Liverpool's own 2024/25 GCSE Geography results, and how the city's 33 Geography-and-History schools split between the two - by curriculum choice, not just by which subject each one offers.
Book a Free ConsultationGCSE Geography is one of Liverpool's two EBacc humanities options, and in 2024/25 the city's state-funded secondaries entered 1,886 pupils for it - 57% achieved grade 4 or above, 44% grade 5 or above. Its curriculum rival, GCSE History, drew considerably more entries that year (2,257), a gap proportionally wider in Liverpool than almost anywhere in England.
Some Liverpool schools push Geography hard; others barely touch it. Whatever your child's school does, our expert GCSE Geography tutors work across Liverpool with every board - AQA, Edexcel, Cambridge OCR and Eduqas - building each programme around the pupil's own specification and fieldwork enquiries.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppLiverpool's 2024/25 GCSE Geography results sit behind England's state-funded average on both headline thresholds: 57% of Liverpool's entries reached grade 4 or above against 63% nationally, and 44% reached grade 5 or above against 51% nationally - gaps of 6 and 7 percentage points. GCSE History shows an almost identical grade 4+ gap (57% against 63%, also 6 points) and a smaller grade 5+ gap than Geography (46% against 52%, 6 points). The two subjects perform close to each other locally and nationally on both thresholds, which is exactly why the entries gap between them - not the results gap - is the more distinctive feature of Liverpool's data, and the subject of this page.
| Subject / area, 2024/25 | Entries | Grade 4+ | Grade 5+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool - GCSE Geography | 1,886 | 57% | 44% |
| England (state-funded) - GCSE Geography | 274,424 | 63% | 51% |
| Liverpool - GCSE History | 2,257 | 57% | 46% |
| England (state-funded) - GCSE History | 281,600 | 63% | 52% |
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History, and Liverpool's schools favour it more heavily than England's do. Liverpool's 2,257 History entries outnumbered its 1,886 Geography entries by 371 - 20% more History than Geography (a ratio of 1.20 to 1) in 2024/25. Nationally, the same comparison is far tighter: England's 281,600 History entries outnumbered its 274,424 Geography entries by just 2.6% (a ratio of 1.03 to 1). Liverpool's tilt towards History is therefore close to eight times steeper than England's own.
Geography's own three-year entries trend also runs against the national pattern. Liverpool's Geography entries rose sharply from 1,671 in 2022/23 to 1,924 in 2023/24 (up 15.1%), then eased back to 1,886 in 2024/25 (down 2.0%). England's Geography entries, by contrast, rose in every one of the same three years without a single fall - 265,019, then 268,902, then 274,424. Liverpool's History entries moved the opposite way in the latest year, falling 7.1% from 2,430 to 2,257, a sharper drop than England's own 5.6% national fall. Put together: Liverpool's pupils are entering Geography in roughly the numbers they were three years ago, while History has just had its worst year of the three - yet History still comfortably outnumbers Geography in the city, because the gap between them was so wide to begin with.
Liverpool had 39 state-funded secondary schools with a Key Stage 4 cohort in 2024/25, confirmed against the Department's own school-count indicator. Querying the Department's school-level subject-entry data for Geography and History separately returns 36 distinct Liverpool schools with at least one entry in either subject before any exclusions. Three of those are not part of the state-funded 39: Auckland College and Christian Fellowship School are independent schools confirmed open on Get Information about Schools, and St Vincent's School is a non-maintained special school, a distinct category from both "state-funded" and "independent." That leaves 33 state-funded schools with a Geography or History entry - and of those 33, two have since closed as predecessor establishments under academy conversion: Archbishop Blanch CofE High School (closed 30 November 2025) and Gateacre School (closed 30 November 2024). Neither is named as a current school on this page. The remaining 6 of the 39 entered pupils for neither subject at GCSE in 2024/25.
