE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fullhurst Community College | 237 | 237 | 237 | 30 |
| English Martyrs' Catholic School | 66 | 66 | 66 | 122 |
| Judgemeadow Community College | 57 | 56 | 56 | 179 |
| Rushey Mead Academy | 73 | 73 | 73 | 244 |
| New College Leicester | 3 | 3 | 3 | 191 |
At Fullhurst, separate Biology outnumbers Combined Science by roughly eight to one — the school is the exception, not the rule, in the numbers above. Every other school in this table shows the opposite pattern: Rushey Mead entered 244 pupils for Combined Science against 73 for separate Biology, English Martyrs 122 against 66, and New College Leicester 191 against just 3. Judgemeadow is the one school checked for this page where the three separate-science entry counts do not line up exactly: 57 Biology entries against 56 each for Chemistry and Physics, meaning at least one pupil sat GCSE Biology without a matching Chemistry or Physics entry that year — an unusual combination, since the three separate sciences are normally taken as a set.
These are entry counts, not headcounts of distinct pupils. A pupil taking all three separate sciences appears three times in this table — once under Biology, once under Chemistry, once under Physics — while a pupil taking Combined Science appears once, under Science: Double Award. That is also why the entries in this table do not need to sum to each school's total cohort size from the ranking table above: a pupil could in principle sit neither route, or a school's total entries can include small numbers of resits or alternative arrangements not shown here.
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The tables above come from a single Department for Education tool, and that tool has a real limitation worth knowing before treating it as complete. Leicester High School for Girls, an independent school with 34 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2025, shows 0.0% entering for Biology, Chemistry and Physics in DfE's own school-comparison data — and no Biology, Chemistry, Physics or Science: Double Award row appears anywhere in its published "subjects entered at key stage 4" list, which otherwise covers subjects from Art & Design to Spanish.
Yet the school's own website tells a different story. Its GCSE Results 2026 news page reports: "In Biology, 77% of grades were 9-8 and 100% were grade 7 or above, while in Physics, 77% were grades 9-8 and 92% were grade 7 or above." Those are real, named, dated results for a real cohort of GCSE Biology and Physics students at this school — plainly at odds with a DfE table that records no science GCSE entries for it at all.
The likely explanation is a data-classification gap rather than any error in the school's own results: DfE's performance-measures tables draw only from qualifications on its approved list for a given year's cohort, and a small independent school's results can fall outside what that particular table captures, even when the school teaches and examines the subject in the ordinary way. The practical lesson for a parent researching Leicester schools is not to treat a 0.0% or an absent row in DfE's public tool as proof a school teaches no science — checking the school's own published results, as this page has for Leicester High School for Girls, is the only way to be sure.
Whatever a directory or DfE table shows for your child's school, our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Leicester confirm exactly which qualification and exam board applies before building a programme around it.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppAQA, Edexcel and OCR all offer separate Biology and Combined Science GCSEs, and a Leicester pupil's actual exam depends on which specification their own school has chosen — not on any citywide standard. AQA's two relevant specifications are confirmed directly on its own website: GCSE Biology carries the code 8461, and GCSE Combined Science: Trilogy carries the code 8464. Edexcel and OCR publish their own Biology and Combined Science specifications under their own separate codes.
None of the marketplace directories ranking for this search name a single Leicester school or a single exam board — the closest any of the top five results comes is mentioning Beauchamp College by name, with no data attached to it at all. Knowing the specification matters in practice: past papers, grade boundaries and topic lists are all specification-specific, so a student revising from the wrong board's materials can waste real study time on content their own exam does not cover. Our tutors confirm a student's board and specification directly from their own school before building any revision plan.
Whether a Leicester pupil is one of the 82.2% at Fullhurst Community College sitting three separate sciences, or one of the far larger group elsewhere in the city working towards Combined Science, the starting point is the same: confirming which qualification, tier and exam board actually applies to that pupil's own school, rather than assuming from a city average. Our diagnostic assessment for every new Leicester GCSE Biology student begins there, then builds a programme from a pupil's own mock results and topic-by-topic gaps.
