Leicester's 2025 key-stage-4 entries for the EBacc's languages pillar, school by school — including the school where Spanish has displaced French entirely, and the schools meeting the pillar through Arabic, Urdu, Gujarati and Polish instead.
Book a Free ConsultationSpanish is far from the default EBacc language across Leicester City: of the 21 secondaries checked for this page, schools entered 662 pupils for GCSE Spanish against 1,264 for French in 2025, and eight of the 21 recorded zero Spanish entries. Our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester with AQA and Edexcel specifications alike.
Already know whether your child's school teaches Spanish, French or German? Our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's actual specification and tier.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppSearch results for GCSE Spanish tutoring in Leicester rarely explain that Spanish is only one of several subjects that satisfy the EBacc's languages requirement, but that breadth is the whole reason a school's Spanish entry count cannot be read as its EBacc-languages figure. The Department for Education's own English Baccalaureate guidance sets out the EBacc as five components: “English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history, a language.” The pillar's own approved list runs well beyond French, German and Spanish to include Latin, ancient Greek, and community and heritage languages such as Polish, Urdu, Arabic, Bengali and Portuguese — every one of which satisfies the same requirement. A pupil entering Urdu or Arabic is credited with the languages pillar and has no Spanish entry at all, and this page never presents the two measures as interchangeable.
Nationally, languages remain the EBacc pillar pupils drop most often. DfE's own key stage 4 performance release for 2024/25 states that, of pupils in state-funded schools who entered four out of the five EBacc components that year, 88.4% were missing the languages component specifically — against just 11.3% missing humanities, the far less commonly dropped pillar. That is a conditional statistic about pupils who were one component short of the full EBacc, not a claim that 88.4% of all pupils skip languages, and this page does not treat it as one. Separately, DfE's own release shows the languages pillar entry rate itself — the share of pupils in state-funded schools entered for any language GCSE at all, Spanish included alongside every other option — fell from 50.5% in 2013/14 to a low of 44.7% in 2022/23 before recovering to 45.9% in 2024/25, its second consecutive rise.
Getting the geography right matters here as much as the subject choice. 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. DfE does not publish a school-level, languages-only entry rate at local-authority level either: filtering its own compare-school-performance table specifically for “Entering for a language” returns the identical columns as every other filter, confirming the closest published city-wide figure is still the full EBacc entry rate, which counts all five pillars together, not languages alone. On that measure, Leicester City recorded 40.2% of its 4,523 key-stage-4 pupils entering for all five EBacc components in 2025, against 41.5% of Leicestershire's 7,862 pupils, 40.5% for England's state-funded schools and 36.7% across all English schools including independents.
To get an actual Spanish-versus-French-versus-German picture, this page went to each school's own published subjects-entered table rather than wait for DfE to publish one. Across the 21 Leicester City secondaries checked directly for this page — 4,165 of the city's 4,523 key-stage-4 pupils, or 92% of the total, the same set already GIAS-verified for this site's sibling Leicester GCSE History page — schools entered 662 pupils for GCSE Spanish, 1,264 for GCSE French and just 46 for GCSE German in 2025. Both totals are this page's own sum of each school's separately published entry count, not a figure DfE publishes as a single number, and the scope is explicitly the schools checked, not the whole city.
Whichever local-authority average your child's school sits near, our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's actual entry, not a city or county average.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe table below covers twelve Leicester City secondaries, each cross-checked against GIAS as open and correctly listed under Leicester City local authority, with Spanish and French entry counts taken directly from each school's own DfE subjects-entered page. The percentage columns are this page's own calculation — each subject's entries divided by the school's own key-stage-4 pupil total — since DfE does not publish either rate directly.