Rather than just asking which schools offer Geography at all, this page sorts all 33 by how heavily they lean towards it - the ratio of a school's own Geography entries to its own History entries - plus how much of its cohort takes either subject at all. Two schools enter barely anyone in either: Bank View High School returned a single Geography entry against a 36-pupil cohort (2.8%), and Childwall Abbey School returned a single History entry against a 31-pupil cohort (3.2%) - both a sharp break from every other school, the next-lowest combined entry rate being 50.0%. Among the remaining 31 open schools plus the two closed ones, a Geography-to-History ratio of 1.2 or higher (at least 20% more Geography entries than History) marks a clear lean towards Geography; a ratio of 0.83 or lower (the reciprocal, at least 20% more History) marks a clear lean towards History; anything in between is close to an even split.
| Group (by 2024/25 entry ratio) | Schools | Geography entries | History entries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lean to Geography (ratio ≥1.2) | 8 (1 since closed) | 713 | 489 |
| Lean to History (ratio ≤0.83) | 17 | 708 | 1,251 |
| Close to even (both at real scale) | 6 (1 since closed) | 461 | 512 |
| Negligible entries in either | 2 | 1 | 1 |
The 17 schools leaning to History are the single biggest group - just over half of the 33 - and between them they account for 1,251 of the city's 2,253 school-level History entries (55.5%) against only 708 of its 1,883 school-level Geography entries (37.6%). Liverpool's citywide tilt towards History is therefore not a uniform citywide pattern; it is concentrated in a majority bloc of schools that enter far more pupils for History than Geography, alongside a smaller group of 8 schools pulling firmly the other way and 6 more running both subjects close to level.
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Liverpool College, a 148-pupil Year 11 cohort within this all-through, Church of England academy, entered 97 pupils for Geography against just 35 for History in 2024/25 - a ratio of 2.77 to 1, the steepest Geography lean of any Liverpool secondary with entries in both subjects. Liverpool College has 1,685 pupils on its wider all-through roll and is non-selective; its Year 11 cohort clearly channels the large majority of its humanities pupils towards Geography rather than History.
St Margaret's Church of England Academy shows the opposite pattern, and more steeply than any other Liverpool school. This 171-pupil-cohort academy converter entered 86 pupils for History against just 15 for Geography in 2024/25 - a ratio of 0.17 to 1, meaning History outnumbered Geography by more than five to one. Of the 33 Liverpool schools with entries in either subject, no other school shows as lopsided a tilt in either direction.
The Blue Coat School sits at the other end of the spectrum entirely: not leaning hard either way, but running both subjects at real scale. This 176-pupil-cohort academy converter entered 98 pupils for Geography and 119 for History in 2024/25 - 217 combined entries against a cohort of 176, or 123% of the cohort, meaning a majority of its pupils sit both subjects rather than choosing one. Despite its name, Get Information about Schools records no religious character for The Blue Coat School at all - a detail worth stating precisely rather than assuming from a traditional-sounding name. It is also one of the minority of Liverpool state secondaries with selective admissions, which fits a pattern of academically confident cohorts being more likely to double up on both humanities subjects rather than specialise in one.
| School, 2024/25 | Geography | History | Cohort | Ratio (Geog:Hist) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool College | 97 | 35 | 148 | 2.77 |
| The Blue Coat School | 98 | 119 | 176 | 0.82 |
| St Margaret's Church of England Academy | 15 | 86 | 171 | 0.17 |
Three named, currently open Liverpool schools, three different curriculum choices: one channelling its humanities pupils heavily towards Geography, one running both subjects at a scale most schools do not reach, and one doing the opposite of the first almost as steeply. None of those three patterns can be guessed from a citywide average - book a free consultation and we'll start from your child's actual school and specification.
