GCSE English Tutors in Liverpool

Liverpool is a local authority where GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature are reported as two separate qualifications, not one "GCSE English" grade. The Attainment 8 English element for Liverpool's state-funded schools averaged 9.1 points in 2024/25 against England's 9.8, while nationally English Language entries rose 2.3% to 825,940 and English Literature entries fell 1.4% to 614,800.

GCSE English Language and GCSE English Literature are not the same qualification

Each exam board sets English Language and English Literature as separate GCSEs, with their own specification codes: AQA's are English Language 8700 and English Literature 8702; Pearson Edexcel's are English Language 1EN0 and English Literature 1ET0; OCR's are English Language J351 and English Literature J352; and Eduqas's (WJEC) are English Language C700QS and English Literature C720QS. A Liverpool school can offer either GCSE from any of these four boards, and the two subjects within a single school need not come from the same board.

The distinction matters beyond the exam hall, because it changes how a pupil's result is actually counted in the Department for Education's own performance measures. Attainment 8, the headline measure schools are judged on, allocates one of its four buckets - maths, English, EBacc and open - to English, and those four buckets between them fill its eight qualification slots. The Department's 2025 secondary accountability guidance defines that bucket precisely: it is "based on the higher point score of a pupil's EBacc English language or English literature qualification. This will be double weighted provided a pupil has taken both qualifications." A pupil who sits only one of the two GCSEs still has that grade counted once in the English element - but not double-weighted, which lowers the maximum possible contribution English can make to that pupil's Attainment 8 score. This single rule is why entry numbers for Language and Literature are rarely identical at any real school, Liverpool's included, and it is explained in more depth further down this page.

A separate but frequently confused DfE measure is "grade 5 or above in English and maths," which is a joint pass-rate figure covering two subjects together, not a GCSE English result on its own. The Department states plainly that "to count for this measure a pupil would have to achieve a grade 5 or above in either English literature or English language. There is no requirement to sit both." A city or school's rate on this joint measure says nothing about how many pupils actually achieved a grade 5 in Literature specifically, or in Language specifically - only that one of the two reached that grade alongside a grade 5+ in maths. General exam-format and grade-boundary detail for both subjects, including how each paper is marked nationally, is covered on our GCSE English guide; this page instead covers what Liverpool's own schools and pupils actually recorded in 2024/25.

How does Liverpool's Attainment 8 English score compare with England's?

Liverpool's Compare School and College Performance data puts the Attainment 8 English element for the local authority's 5,366 state-funded Year 11 pupils at 9.1 points for 2024/25, against an England figure of 9.8 points across 625,647 pupils - a gap of 0.7 points, smaller in relative terms than the gap on Liverpool's overall (all-subject) Attainment 8 score. Because the English element is capped by the double-weighting rule above, 9.1 does not translate neatly into a single "average grade": it reflects a mix of pupils who took both English GCSEs and had their higher grade counted twice, and pupils who took only one and had it counted once.

A short call is enough to check where your own child's school sits against these figures and plan English lessons around it - book a free consultation.

What the England-wide figure of 9.8 hides is the same thing any national average hides: individual schools land well above and well below it. Liverpool is no exception, and the three schools below show the real spread inside one city rather than the single blended number.

Three Liverpool schools, three different pictures of GCSE English in 2024/25

Bellerive FCJ Catholic College, Notre Dame Catholic Academy and Alsop High School are three Liverpool secondary schools with published 2024/25 Attainment 8 English-element scores and their own GCSE English Language and Literature entry counts, drawn directly from the Department's Compare School and College Performance service.

Bellerive FCJ Catholic College's English-element score of 10.9 sits above both the Liverpool average of 9.1 and the England figure of 9.8 - the only one of the three above the national figure. Notre Dame Catholic Academy's 7.3 and Alsop High School's 6.6 both sit below the local-authority average, with a gap of 4.3 points between the highest and lowest of the three schools (10.9 minus 6.6). None of these figures is a "GCSE English grade" in the way a parent might expect from a school prospectus - each is a points score built from the double-weighting rule explained above, which is precisely why reading the entry counts alongside it matters.