| School | KS4 pupils | Spanish entries | French entries | Favours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avanti Fields School | 184 | 164 (89.1%) | 0 (0.0%) | Spanish |
| Judgemeadow Community College | 236 | 118 (50.0%) | 76 (32.2%) | Spanish |
| Tudor Grange Samworth Academy | 123 | 35 (28.5%) | 1 (0.8%) | Spanish |
| St Paul's Catholic School | 183 | 50 (27.3%) | 18 (9.8%) | Spanish |
| Sir Jonathan North Girls' College | 240 | 103 (42.9%) | 112 (46.7%) | French |
| Moat Community College | 213 | 74 (34.7%) | 77 (36.2%) | Near-even |
| Beaumont Leys School | 208 | 29 (13.9%) | 31 (14.9%) | Near-even |
| Soar Valley College | 309 | 0 (0.0%) | 74 (23.9%) | French |
| Rushey Mead Academy | 322 | 0 (0.0%) | 280 (87.0%) | French |
| Castle Mead Academy | 246 | 0 (0.0%) | 211 (85.8%) | French |
| Crown Hills Community College | 288 | 1 (0.3%) | 94 (32.6%) | French |
| Madani Girls' School | 94 | 1 (1.1%) | 54 (57.4%) | French |
Avanti Fields School shows the widest pull towards Spanish among the twelve: 164 of its 184 pupils (89.1%) against zero for French. Judgemeadow Community College and Tudor Grange Samworth Academy also favour Spanish clearly, entering 118 (50.0%) and 35 (28.5%) respectively against far smaller French counts. At the other end, Rushey Mead Academy — the city's largest secondary at 322 pupils — enters 280 pupils for French (87.0%) and none at all for Spanish, and Castle Mead Academy's 211 French entries (85.8%) are the highest French share recorded on this page against zero Spanish. Moat Community College and Beaumont Leys School both sit close to even between the two languages. Madani Girls' School enters more pupils for French (54, 57.4%) than Spanish (1) but also enters 25 for Arabic and 15 for Urdu — three languages taught at once, a pattern explored further below.
Whichever side of that table your child's school sits on, our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester build a programme around their own school's real specification, not a citywide assumption.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppYes. Avanti Fields School, an academy with 184 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2025, entered 164 of them — 89.1% — for GCSE Spanish, and the school's own subjects-entered table for the same year lists no French entries anywhere on the page, confirmed by a direct search of the fetched page text. Every other Leicester City secondary checked for this page recorded at least one French entry alongside whatever else it teaches, several of them well above their Spanish count, which makes Avanti Fields School the only exception found in the set.
Barely. Of the 21 Leicester City secondaries checked for this page, only Soar Valley College enters a German cohort large enough to describe as a taught GCSE class: 41 of its 309 pupils (13.3%) in 2025, alongside 74 for French and zero for Spanish. Four further schools — Sir Jonathan North Girls' College, Lancaster Academy, English Martyrs' Catholic School and St Paul's Catholic School — each record only one or two German entries on their own subjects-entered tables, too small to indicate a taught class rather than an individual candidate, and the remaining sixteen schools checked record no German entries at all. Summed across the full set, German's 46 entries are a small fraction of French's 1,264 and Spanish's 662.
At Al-Aqsa Schools Trust, an independent school with 15 pupils at the end of key stage 4 in 2025, the school's own subjects-entered table records 14 of those pupils — 93.3% — entered for GCSE Arabic, and lists no French, German or Spanish entries anywhere on the page. Every one of those 14 pupils meets the EBacc's languages pillar exactly as a Spanish entry would; DfE's own EBacc guidance treats Arabic as an equally valid approved language, not a lesser substitute. This is the same school this site's sibling GCSE History page for Leicester found entering all 15 of its pupils for GCSE History and none for Geography — a school whose entries concentrate heavily within a single subject per pillar, rather than splitting across options.
Madani Girls' School shows a different pattern: 94 pupils at the end of key stage 4, with 54 entered for French, 25 for Arabic and 15 for Urdu — three separate languages taught at once, and just a single Spanish entry. Rushey Mead Academy, the city's largest secondary, enters 38 pupils for Gujarati alongside its 280 French entries, and English Martyrs' Catholic School enters 25 for Polish alongside 65 for French.
Summed across all 21 Leicester City secondaries checked for this page, community and heritage language GCSE entries include 71 for Gujarati, 71 for Polish, 53 for Arabic, 28 for Urdu, 11 for Punjabi and 10 for Portuguese in 2025 — every one of them DfE-published at the individual school level, and every one of them satisfying the EBacc languages pillar exactly as Spanish, French or German would. Gujarati concentrates at Rushey Mead Academy and Avanti Fields School; Polish concentrates at English Martyrs' Catholic School and Fullhurst Community College; Arabic concentrates at Madani Girls' School and Al-Aqsa Schools Trust. This page reports what each school's own published entries show, not why a particular school's intake favours one language over another.
Whichever language your child's own school actually teaches, our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester whichever EBacc language their school has entered them for -- and prepare Spanish specifically wherever that is the school's own choice.
