Liverpool's own 2024/25 GCSE Computer Science results, and why 18 of the city's 39 state secondaries teach a different computing qualification - or none at all.
Book a Free ConsultationLiverpool is a local authority in North West England where 687 pupils were entered for GCSE Computer Science in 2024/25, achieving 65% at grade 4 or above - a genuinely optional subject, taught at just 21 of the city's 39 state-funded secondary schools, with the rest offering a different computing qualification entirely, or none at all.
Whether your child's school teaches GCSE Computer Science, a vocational computing qualification, or nothing at all, the right preparation looks different for each path. Our expert Computer Science tutors help students across Liverpool with the current AQA, OCR and Eduqas specifications.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppGCSE Computer Science is one of four separate qualifications the Department for Education tracks under Liverpool's computing provision, and confusing them produces a false picture of which schools teach the subject at all. GCSE Computer Science is the academic GCSE, graded 9 to 1 and counted towards the EBacc; Creative iMedia, awarded through OCR's Cambridge Nationals suite, is a vocational qualification that does not count towards the EBacc; a BTEC or Cambridge National in digital information technology is a second, separate vocational route; and GCSE Information and Communication Technology, the older academic qualification some parents still expect, recorded zero entries anywhere in England in every year the Department's subject-entry dataset covers, from 2018/19 to 2024/25 - already withdrawn before this data begins. The Department publishes each as a distinct subject with its own qualification-type marker, and a school can report heavily on one while reporting nothing at all on another.
Querying the Department's 2024/25 school-level data across all three currently-live qualifications shows exactly how unevenly Liverpool's 39 state-funded secondary schools split. 21 schools entered at least one pupil for GCSE Computer Science; a further 10 entered pupils for Creative iMedia and/or a vocational computing qualification but recorded zero GCSE Computer Science entries; and the remaining 8 - small special schools, GIAS-verified as open with 2024/25 Key Stage 4 cohorts of between 11 and 39 pupils - have no recorded computing-qualification entry of any kind. Put another way: a family assuming their child's school "does" or "doesn't do" computing based on one subject name alone is working from an incomplete picture in roughly a quarter of Liverpool's schools.
| Liverpool state-funded secondaries, 2024/25 | Schools |
|---|---|
| Enter GCSE Computer Science | 21 |
| Enter Creative iMedia and/or vocational computing, but not GCSE Computer Science | 10 |
| No recorded computing-qualification entry | 8 |
| Total | 39 |
Archbishop Beck Catholic College illustrates why the distinction matters. This 177-pupil-cohort school entered zero pupils for GCSE Computer Science in 2024/25, but entered 36 for the OCR Cambridge National in Creative iMedia and a further 29 for a Level 1/2 vocational qualification in information technology - 65 pupils, 36.7% of its cohort, on a computing-related qualification that simply is not the one this page's own keyword describes. Two more schools, King's Leadership Academy, Liverpool and St Julie's Catholic High School, show the same pattern on a smaller scale, entering 13 and 26 pupils respectively for Creative iMedia with no GCSE Computer Science entries at all. A short call is the fastest way to find out which route your own child's school actually follows - book a free consultation.
687 pupils were entered for GCSE Computer Science in Liverpool in 2024/25, achieving 65% at grade 4 or above and 52% at grade 5 or above - both a close match to England's state-funded rates of 67% and 55%, gaps of just 2 and 3 percentage points. That narrow gap sits alongside a genuinely large spread in scale: across all Liverpool's computing-related qualifications together - GCSE Computer Science, Creative iMedia and vocational information technology - 1,330 entries were recorded citywide in 2024/25, of which the academic GCSE accounts for 687, or 51.7%. Just over half of Liverpool's computing-qualification entries, in other words, are on the route that counts towards the EBacc; the rest are on a vocational pathway that does not.
