Leicester's 2024/25 key-stage-4 entries for GCSE Computer Science, school by school — including the mainstream academy that enters none, and teaches a vocational computing award instead.
Book a Free ConsultationLeicester City entered 847 of its 4,523 state-funded key-stage-4 pupils for GCSE Computer Science in 2024/25 — an 18.7% rate, confirmed school by school. One Leicester secondary, Tudor Grange Samworth Academy, entered none at all, teaching a vocational computing qualification instead. Our expert GCSE Computer Science tutors help students across Leicester on AQA, OCR, Edexcel and Eduqas.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNo, and the distinction decides which figures on this page even apply to a given pupil. GCSE Computer Science is the academic GCSE, examined and graded 9-1 like Maths or Physics, and it is one of four subjects — alongside Biology, Chemistry and Physics — that can satisfy the science element of the EBacc. Creative iMedia, a Cambridge National offered by OCR, and BTEC Technical Awards in computing subjects are vocational qualifications, assessed and graded on entirely different scales, and neither one counts towards the EBacc, whatever a school's marketing describes them as.
The Department for Education's own school-level performance data shows why checking the qualification column matters, not just the subject name. Its subjects-entered tables list the academic GCSE under a subject heading of “Computer Studies/Computing” — DfE's own subject-group label, which this page confirms covers the modern GCSE Computer Science course at every school checked — and list vocational computing awards separately, under a “Computer Appreciation / Introduction” heading, recorded as a Technical Award rather than a GCSE. A school can show zero entries under the first heading and dozens under the second in the same year, for the same pupils — not a school that ignores computing, but one that teaches it through a different qualification. This page keeps the two apart throughout, and names which one every figure below describes.
A fourth qualification is worth naming only to rule it out: GCSE Information and Communication Technology, the old academic ICT GCSE, was withdrawn by the exam boards years ago and does not appear anywhere in DfE's 2024/25 data for Leicester. Any current reference to a Leicester school teaching “GCSE ICT” describes either the vocational award above or out-of-date information.
Not sure which qualification your child's school actually enters them for? Our expert GCSE Computer Science tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's real qualification, exam board and tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppBefore naming individual schools, the honest starting point is the city-wide rate, and DfE's own subject-entry dataset — not the “entering for biology, chemistry & physics” measure this site's Leicester Physics, Chemistry and Biology pages use — is a genuinely different table. Leicester City is a unitary authority in its own right, entirely separate from Leicestershire, the surrounding county, and DfE reports the two areas as distinct rows that should never be combined. In 2024/25, Leicester City's state-funded schools entered 847 pupils for GCSE Computer Science out of 4,523 pupils at the end of key stage 4 — 18.7%, calculated directly from those two DfE-published counts.
This page did not simply take DfE's 847 figure on trust: it individually checked every Leicester City state-funded secondary DfE records with a GCSE Computer Science entry in 2024/25 — 19 schools in total, from Soar Valley College's 105 down to Madani Girls' School's 16 — and summed them. The total comes to exactly 847, matching the city-wide figure. Across all 25 Leicester City schools that enter any pupils at all, including six independent schools outside the state-funded total, the city recorded 926 GCSE Computer Science entries in 2024/25; independent schools account for 79 of those.
The Department for Education publishes school-by-school GCSE Computer Science entries as part of its wider subject-entry data, and 25 of Leicester City's 30 secondaries recorded in that data entered at least one pupil in 2024/25. The table below covers twelve of them, from the highest entry rate found to the one genuine zero among schools that otherwise resemble their neighbours.
| School | GCSE Computer Science entries | Entry rate |
|---|---|---|
| The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School (independent) | 40 | 87.0% |
| Soar Valley College | 105 | 34.0% |
| Jameah Academy (independent) | 7 | 30.4% |
| The City of Leicester College | 80 | 29.6% |
| Avanti Fields School | 53 | 28.8% |
| New College Leicester (now The Herewoode Academy) | 51 | 24.9% |
| Castle Mead Academy | 54 | 22.0% |
| Judgemeadow Community College | 50 | 21.2% |
| Moat Community College | 44 | 20.7% |
| Rushey Mead Academy | 65 | 20.2% |
| Sir Jonathan North Girls' College | 27 | 11.3% |
| Tudor Grange Samworth Academy | 0 | 0.0% |
The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School, a small independent school with just 46 pupils at the end of key stage 4, tops this table at 87.0% — 40 of its pupils entered for GCSE Computer Science, a figure worth reading as a single small cohort rather than a citywide pattern. Soar Valley College enters the largest number of pupils outright, 105 out of 309, and four further schools — The City of Leicester College, Avanti Fields School, New College Leicester and Castle Mead Academy — cluster between 22% and 30%. New College Leicester's 2024/25 record is filed under its former name: the Department for Education's own page confirms the school closed on 30 April 2025 and became an academy, The Herewoode Academy, so a current search for the school by this name will not find it operating under it today. At the foot of the table, Sir Jonathan North Girls' College enters 27 of 240 pupils, 11.3% — the lowest rate among schools that enter any pupils at all.