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Unlike GCSE History, GCSE Spanish is a tiered qualification. AQA's current specification (8692, for first teaching in 2024) sets a Foundation tier entry code of 8692F and a Higher tier entry code of 8692H; Pearson Edexcel's equivalent specification (1SP1) works the same way. A student sitting Foundation tier can be awarded a grade within the range 1 to 5; a student sitting Higher tier can be awarded a grade within the range 4 to 9, with an allowed grade 3 for a narrow miss. Students must be entered for a single tier across all four papers, and cannot mix tiers within the same qualification.
Assessment splits evenly across four skills — Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing — each worth 25% of the qualification on AQA's specification. The Speaking paper is not conducted like a typical exam: on AQA's current specification, the test is conducted and audio-recorded by the pupil's own teacher within a timetabled window running in April and May, then marked externally by an AQA examiner rather than by the school itself. Pearson Edexcel's equivalent paper is described in its own specification as “internally conducted and externally assessed” in the same way. Neither board treats this as coursework built up over the school year; it is a timed, single-sitting oral test with three set tasks — a read-aloud extract, a role play and a picture-based conversation on AQA's specification.
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 Spanish.
AQA and Pearson Edexcel both offer a current GCSE Spanish specification for first teaching from September 2024, each confirmed directly on the board's own specification document. AQA's carries the qualification code 8692 and Ofqual accreditation number 610/3530/0, confirmed on AQA's own specification page — which also states plainly that the qualification's previous code, 8698, is now a legacy specification. Pearson Edexcel's carries the code 1SP1 and Ofqual qualification number 610/3469/1, both confirmed directly in Pearson's own specification PDF and cross-checked against the DfE register of qualifications approved for funding. WJEC Eduqas does not offer GCSE Spanish at all: Eduqas's own qualification page for it (eduqas.co.uk/qualifications/spanish-gcse/) redirects to the site's generic qualifications index rather than a live Spanish GCSE page, and the qualifications list embedded on that index carries an entry for AS/A Level Spanish but none for GCSE Spanish anywhere. A 77-page specification PDF dated “for teaching from 2024, for award from 2026” does exist on Eduqas's own document server, but its entry codes and Qualification Number are stated as literal, unfilled placeholders (“xxxx” and “xxxxxx”), and the qualification it describes does not appear on Eduqas's own current qualifications list — so this page does not name it as a board offering GCSE Spanish. OCR does not offer GCSE Spanish at all either: a direct search of OCR's own full GCSE qualifications list returns zero mentions of Spanish, French or German anywhere on the page.
None of the marketplace directories ranking for “GCSE Spanish tutors in Leicester” — Tutorful, Tutor Hunt and Teachers To Your Home among the top organic results — name a single Leicester school, a single exam board, or a Leicester-specific DfE figure; each lists individual tutor profiles with generic subject descriptions. Knowing the board and the tier matters in practice: past papers, vocabulary lists and mark schemes are specification-specific, and DfE's own subject content for French, German and Spanish was refreshed for teaching beginning in September 2024, so material written against an older specification can miss content a current student actually needs. Our tutors confirm a student's board, tier and specification directly from their own school before building any revision plan.
Whether a Leicester pupil sits at a school like Avanti Fields School, where Spanish is entered for almost nine in ten pupils, or one like Rushey Mead Academy, where French dominates instead, or a school meeting the EBacc through Arabic, Urdu, Gujarati or Polish, the starting point is the same: confirming which language, exam board and tier actually apply to that pupil's own school, rather than assuming from a citywide pattern. Our diagnostic assessment for every new Leicester GCSE Spanish student begins there, then builds a programme from a pupil's own mock results and speaking-paper confidence.
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 mark scheme for a student's own specification — AQA or Edexcel — at whichever tier their own 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.
Ready to start? our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester at both the start of the course and in the final run-up to exams, whichever board and tier their own school has entered them for.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNo — Spanish is one of several approved EBacc languages. The Department for Education's own EBacc guidance lists five components: English language and literature, maths, the sciences, geography or history, and a language. French, German and Spanish all count, and so do Latin, ancient Greek, and approved community and heritage languages including Polish, Urdu, Arabic, Bengali and Portuguese. A pupil entering any one of these meets the EBacc languages pillar; the pillar entry rate is not the same measure as the Spanish entry rate, and this page never treats the two as interchangeable.
The Department for Education does not publish a Spanish-only entry rate for Leicester City, because Spanish sits inside the wider EBacc languages pillar alongside French, German and every other approved language. Leicester City's own published rate for entering all five EBacc components was 40.2% of its 4,523 key-stage-4 pupils in 2025, against 41.5% for Leicestershire, 40.5% for England's state-funded schools and 36.7% across all English schools. Working from the 21 Leicester City secondaries checked directly for this page — covering 4,165 of the city's 4,523 pupils — schools entered 662 pupils for GCSE Spanish and 1,264 for GCSE French in 2025, figures calculated here from each school's own published entry counts.
