Leicester’s German GCSE entries swung from 45 up to 67 and back to 47 across seven years while French and Spanish grew fast and steadily — which exam boards still offer it, the new 2026 specification, and the one school, of 22 state-funded secondaries and 6 of 8 independents checked, with a real taught class.
Book a Free ConsultationLeicester’s GCSE German entries were 45 in 2018/19, rose to a peak of 67 in 2021/22, fell to 34 in 2022/23, and stood at 47 in 2024/25 — a volatile series ending close to where it started, not a flat one, while French and Spanish grew far faster and steadily around it. Across the city’s 22 state-funded secondaries and 6 of 8 independents checked, only Soar Valley College still runs a real taught German class.
Whichever way your child’s own German cohort is moving, our expert GCSE German tutors help students across Leicester build a revision plan around their own school and specification, not a citywide average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNo page on this site has used the Department for Education’s own statistics API to show a subject’s entries changing over time, so this is the first for Leicester. Queried directly for German, French and Spanish across every year the dataset offers, state-funded schools in Leicester City entered 45 pupils for GCSE German in 2018/19, rising to 66 in 2020/21 and a peak of 67 in 2021/22 — about 49% above both the 2018/19 and 2024/25 figures — before falling sharply to a low of 34 in 2022/23 and recovering to 47 in 2024/25. That shape, a volatile climb and fall that happens to land close to where it started, is not the same thing as a flat line, and it is not a subject in collapse either. What moved around it was steadier, not calmer: French rose from 912 entries to 1,330 over the same seven years, up 45.8%, and Spanish rose from 274 to 658, up 140%, both without German’s swings. Leicester’s honest German story is dilution, not decline — a small, volatile subject ending near where it began while its two neighbours grew fast and steadily around it.
This page’s own query of the same API for 2024/25 alone returns 47 — the identical figure already held for Leicester before this page’s own research began, which is exactly the kind of number worth reproducing rather than trusting on sight. A separate, school-by-school check across every Leicester City secondary with a real key-stage-4 cohort, covered further down this page, sums to the same 47, a second independent route to the same total.
| Academic year | German entries | French entries | Spanish entries |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018/19 | 45 | 912 | 274 |
| 2020/21 | 66 | 1,171 | 449 |
| 2021/22 | 67 | 1,365 | 382 |
| 2022/23 | 34 | 1,236 | 563 |
| 2024/25 | 47 | 1,330 | 658 |
Source: Department for Education statistics API, Leicester local authority, state-funded schools, GCSE qualification, total pupil entries by academic year.
Only two. AQA’s current specification is German 8662, a specification for first teaching in 2024, and Pearson Edexcel’s equivalent is German 1GN1, confirmed on Pearson’s own qualification page as first teaching 2024 and first assessment 2026. Neither WJEC Eduqas nor OCR currently offers a GCSE in German, checked directly at each board’s own site rather than assumed.
Eduqas’s own live, current qualifications list carries “AS/A Level German” under its German heading, and a separate, lower-level “Language Pathways German” qualification, but no GCSE German entry anywhere on it. Eduqas’s own web address for a GCSE German specification redirects to that same generic qualifications index rather than resolving to a specification page of its own — the identical pattern this site’s sibling French and Spanish pages already found for Eduqas’s GCSE French and GCSE Spanish. OCR’s own full GCSE qualifications list, which runs alphabetically, goes directly from Food Preparation and Nutrition to Gateway Science with no German row between them, and has no French or Spanish row anywhere either. OCR’s own website returns an ordinary page for a deliberately invalid web address typed into it rather than an error, so a working link there proves nothing on its own; this absence is read from what the qualifications list actually names, not from a broken link.
Not sure which board your child’s school actually uses for German? Our expert GCSE German tutors help students across Leicester confirm it from the school directly before the first session.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppAQA’s German 8662 carries entry codes 8662F for Foundation tier and 8662H for Higher tier, filed under DfE discount code FKG and Ofqual qualification accreditation number 610/3531/2. AQA’s own specification page states plainly that its “GCSE exams and certification for this specification are available for the first time in May/June 2026.”
Pearson Edexcel’s German 1GN1 carries Qualification Number 610/3473/3, confirmed in Pearson’s own specification document, which states “First teaching from September 2024 | first certification from 2026.” Both boards therefore examine a genuinely new German GCSE for the first time in summer 2026, on new content and a new assessment structure, with no earlier cohort on the same paper to set a grade boundary against.
On AQA’s German 8662, Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing each carry an equal 25% of the overall grade — the same even split this site’s Leicester French and Spanish pages already found on their own specifications, so it is not unique to German, and this page does not repeat their board-by-board Speaking-paper comparison. A pupil must sit the same tier, Foundation or Higher, across all four skills: Foundation awards a grade within the range 1 to 5, and Higher awards a grade within the range 4 to 9, with an allowed grade 3 for a narrow miss, both confirmed directly on AQA’s own specification.
Just one. Across every one of Leicester City’s 22 state-funded secondaries and 6 of its 8 independent schools now checked for German by this site, Soar Valley College is the only school with a German cohort large enough to call a taught class: 41 of its 309 pupils, 13.3%, entered for GCSE German in 2025, confirmed directly on the school’s own DfE subjects-entered page. The Department for Education’s own register of schools records Soar Valley College as open, an academy conversion completed 1 June 2023.
A handful of the state-funded secondaries checked record one or two German entries each — too small to describe as a taught class rather than an individual candidate — and every other state-funded and independent school checked records none at all. That pattern, not a citywide absence, is Leicester’s real German picture: one real class, a scatter of individual entries, and nothing in between.
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This site’s existing Leicester French and Spanish pages checked 21 of the city’s secondaries between them. Checking six more this site had not covered — The City of Leicester College, Babington Academy, New College Leicester, Madani Boys School, Jameah Academy and The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School — adds real information rather than repeating it.