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GCSE Geography requires fieldwork in two contrasting environments, and a previous batch of pages on this site spent an afternoon correcting a wrong assumption about exactly this point - so it is worth stating precisely. On every current specification checked directly against the awarding body's own PDF, fieldwork is examined through questions in a written exam paper, not marked as separate coursework or non-exam assessment. AQA's GCSE Geography (8035, Ofqual accreditation number 601/8410/3) requires two geographical enquiries outside the classroom and school grounds, in contrasting environments, and tests them in Paper 3 - Geographical applications, Section B, which carries 39 of that paper's 76 marks and 30% of the GCSE overall. Questions cover both the student's own enquiry work and unfamiliar fieldwork material; schools submit only a written statement confirming fieldwork took place, and that statement is not itself marked. Pearson Edexcel's Geography A (1GA0, Component 3, 25% of the qualification), Cambridge OCR's Geography A (J383, Component 03, 40% of the GCSE) and WJEC Eduqas's Geography A and B (Component 3, 30% of the qualification on each) all follow the same pattern: an externally-assessed written exam, never coursework. This differs from the non-exam assessment used in some other GCSE subjects, and should not be assumed to work the same way.
The exam-board landscape here is also changing in ways worth knowing if your child is starting Year 10 or 11 now rather than finishing. Cambridge OCR (renamed from OCR in September 2025) has replaced its Geography B specification (J384) entirely, with first teaching from September 2025 and first assessment not until summer 2027 - so Liverpool's 2024/25 results reported on this page reflect the previous version of that specification, not the one current OCR Geography B students are now taught. Pearson has also lengthened Geography A's Paper 1 from 1 hour 30 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes, effective from the 2026 exam series. For the full breakdown of papers, marks and tiering across all four boards, see our GCSE Geography boards and papers guide.
For the English Baccalaureate, a pupil must enter one of exactly two humanities subjects - Geography or History - and no other. That makes the pillar an entirely different figure from either subject's own entry count, because a pupil taking both subjects is counted twice in the subject totals but only once in the pillar. In Liverpool in 2024/25, 3,779 pupils entered the EBacc humanities pillar - 70.4% of a 5,366-pupil cohort - against England's 507,722, or 81.2% of a 625,647-pupil cohort: a 10.8 percentage-point gap. That entry gap is noticeably wider than the attainment gaps once pupils are actually entered - 6.2 points at grade 4 or above (57.3% against 63.5%) and 5.7 points at grade 5 or above (45.6% against 51.3%). The pattern here matches what the subject-level results already show: Liverpool's shortfall against England shows up more in whether pupils enter a humanities subject at all than in how those pupils then perform.
This is also a measure worth treating with a specific expiry date rather than as an ongoing series. The government's response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, published 5 November 2025, states plainly: "In advance, we will remove EBacc headline and additional measures at key stage 4. This will take effect for the key stage 4 performance measures for the 2025 to 2026 academic year to be published in autumn 2026." The 2024/25 figures on this page are therefore close to the last full year the humanities pillar will be reported as a headline measure in its current form, and any comparison against a future year's data should check whether the measure still exists at all. Our expert GCSE Geography tutors can work through what a changing measure like this means for your own child's options - book a free consultation to start with their actual school and specification.
Leading Tuition's GCSE Geography tutors work from a student's own school, exam board - AQA, Edexcel, Cambridge OCR or WJEC/Eduqas - and their actual fieldwork enquiries, rather than a generic scheme of work that assumes the wrong specification or the wrong two environments. Sessions run one-to-one online with a shared whiteboard, so a tutor can work through case-study recall, data-response and extended-writing questions on the correct papers, mark them against the real mark scheme, and talk a student through how their own fieldwork enquiry is likely to be examined. Our wider GCSE Geography tuition service covers the subject across every board, our GCSE Geography boards and papers guide covers the specification detail in full, and our Geography tutor service page covers GCSE and A-level together for families planning ahead. Families in Liverpool wanting a different GCSE subject can also see our GCSE History tutors in Liverpool, GCSE Maths tutors in Liverpool and GCSE English tutors in Liverpool pages, and families researching tutoring in other cities can browse every location we cover.