Whichever end of that table your child's school sits at, our expert GCSE Computer Science tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's real qualification, exam board and tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppTudor Grange Samworth Academy, a mainstream Church of England academy with 123 pupils at the end of key stage 4, is the one school in this table with a genuine 0.0% — not a small, rounded-down number, but no GCSE Computer Science entries recorded anywhere in DfE's 2024/25 data for the school. That is not the same as a school that ignores computing.
| School | GCSE Computer Science entries | Vocational computing entries | KS4 pupils |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tudor Grange Samworth Academy | 0 | 26 (Technical Award, "Computer Appreciation / Introduction") | 123 |
Tudor Grange's own subjects-entered record shows 26 entries under DfE's “Computer Appreciation / Introduction” heading — recorded as a Technical Award, a vocational qualification, covering 21.1% of the school's pupils. That qualification does not count towards the EBacc and is graded on its own distinction/merit/pass scale rather than 9-1, so a pupil there is not simply missing from the Computer Science figures — they are very likely doing computing coursework under a different qualification entirely. Of Leicester City's 30 secondaries recorded in this data, five show no GCSE Computer Science entries: two special schools, Keyham Lodge School and Millgate School; two small independent schools, Jameah Boys Academy and Emmanuel Christian School, the latter with just 5 pupils at the end of key stage 4; and Tudor Grange Samworth Academy, the only one of the five that is a real mainstream secondary with a substantial cohort.
The Department for Education's own EBacc guidance states the science requirement can be met either through “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.” A pupil taking Biology, Chemistry and Computer Science therefore satisfies the EBacc science pillar in full, without ever sitting Physics.
That matters for reading this page correctly against this site's Leicester Physics, Chemistry and Biology pages, which use DfE's “entering for biology, chemistry & physics” measure — a headline figure that only counts a pupil once they are entered for that exact three-subject combination. A pupil doing Biology, Chemistry and Computer Science does not appear in that triple-science percentage at all, even though they have fully met the EBacc science requirement. This page's own 847-entry, 18.7% figure comes from a separate DfE subject-entry dataset that counts GCSE Computer Science entries on their own terms, not as a component of the triple-science measure. The two figures should never be added together, subtracted from one another, or treated as describing the same pupils — they are different DfE tables, built from different questions.
AQA — the board most Leicester schools use — now publishes two editions of GCSE Computer Science under the same code, 8525: a “Current” edition, first taught from September 2020 with exams from 2022 onwards, which is the edition every pupil in this page's 2024/25 entries figures actually sat; and an “Updated” edition, first taught from September 2025 with first exams in summer 2027, published after the Department for Education's own updated “GCSE subject content for computer science” guidance, dated 31 March 2025. AQA's own announcement of the Updated edition reads: “We are delighted to announce that we have updated our GCSE Computer Science (8525) specification for first teaching in September 2025, with first exams in summer 2027”, removing content based on teacher feedback and senior examiner input. The code has not changed between editions; only the content has, so a Leicester pupil already partway through the course, sitting exams in summer 2026, sits the Current edition, while a pupil starting Year 10 from September 2025 sits the Updated edition — a distinction worth confirming with a school directly rather than assuming from the code alone.
Assessment has not changed between editions: both AQA's Current-edition specification document and its Updated-edition specification page confirm the qualification is examined entirely through two written papers at the end of a two-year linear course, with no coursework contributing marks, under either edition. Schools must instead provide a “Practical programming statement” — AQA's own wording, present in both editions, for a written declaration confirming each pupil has had the opportunity to complete a programming task during the course, to meet Ofqual's qualification criteria. That statement carries no marks of its own; it evidences opportunity to practise, not examined coursework, and families should confirm the current position with a school before assuming any project work is marked.
Confirming which edition your child's school actually teaches matters more than the code alone, our expert GCSE Computer Science tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's real qualification, exam board and tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppSeparately from either AQA edition, the Department for Education has committed to a longer-term change to the qualification itself. Its own November 2025 response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review states: “We will also replace the computer science GCSE with a broader offer that reflects the entirety of the computing curriculum whilst continuing to uphold the core principles of computer science such as programming and algorithms, and explore the development of a level 3 qualification in data science and AI.” That document does not give a first-teaching date for the replacement, and this page does not invent one — it is a stated direction of policy, not yet a dated specification change, and should not be confused with AQA's 2025 Updated edition of 8525 above, which is a separate, already-published content revision under the existing GCSE.