Every one of the three schools recorded more entries for English Language than for English Literature: 139 against 136 at Bellerive, 176 against 171 at Notre Dame, and 248 against 239 at Alsop. Added together, the three schools recorded 563 entries for English Language and 546 for English Literature in 2024/25 - a gap of 17 entries, or 3.0% of the combined Language cohort (17 divided by 563). That gap is explained in full in the next section, but it is worth noting here because it directly affects how each school's English-element score should be read: a school where every pupil sat both GCSEs benefits from double-weighting throughout, while a school with a wider entry gap has more pupils whose English grade was counted only once.

Why do fewer pupils sit English Literature than English Language?

The pattern at Bellerive, Notre Dame and Alsop is not a Liverpool quirk - it holds nationally too. In summer 2025, there were 825,940 entries for GCSE English Language across England against 614,800 for English Literature, a national gap of 211,140. Some of that gap reflects genuine timetabling and curriculum decisions at individual schools; some reflects pupils entered late or withdrawn from one paper but not the other. What DfE's methodology confirms is that the gap has a direct consequence for how a school's results are scored, not just a cosmetic one.

Recall the double-weighting rule: where a pupil sits both English GCSEs, the higher of the two grades is double-weighted into the Attainment 8 English bucket, and the lower grade can then count separately in the "open" bucket of subjects. Where a pupil sits only one of the two, that single grade fills the English bucket once, without the double-weighting - and, because open slots are also finite, that pupil has one fewer grade competing for the remaining slots. None of this changes what grade a pupil is actually awarded; it changes how that grade is counted in the school-level score a Local Authority page like this one, or a national league table, ultimately reports. A tutor working with a Liverpool family needs to understand both the grade a student is chasing and how it will be counted - which is part of why our own GCSE English tutors are briefed on both papers, not just one.

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Are GCSE English Language entries rising nationally?

Yes, and English Literature just broke a four-year run in the opposite direction. Ofqual's provisional entries data for summer 2025 shows GCSE English Language entries rose 2.3% year-on-year to 825,940 - the largest percentage increase of any EBacc subject that year, ahead of maths (+1.6%) and combined science (+0.8%). English Literature entries fell 1.4% to 614,800, the first year-on-year fall in the five-year series Ofqual publishes: entries rose every year from 572,765 in summer 2021 to 582,680, then 601,945, then 623,590 by summer 2024, before dropping back in 2025.

Reading the two columns side by side rules out the simplest explanation for the entry gap at Liverpool's own schools - that Literature entries are simply falling everywhere. They were not, for four of the last five years; 2025 is the first year they fell, and Language has now risen for three years running while sitting further ahead of Literature than at any point in this series. Whatever produced Liverpool's 2024/25 gap between the two subjects, it was already the national norm before this year's dip, not a new or Liverpool-specific pattern.

How Leading Tuition works with Liverpool GCSE English students

Our expert GCSE English tutors help students across Liverpool with both Language and Literature, across AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas, because the two subjects call for different skills even when a pupil sits both at the same school. Language tuition concentrates on unseen reading comprehension and transactional or creative writing under timed conditions; Literature tuition works through the specific set texts a student's own school has chosen, since AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas each offer a different anthology and list of approved novels, plays and poetry. Sessions run one-to-one online with a shared document, so a tutor can annotate a student's own extract or essay in real time rather than teaching from a generic worksheet. Families whose child also needs support in another subject can see our wider GCSE tuition service, and families with a child facing 13+ entry can see our 13+ tuition in Liverpool page.

The figures on this page are drawn from the Department for Education's Compare School and College Performance service for Bellerive FCJ Catholic College, Notre Dame Catholic Academy and Alsop High School specifically, its Secondary accountability measures: 2025 guidance, and Ofqual's provisional entries for GCSE, AS and A level: summer 2025 release, all checked on 28 August 2026. For students who need to resit English Language after failing it while passing Literature, our blog covers what happens next in detail; for the national grade boundaries, mark schemes and general assessment structure behind both GCSEs, see our GCSE English guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

For tutoring across other subjects and stages in the city, see our Liverpool tuition hub, our GCSE maths tutors in Liverpool page, or our A-level maths tutors in Liverpool page.