| Liverpool computing qualifications, 2024/25 | Entries | Share |
|---|---|---|
| GCSE Computer Science | 687 | 51.7% |
| Creative iMedia / other Cambridge National (Multimedia) | 263 | 19.8% |
| Vocational information technology (BTEC / Cambridge National ICT) | 380 | 28.6% |
| Total | 1,330 | - |
Liverpool's GCSE Computer Science entries have not moved in a straight line, and its most recent year broke from England's own direction of travel. Entries fell from 643 in 2022/23 to 615 in 2023/24 (-4.4%), then rose to 687 in 2024/25 (+11.7%); England's entries rose from 80,353 to 85,167 over that same first year (+6.0%) before falling to 80,991 (-4.9%) in the most recent year - the opposite direction from Liverpool's own rise. Grade 4+ achievement in Liverpool moved from 57% to 67% to 65% across the three years; grade 5+ moved from 45% to 58% to 52%. England's own rates rose steadily across all three years instead: grade 4+ from 62% to 66% to 67%, grade 5+ from 49% to 54% to 55%.
| Year | Liverpool entries | Liverpool 4+/5+ | England entries | England 4+/5+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022/23 | 643 | 57% / 45% | 80,353 | 62% / 49% |
| 2023/24 | 615 | 67% / 58% | 85,167 | 66% / 54% |
| 2024/25 | 687 | 65% / 52% | 80,991 | 67% / 55% |
A short call is enough to check which computing qualification your child's own school actually enters, and how their results compare - book a free consultation.
Wide on who takes the subject, and it runs in the same direction as the well-documented national pattern for Computer Science. Boys made up 533 of Liverpool's 687 GCSE Computer Science entries in 2024/25 (77.6%) against 154 girls (22.4%) - close to England's own 63,167-boy, 17,824-girl split (78.0%/22.0%). The gap in who takes the subject does not carry over into results: among pupils who did sit it, Liverpool's girls out-performed boys on both grade thresholds, achieving 71% at grade 4 or above against boys' 64%, and 58% at grade 5 or above against boys' 50% - the same direction as England's own 73%/65% and 62%/53% splits. Girls are a minority of Liverpool's Computer Science entrants, in other words, but not a minority of its higher grades.
| GCSE Computer Science, 2024/25 | Entries | Grade 4+ | Grade 5+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool - Boys | 533 (77.6%) | 64% | 50% |
| Liverpool - Girls | 154 (22.4%) | 71% | 58% |
| England - Boys | 63,167 (78.0%) | 65% | 53% |
| England - Girls | 17,824 (22.0%) | 73% | 62% |
It can count towards it, but the route is barely used in Liverpool. For the EBacc science requirement, a pupil needs three from biology, chemistry, physics and computer science - so a pupil taking biology, chemistry and Computer Science satisfies the pillar without ever sitting physics. The Department for Education publishes both measures separately: the exact biology-chemistry-physics triple, which stood at 973 pupils in Liverpool in 2024/25 (18.1% of the 5,366-pupil cohort), and the wider three-of-four measure allowing Computer Science to substitute for one science, at 975 pupils (18.2%). The two are two apart - meaning just 2 Liverpool pupils used the Computer-Science-inclusive route to complete their EBacc science pillar, against 687 pupils citywide taking GCSE Computer Science on its own. England's own figures show the same pattern at greater scale: 145,726 pupils (23.3%) on the exact triple against 145,985 (23.3%) on the wider measure, a gap of 259 pupils out of a 625,648-pupil cohort. In both Liverpool and England, in other words, GCSE Computer Science functions overwhelmingly as an open-slot subject in its own right, not as a stand-in for a missing science.
The Blue Coat School, a 176-pupil-cohort open academy and already Liverpool's leading science entrant on the sibling GCSE Physics and Chemistry pages, is also its leading Computer Science entrant: 103 pupils in 2024/25, more than any other Liverpool school and roughly 15% of the city's entire 687-pupil total on its own. Its results are the strongest recorded on this page: 101 of its 103 entries (98.1%) achieved grade 4 or above, and 97 (94.2%) achieved grade 5 or above, with 26 pupils - just over a quarter of its entrants - achieving the top grade 9.
Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School, a 240-pupil-cohort open voluntary-aided school, runs all three computing routes side by side rather than choosing one. It entered 33 pupils for GCSE Computer Science in 2024/25 (87.9% at grade 4 or above, 63.6% at grade 5 or above), a further 28 for Creative iMedia, and 54 for a BTEC vocational qualification in information technology - 115 entries in total, just under half its 240-pupil cohort, split across three genuinely different qualifications rather than concentrated on one.