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Whether your child sits GCSE Computer Science or a vocational alternative, our expert GCSE Computer Science tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's real qualification, exam board and tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppFour boards currently offer GCSE Computer Science in England, each confirmed directly on its own specification. AQA's GCSE Computer Science carries the code 8525, confirmed on AQA's own specification pages, and is the specification named in the reform above. Pearson Edexcel's Level 1/Level 2 GCSE (9-1) in Computer Science carries the code 1CP2, confirmed on the cover of its own specification document, first taught from September 2020 with first certification in 2022. OCR's GCSE (9-1) Computer Science carries the code J277, confirmed on OCR's own qualification page, also first taught from 2020; OCR's own website separately lists a further Computer Science specification structured for a later teaching start, alongside its current J277 qualification, with no final code yet published. WJEC Eduqas also offers a GCSE in Computer Science, taught from 2020, confirmed under Ofqual Qualification Accreditation Number 601/8291/X in its own specification document — an accreditation number, not a specification code in the AQA/Edexcel/OCR sense, since Eduqas does not print one on its cover page.
None of the marketplace directories ranking for “GCSE Computer Science tutors in Leicester” — Tutor Hunt and Tutorful among the top organic results — name a single Leicester school or a Leicester-specific DfE figure; each lists individual tutor profiles, some of which mention exam boards only as generic bio text (a tutor listing “OCR, AQA and Edexcel” among subjects they cover), never tied to a named Leicester school. Which board and specification a Leicester pupil actually sits depends entirely on their own school's choice, not on the city they live in, so families should check directly with their child's school before assuming a single board applies city-wide.
Whether a Leicester pupil is one of the 87.0% at The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School sitting GCSE Computer Science, or one of Tudor Grange Samworth Academy's pupils working towards a vocational computing award instead, the starting point is the same: confirming which qualification, exam board and content version actually applies to that pupil's own school, rather than assuming from a citywide average. Our diagnostic assessment for every new Leicester GCSE Computer Science student begins there, then builds a programme from a pupil's own topic-by-topic gaps in programming, data representation and computer systems.
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, OCR, Edexcel or Eduqas — covering both examined papers and the practical programming skills every specification requires, whichever content version a pupil's own school is teaching. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews.
For related subjects and levels, see our national Computer Science tutoring service, our wider GCSE tuition across every subject, and our other Leicester subject pages for GCSE Physics, GCSE Chemistry and GCSE Maths. For the full picture of tutoring across the city, see our overview of Leicester tutoring, or browse our full directory of UK tutoring locations.
GCSE Computer Science is the academic GCSE, graded 9-1, and it is one of four subjects that can satisfy the EBacc science requirement. Creative iMedia and BTEC Technical Awards in computing subjects are vocational qualifications, graded on their own separate scales, and neither counts towards the EBacc. The Department for Education's own school-level performance data lists GCSE entries under a subject heading of ‘Computer Studies/Computing’, and vocational computing awards separately under ‘Computer Appreciation / Introduction’ — at Tudor Grange Samworth Academy in Leicester, 26 of the school's 123 pupils sat a vocational Technical Award under that second heading in 2024/25, while the school's own data shows zero entries under the GCSE heading that year.
The Department for Education's own subject-entry data records 847 pupils entered for GCSE Computer Science across Leicester City's state-funded schools in 2024/25, out of 4,523 pupils at the end of key stage 4 — an 18.7% rate. This page checked that 847 figure school by school: summing DfE's own live entry counts for all 19 Leicester City state-funded secondaries with a recorded GCSE Computer Science entry reproduces 847 exactly.
Among the Leicester City secondaries that enter any pupils for GCSE Computer Science, The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School, a small independent school with 46 pupils at the end of key stage 4, records the highest rate, 87.0%, from 40 entries. Sir Jonathan North Girls' College records the lowest rate among schools that do enter pupils, 11.3%, from 27 entries out of 240 pupils. A fifth school, Tudor Grange Samworth Academy, records a genuine 0.0% — not the lowest non-zero rate, but a true zero, covered in more detail below.