Among the schools checked for this page, Avanti Fields School shows the strongest pull towards Spanish, entering 164 of its 184 pupils (89.1%) against zero for French. Judgemeadow Community College (118 Spanish against 76 French) and Tudor Grange Samworth Academy (35 against 1) also favour Spanish clearly. The reverse is true at Rushey Mead Academy, the city's largest secondary at 322 pupils, which enters 280 for French and none at all for Spanish, and at Castle Mead Academy, where French's 211 entries are the highest single French-or-Spanish count recorded on this page against zero Spanish.
Yes. Avanti Fields School enters 164 of its 184 key-stage-4 pupils (89.1%) for GCSE Spanish, and its own subjects-entered table for 2025 lists no French entries at all. Every other Leicester City secondary checked for this page recorded at least one French entry alongside whatever else it teaches, which makes Avanti Fields School the only exception found in the set.
Only one, in any meaningful sense. Of the 21 Leicester City secondaries checked for this page, Soar Valley College is the only one with a German entry large enough to indicate a taught GCSE class: 41 of its 309 pupils (13.3%) in 2025. Four further schools — Sir Jonathan North Girls' College, Lancaster Academy, English Martyrs' Catholic School and St Paul's Catholic School — each record only one or two German entries, too small to describe as a taught cohort, and the remaining sixteen schools checked record none at all.
Yes, and substantially. Al-Aqsa Schools Trust enters 14 of its 15 pupils (93.3%) for GCSE Arabic and records no French, German or Spanish entries at all. Madani Girls' School enters 25 pupils for Arabic and 15 for Urdu alongside 54 for French. Summed across the 21 schools checked for this page, community and heritage language entries include 71 for Gujarati (concentrated at Rushey Mead Academy and Avanti Fields School), 71 for Polish (concentrated at English Martyrs' Catholic School and Fullhurst Community College), 53 for Arabic and 28 for Urdu — every one of these entries satisfies the EBacc languages pillar exactly as a Spanish, French or German entry does.
Still working out which language your child's school actually teaches? Our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across Leicester confirm it from their own school before the first session.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppNo. 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's published EBacc entry rate was 40.2% of its 4,523 key-stage-4 pupils in 2025, against 41.5% 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.
Yes. Unlike GCSE History, GCSE Spanish is tiered: AQA's current specification (8692, for first teaching in 2024) sets Foundation tier entry code 8692F and Higher tier entry code 8692H, and Pearson Edexcel's equivalent specification (1SP1) works the same way. A student sitting Foundation tier can be awarded grades 1 to 5; a student sitting Higher tier can be awarded grades 4 to 9, with an allowed grade 3 for a narrow miss. Students must be entered for a single tier across all four papers.
Through a dedicated Speaking paper worth 25% of the qualification, alongside separate Listening, Reading and Writing papers also worth 25% each. On AQA's current specification, the Speaking test is conducted and audio-recorded by the pupil's own teacher within a timetabled April-to-May window, then marked externally by an AQA examiner rather than by the school. Pearson Edexcel's equivalent paper is described in its own specification as "internally conducted and externally assessed" in the same way. Neither board treats this as coursework completed over the school year; it is a timed, single-sitting oral test.
AQA and Pearson Edexcel both offer a current GCSE Spanish specification for first teaching from September 2024, confirmed directly on each board's own specification document: AQA's carries the code 8692 (Ofqual number 610/3530/0) and Pearson Edexcel's carries the code 1SP1 (Ofqual number 610/3469/1). WJEC Eduqas does not offer GCSE Spanish: its own qualification page for Spanish GCSE redirects to Eduqas's generic qualifications index, and Eduqas's own published qualifications list contains no GCSE Spanish entry at all — only AS/A Level Spanish. A specification PDF titled for teaching from 2024 does exist on Eduqas's own site, but its entry codes and Qualification Number are literal, unfilled placeholders and it does not appear on Eduqas's own live qualifications list, so this page does not treat it as a live, offered qualification. OCR does not offer GCSE Spanish, French or German at all — confirmed by a direct search of OCR's own GCSE qualifications list, which contains no mention of any of the three.
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.
For related subjects and levels, see our wider GCSE tuition across every subject, and our other Leicester subject pages for GCSE History, GCSE Maths, GCSE Biology, GCSE Chemistry and GCSE English. 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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