However your child's school splits its humanities cohort, our expert GCSE Geography tutors build every programme around their actual exam board and fieldwork options, not a generic scheme of work. 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 via the Department's own API on 2 September 2026; Liverpool College, St Margaret's Church of England Academy and The Blue Coat School's figures come from the same school-level dataset, cross-checked against all three schools' Get Information about Schools records to confirm they remain open, and the same source confirmed Auckland College and Christian Fellowship School are independent, St Vincent's School is non-maintained, and Archbishop Blanch CofE High School and Gateacre School's predecessor establishments closed on 30 November 2025 and 30 November 2024 respectively as part of academy conversions. Fieldwork assessment detail is confirmed directly from each board's own specification PDF: AQA's GCSE Geography (8035), Pearson Edexcel's Geography A specification PDF (1GA0), Cambridge OCR's Geography A (J383) and WJEC Eduqas's Geography A and B specification PDFs. The EBacc removal is quoted directly from the government's Curriculum and Assessment Review: final report government response. For revision support across the wider GCSE, see our GCSE resources for parents guide.
1,886 pupils were entered for GCSE Geography in Liverpool in 2024/25, and 57% achieved grade 4 or above while 44% achieved grade 5 or above, according to the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance data for state-funded schools. GCSE History, the only other subject that counts towards the EBacc humanities pillar, had more entries in Liverpool - 2,257 - with the same 57% at grade 4 or above but a slightly higher 46% at grade 5 or above.
History, by a wider margin locally than nationally. Liverpool's 2,257 GCSE History entries in 2024/25 outnumbered its 1,886 Geography entries by 20% (a ratio of 1.20 to 1); England's own History entries (281,600) outnumbered its Geography entries (274,424) by just 2.6% (a ratio of 1.03 to 1). Liverpool's tilt towards History is therefore close to eight times steeper than England's own, even though - as this page sets out - the schools that lean towards each subject are not evenly spread across the city.
33 of Liverpool's 39 state-funded secondary schools with a 2024/25 Key Stage 4 cohort returned at least one Geography or History entry once three non-state-funded institutions are excluded (two independent schools and one non-maintained special school). Of those 33, 31 remain open today - two, Archbishop Blanch CofE High School and Gateacre School, have since closed as predecessor establishments under academy conversion. The remaining 6 state-funded secondaries entered pupils for neither GCSE Geography nor GCSE History in 2024/25.
No. On every current specification checked directly - AQA, Pearson Edexcel, Cambridge OCR and WJEC Eduqas - fieldwork is assessed through questions in a written exam paper, not through separately marked coursework or non-exam assessment. AQA's GCSE Geography (8035) tests it in Paper 3, Section B (39 of the paper's 76 marks, 30% of the GCSE overall), using questions on the student's own fieldwork enquiries and on unfamiliar fieldwork material. Schools submit only a written statement confirming the fieldwork took place; that statement is not itself marked.
The EBacc humanities pillar counts a pupil who enters either GCSE Geography or GCSE History once, so it is a different figure from either subject's own entry count. In 2024/25, 3,779 Liverpool pupils entered the pillar (70.4% of a 5,366-pupil cohort) against England's 507,722 (81.2% of 625,647) - a 10.8 percentage-point entry gap. That gap is noticeably wider than the attainment gaps once pupils are entered: 6.2 points at grade 4 or above and 5.7 points at grade 5 or above. The government's response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, published 5 November 2025, confirms that EBacc headline and additional measures at key stage 4 will be removed from the 2025/26 performance measures onward, so this 2024/25 figure should be read as the pillar's near-final year, not an ongoing series.
Rising, then falling back slightly. Liverpool's GCSE Geography entries went from 1,671 in 2022/23 up to 1,924 in 2023/24, then down to 1,886 in 2024/25 - a 2.0% dip in the latest year after a 15.1% jump the year before. England's own Geography entries moved quite differently over the same period: they rose in every one of the three years, from 265,019 to 268,902 to 274,424, without a single fall. Liverpool's GCSE History entries fell more sharply over the same final year - from 2,430 to 2,257, a 7.1% drop.
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A Geography tutor who starts from your child's own school, board and fieldwork enquiries will always outperform one working from a generic scheme of work - whichever way that school splits its humanities pupils between Geography and History. 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 Geography service.
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