Five of the 30 Leicester City secondaries recorded in DfE's 2024/25 subject-entry data show no GCSE Computer Science entries at all: two special schools, Keyham Lodge School and Millgate School; two small independent schools, Jameah Boys Academy and Emmanuel Christian School, the latter with just 5 pupils; and one real mainstream academy, Tudor Grange Samworth Academy, with 123 pupils. Tudor Grange's own subjects-entered record is not empty of computing — it shows 26 entries under a “Computer Appreciation / Introduction” heading, recorded as a vocational Technical Award rather than a GCSE, which does not count towards the EBacc, covering 21.1% of the school's pupils. A zero in the GCSE Computer Science column is not proof that a school teaches no computing at all.
Still working out which qualification applies to your child? Our expert GCSE Computer Science tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's real qualification, exam board and tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppYes, but only as one of four options, and DfE measures it separately from the triple-science figures this site's other Leicester science pages use. The Department for Education's own EBacc guidance states the science requirement is met either through “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.” A pupil taking Biology, Chemistry and Computer Science therefore satisfies the EBacc science pillar without ever sitting Physics — but DfE's published “entering for biology, chemistry & physics” measure, used on this site's Leicester Physics, Chemistry and Biology pages, does not count that pupil at all, since it only counts the exact three-subject combination. This page's own Computer Science entry figures come from a separate DfE subject-entry dataset, not from that triple-science measure, and the two should not be added together or treated as describing the same pupils.
No. Leicester City is a unitary authority in its own right, entirely separate from Leicestershire, the surrounding county, and the Department for Education reports the two areas separately, with their own key-stage-4 pupil populations (4,523 for Leicester City against 7,862 for Leicestershire in 2024/25). This page's 847-entry, 18.7% GCSE Computer Science figure is specific to Leicester City's own state-funded secondaries; it says nothing about any school in Leicestershire, and a source that treats “Leicester” as covering the whole county is combining two different local authorities' data.
Yes, for pupils starting the course from September 2025 onwards. AQA — the board Leicester schools most commonly use — now publishes two editions under the same code, 8525: a “Current” edition (first taught September 2020, exams from 2022 — the edition every pupil in this page's 2024/25 entries figures sat) and an “Updated” edition (first taught September 2025, first exams summer 2027), issued after the Department for Education published an updated “GCSE subject content for computer science” guidance document on 31 March 2025. The code has not changed between editions; only the content has, so a Leicester pupil already partway through the course in Year 11, sitting exams in summer 2026, sits the Current edition, while a pupil starting Year 10 from September 2025 sits the Updated edition. Families should confirm directly with their child's school which edition applies, rather than assume it from the code alone.
No, not on AQA's specification, in either of its two current editions (8525 Current, first taught 2020, and 8525 Updated, first teaching September 2025). Both editions' own specification documents confirm the qualification is assessed entirely through two written examination papers, taken at the end of a two-year linear course. Schools and colleges must instead provide a “Practical programming statement” — a written declaration confirming that each pupil has had the opportunity to complete a programming task or tasks during the course — to meet Ofqual's qualification criteria, but this statement carries no marks of its own; it evidences opportunity to practise, not examined coursework. Families should confirm the current position directly with an awarding body before assuming any practical or project work contributes marks.
Yes, in the longer term, and separately from AQA's 2025 content update covered above. The Department for Education's own November 2025 response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review states: “We will also replace the computer science GCSE with a broader offer that reflects the entirety of the computing curriculum whilst continuing to uphold the core principles of computer science such as programming and algorithms, and explore the development of a level 3 qualification in data science and AI.” That response, published 5 November 2025, does not give a first-teaching date for the replacement qualification, so this page does not assume one. It is a stated policy direction, not a dated specification change, and it should not be confused with AQA's Updated edition of 8525, which is a separate, already-published content revision under the current GCSE.
Four boards currently offer GCSE Computer Science in England, each confirmed directly on its own website or specification document. AQA's GCSE Computer Science carries the code 8525, confirmed on AQA's own specification pages. Pearson Edexcel's Level 1/Level 2 GCSE (9-1) in Computer Science carries the code 1CP2, confirmed on the cover of its own specification document, first taught from September 2020. OCR's GCSE (9-1) Computer Science, first taught from 2020, carries the code J277, confirmed on OCR's own qualification page; OCR's own website also lists a further specification for computer science structured for a later teaching start, alongside its current J277 qualification. WJEC Eduqas also offers a GCSE in Computer Science, taught from 2020, under Ofqual Qualification Accreditation Number 601/8291/X, confirmed in its own specification document — an accreditation number, not a specification code, since Eduqas does not publish one on its cover page the way AQA, Edexcel and OCR do. Which board and specification a Leicester pupil sits depends entirely on their own school's choice, so families should check directly with their child's school rather than assume a single board applies city-wide.
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