Our tutors hold degrees from leading UK universities and work one-to-one online through past-paper questions marked against the real mark scheme for a student's own specification — AQA, Edexcel or OCR — whether that is one paper of a Combined Science double award or the full separate-science route. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
Ready to start? Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Leicester at both Foundation and Higher tier, whichever route their own school has entered them for.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppFor related subjects and levels, see our national GCSE Biology guide and our Biology tutoring service, our wider GCSE tuition across every subject, and our other Leicester subject pages for GCSE Maths and GCSE English. For the full picture of tutoring across the city, see our overview of Leicester tutoring.
They are different qualifications. Separate Biology is one of three individual GCSEs — Biology, Chemistry and Physics — each graded on the 9-1 scale. Combined Science is a single double-award qualification covering all three sciences, producing two grades on a 17-point scale running from 9-9 down to 1-1. A pupil taking Combined Science receives no GCSE Biology grade at all: their result reflects biology, chemistry and physics content combined, in less depth per subject than the separate-science route. At Fullhurst Community College in Leicester, 237 pupils sat separate Biology, Chemistry and Physics GCSEs in 2025 against just 30 Science: Double Award entries.
Across Leicester City's 44 secondary schools and colleges, the Department for Education recorded 20.6% of the 4,523 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2025 entering for Biology, Chemistry and Physics as three separate GCSEs, below the England all-schools average of 22.4% the same year. The rate varies enormously by individual school, from 82.2% at Fullhurst Community College down to 1.5% at New College Leicester, the lowest non-zero rate, since eight further Leicester City secondaries recorded 0.0% that year, so a single city-wide figure hides which schools are actually teaching the separate-science route.
Fullhurst Community College recorded the highest rate of any Leicester City secondary in the Department for Education's 2025 key stage 4 data: 82.2% of its 287 pupils were entered for Biology, Chemistry and Physics as three separate GCSEs, each with 237 entries. That is nearly four times Leicester City's own average of 20.6%, and the school entered only 30 pupils for the Science: Double Award (Combined Science) qualification, a much smaller share of its cohort than at most other Leicester schools.
No. Leicester City is a unitary authority in its own right, entirely separate from Leicestershire, which covers the surrounding county. The Department for Education reports the two areas separately: Leicester City recorded 20.6% of its 4,523 key stage 4 pupils entering for Biology, Chemistry and Physics as separate GCSEs in 2025, against 21.9% of Leicestershire's 7,862 pupils. Neither figure includes the other, so a source that treats "Leicester" as covering the whole county is combining two different local authorities' data.
No. Attainment 8 has four components: English, double-weighted; maths, double-weighted; three "EBacc" slots, which must include a science, a language and history or geography among the approved options; and three further open slots. The Department for Education's own EBacc guidance states pupils meet the science requirement either through "GCSE combined science – pupils take 2 GCSEs that cover the 3 main sciences" or "3 single sciences at GCSE – pupils choose 3 subjects from biology, chemistry, physics and computer science." There is no dedicated science element of Attainment 8 the way English and maths each have their own named, double-weighted element.
The Department for Education states on its own Compare School and College Performance service that it "is not able to calculate Progress 8 scores for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26," because the pupils sitting GCSEs in those years had no key stage 2 assessment data to build a baseline from, after primary tests were cancelled during the Covid-19 pandemic. This applies to every school in Leicester, Leicestershire and the rest of England equally, and no city or county anywhere can report a Progress 8 score for either year.
Not always. Leicester High School for Girls, an independent school with 34 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2025, shows 0.0% entering for Biology, Chemistry and Physics in the Department for Education's own table, and no Biology, Chemistry, Physics or Science: Double Award row appears anywhere in its published subjects-entered list. Yet the school's own website reports real GCSE Biology results for 2026: "In Biology, 77% of grades were 9-8 and 100% were grade 7 or above." A parent comparing schools purely through DfE's public performance tool could wrongly conclude this school teaches no GCSE science at all.
AQA, Edexcel and OCR all offer both qualifications in England. AQA's GCSE Biology specification carries the code 8461, and its Combined Science: Trilogy specification carries the code 8464, both confirmed on AQA's own website. Which board and which specification a Leicester pupil sits depends entirely on their own school's choice, not on the city or county they live in, so families should check with their child's school directly rather than assume a single board applies city-wide.
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