Archbishop Beck Catholic College, a 177-pupil-cohort open voluntary-aided school, shows the opposite pattern: zero GCSE Computer Science entries, but 36 pupils in Creative iMedia and 29 in a Level 1/2 vocational information technology qualification - 65 pupils, 36.7% of its cohort, all on the vocational side of the computing divide this page opened with. Three schools, three different answers to what looks like the same question - proof that a citywide average cannot tell a family which route their own child's school actually runs.
| School, 2024/25 | GCSE Computer Science | Creative iMedia | Vocational IT | Cohort |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Blue Coat School | 103 (98.1% grade 4+) | - | - | 176 |
| Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School | 33 (87.9% grade 4+) | 28 | 54 | 240 |
| Archbishop Beck Catholic College | 0 | 36 | 29 | 177 |
Whichever of the three routes your own child's school runs, a tutor who starts from the right specification saves time - book a free consultation and we'll confirm it with you.
Three awarding bodies currently offer GCSE Computer Science to English schools, confirmed directly with each on 2 September 2026: AQA (specification 8525), OCR (specification J277, Ofqual qualification number 601/8355/X) and Eduqas (Qual Code C500QS, Ofqual qualification number 601/8291/X). WJEC, the Welsh sister board to Eduqas, publishes a separate "GCSE Computer Science - Teaching from 2025," but that specification is explicitly built to support the Curriculum for Wales rather than the English GCSE system, and does not apply to Liverpool schools.
AQA's own subject is mid-transition in a way that matters for any family starting the course now. Its specification first taught in 2020 has 2026 as its last teaching year, with its final scheduled exam on 13 May 2026; a separate, updated 8525 specification, first taught from September 2025, holds its first exams in summer 2027. A pupil beginning Year 10 this September is on the updated specification, not the one most existing guides and past papers describe. OCR's J277 showed no announced refresh as of this check.
None of the three currently require a separately graded coursework component. Eduqas states plainly that "there is no NEA component" for its GCSE Computer Science; AQA's updated specification instead requires schools to submit a "Practical programming statement" confirming each pupil had the opportunity to design, write, test and refine a program, with programming ability itself assessed through the written exam papers; OCR runs the same practical-programming-statement mechanism. The programming project every pupil completes, in other words, is real and required, but it does not carry its own separate mark towards the final grade on any of the three specifications checked for this page. Pearson Edexcel also offers a GCSE Computer Science, describing its own approach as "innovative, practical, future-looking on-screen assessment" - a genuinely different assessment method worth asking about directly, though this page does not publish an unverified specification code for it.
No, and this holds for Computer Science exactly as it does for the sciences, languages and humanities covered on this site's other Liverpool GCSE pages. Attainment 8 is built from four buckets filling eight GCSE-equivalent slots: English counts twice, maths counts twice, three slots go to a pupil's best results from the EBacc group of subjects, and a final three go to any other qualifications, the "open" group. Computer Science does not have a dedicated slot - it competes for the same three EBacc slots as biology, chemistry, physics, languages, history and geography, and a pupil's best results from that entire group fill those three places, whichever subjects they come from. Liverpool's average score across that shared EBacc bucket was 12 in 2024/25, against 13.5 for England - a 1.5-point gap on a bucket that Computer Science results feed into alongside every other EBacc subject, smaller than the wider 42.1-versus-46 gap on Attainment 8 as a whole. A pupil who studies Creative iMedia or vocational information technology instead sees those results counted in the separate three-slot "open" group, not the EBacc bucket - a further reason the qualification a school actually enters a pupil for changes more than which subject line it appears under.