The City of Leicester College entered 17 pupils for GCSE French and 17 for GCSE Spanish in 2025, out of 270 at the end of key stage 4, with no German row on its own subjects-entered table. Babington Academy entered 50 for French, out of 270, with no German or Spanish entry. Madani Boys School entered 45 for French and, out of its 88 pupils, exactly 1 for German — the sixth Leicester school found with any German entry at all, and the one that brings the school-level total to 47, matching the Department for Education’s own local-authority figure for 2024/25 exactly.
The two remaining independent schools checked follow the same pattern already found at Darul Uloom Leicester and Jameah Boys Academy. Jameah Academy enters 18 of its 23 pupils for Arabic and records no French, German or Spanish entry at all; The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School enters 27 of its 46 pupils for Arabic, with the same absence. Arabic, not a modern European language, carries the languages requirement at both schools.
New College Leicester entered 33 pupils for GCSE French and 14 for GCSE Spanish in 2025, with no German entry, out of 205 at the end of key stage 4 — but that figure belongs to a school that no longer exists under that name. The Department for Education’s own register of schools records New College Leicester as closed on 30 April 2025, succeeded by The Herewoode Academy, which has not yet published subjects-entered data of its own. A reader checking New College Leicester’s current status directly would find no such school open today — a reminder that a subjects-entered table is a snapshot of the school that submitted it, not a guarantee the school still exists under that name by the time a parent reads the figure.
Whichever of Leicester’s schools your child actually attends, our expert GCSE German tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school’s real entry, not a citywide assumption.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppWhether a Leicester pupil is entered for AQA’s German 8662 or Pearson Edexcel’s German 1GN1, at Soar Valley College or a smaller German cohort at another school entirely, the starting point is the same: confirming which board, tier and specification actually apply, since 2026’s German boundaries have no prior year to benchmark against — no source records which board any individual Leicester school uses, so this page never assumes one. Our diagnostic assessment for every new Leicester GCSE German student begins there, then works from a pupil’s own mock results.
Our tutors hold degrees from leading UK universities and work one-to-one online through vocabulary building, grammar practice and full Speaking-paper rehearsal marked against the real task structure for a student’s own board, at whichever tier their school has entered them for. 91% of our students achieve their desired grades, and Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews.
Losing share, not declining, and not flat either. DfE’s own statistics API records 45 GCSE German entries across Leicester City’s state-funded schools in 2018/19, rising to 66 in 2020/21 and a peak of 67 in 2021/22, before falling to a low of 34 in 2022/23 and recovering to 47 in 2024/25 — a volatile series that ends close to where it started. Over the same seven years French rose steadily from 912 to 1,330 entries (up 45.8%) and Spanish rose steadily from 274 to 658 (up 140%), so German went from being the smallest of the three languages by a wide margin to an even wider one, without its own entries actually collapsing.
Only two: AQA, with specification 8662, and Pearson Edexcel, with specification 1GN1, both confirmed directly on each board’s own site. WJEC Eduqas’s own live, current qualifications list carries “AS/A Level German” but no GCSE German, and its GCSE-German web address redirects to Eduqas’s generic qualifications index rather than resolving to a specification page. OCR’s own full GCSE qualifications list runs alphabetically from Food Preparation and Nutrition straight to Gateway Science, with no German entry anywhere on it — and OCR’s own website returns an ordinary page for almost any web address typed into it, so that absence is read from what the list actually contains, not from a broken link.
AQA’s German 8662 is a specification for first teaching in 2024, with entry codes 8662F (Foundation) and 8662H (Higher), DfE discount code FKG and Ofqual qualification accreditation number 610/3531/2; AQA’s own specification page states its GCSE exams “are available for the first time in May/June 2026.” Pearson Edexcel’s equivalent, German 1GN1 (Qualification Number 610/3473/3), is confirmed on Pearson’s own qualification page as first teaching 2024 and first assessment 2026.
Only one, in any meaningful sense. Of the 22 state-funded secondaries in Leicester City and 6 of its 8 independent schools now checked for this page, Soar Valley College is the only school with a German cohort large enough to describe as a taught class: 41 of its 309 pupils (13.3%) in 2025. A handful of other state-funded schools record one or two German entries each, too small to indicate a taught class, and every independent school checked records none.
Not among the six checked for this page. Darul Uloom Leicester, Jameah Boys Academy, Al-Aqsa Schools Trust, Jameah Academy and The Imam Muhammad Adam Institute School each record Arabic on their own DfE subjects-entered tables and no French, German or Spanish entry at all; Leicester High School for Girls, checked directly for this page, enters French and Spanish but has no German entry either. Two of Leicester’s eight independent secondaries, both very small, have not been checked for this page.
They belong to a school that has since closed. New College Leicester entered 33 pupils for GCSE French and 14 for GCSE Spanish in 2025, with no German entry, but the Department for Education’s own register of schools records New College Leicester as closed on 30 April 2025, succeeded by The Herewoode Academy. The Herewoode Academy has not yet published subjects-entered data of its own.
No, and the two are easy to conflate. Ofqual’s grading alignment for French and German was decided several years before AQA’s German 8662 and Pearson Edexcel’s German 1GN1 existed, and was phased into results on the old specification, not the reformed one. This site’s blog post on why GCSE French and German grades rose covers that earlier adjustment in full, including the exact date it was decided.
For related subjects and levels, see our wider GCSE tuition across every subject, our GCSE German tutoring page, and our other Leicester subject pages for GCSE French, GCSE Spanish and GCSE Business Studies. For the full picture of tutoring across the city, see our overview of Leicester tutoring, or browse our full directory of UK tutoring locations.
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