Leading Tuition's GCSE Computer Science tutors work from a student's own school and specification - AQA, OCR or Eduqas - and from whichever qualification that school has actually entered the student for, whether that is the academic GCSE, Creative iMedia or a vocational information technology award, rather than a generic scheme of work built for none of them. Sessions run one-to-one online with a shared code editor and whiteboard, so a tutor can work through past-paper questions and programming tasks on the correct specification, mark them against the real mark scheme, and share annotated resources with a student in real time. Our wider GCSE tuition service covers every subject alongside Computer Science for families who need more than one, and our Computer Science tutor page covers our approach in more depth. Families in Liverpool wanting a different GCSE subject can also see our GCSE Maths tutors in Liverpool and GCSE Physics tutors in Liverpool pages, and families researching tutoring in other cities can browse every location we cover.
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Whether your child is one of the minority taking the academic GCSE, or is on a vocational computing pathway instead, our expert Computer Science tutors help students across Liverpool with both, across AQA, OCR and Eduqas. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews, read on 22 August 2026.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe Liverpool and England figures above are drawn from the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance, 2024/25 release and its open subject-entry and school-level datasets, queried directly on 2 September 2026; The Blue Coat School, Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School and Archbishop Beck Catholic College's figures come from the same school-level datasets, cross-checked against all three schools' Get Information about Schools records to confirm they remain open. Exam board details are drawn from AQA's, OCR's and Eduqas's own GCSE Computer Science specification pages, read directly on 2 September 2026. For wider support across every GCSE subject, see our GCSE resources for parents guide.
65% of the 687 pupils entered for GCSE Computer Science in Liverpool achieved grade 4 or above in 2024/25, and 52% achieved grade 5 or above, according to the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance data for state-funded schools. Both figures sit close to England's own state-funded rates of 67% and 55%.
No. GCSE Computer Science is entered at just 21 of Liverpool's 39 state-funded secondary schools with a 2024/25 Key Stage 4 cohort. A further 10 schools offer a different computing qualification instead - Creative iMedia, a Cambridge National, or a BTEC in digital information technology - while the remaining 8 have no recorded computing-qualification entry of any kind in the Department for Education's 2024/25 subject-entry data.
Not necessarily. Archbishop Beck Catholic College entered zero pupils for GCSE Computer Science in 2024/25 but entered 36 for the OCR Cambridge National in Creative iMedia and 29 for a vocational Level 1/2 qualification in information technology - 65 pupils, 36.7% of its 177-pupil cohort, on a computing qualification that simply is not GCSE Computer Science. The Department for Education files these as separate subjects with separate qualification types, and confusing them understates how much computing many Liverpool schools actually teach.
It can, but almost nobody in Liverpool uses that route. The EBacc science requirement can be met either by the exact biology-chemistry-physics triple or by a wider measure allowing computer science to replace one of the three sciences. Liverpool's 2024/25 figures are 973 pupils (18.1% of the cohort) on the exact triple against 975 (18.2%) on the wider measure - a gap of just 2 pupils, despite 687 pupils citywide taking GCSE Computer Science on its own. England's own gap is proportionally similar: 145,726 against 145,985 pupils, out of a 625,648-pupil cohort.
Yes, and it runs in a consistent direction with England as a whole. Boys made up 533 of Liverpool's 687 GCSE Computer Science entries in 2024/25 (77.6%) against 154 girls (22.4%), close to England's own 78.0%/22.0% split. Among pupils who did take the subject, girls achieved higher grades than boys on both measures: 71% of Liverpool's girls reached grade 4 or above against 64% of boys, and 58% reached grade 5 or above against 50% of boys - the same direction as England's 73%/65% and 62%/53% splits.
AQA (8525), OCR (J277) and Eduqas (C500QS) all currently offer GCSE Computer Science, checked directly with each awarding body on 2 September 2026. AQA's subject is mid-transition: its specification first taught in 2020 has its last teaching year in 2026, while an updated 8525 specification, first taught from September 2025, holds its first exams in summer 2027 - meaning a pupil starting Year 10 this September is on the updated specification, not the one most existing guides describe.
For tutoring across other subjects and stages in the city, see our Liverpool tuition hub.
Whichever computing qualification your child's school has actually entered them for, a tutor who understands the difference between GCSE Computer Science, Creative iMedia and vocational IT starts from a stronger position than one working from a generic scheme of work. 91% of Leading Tuition's students achieve their desired grades, and we are rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot. Explore tutoring across Liverpool or our wider GCSE tuition service.
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