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Biology, Chemistry and Physics entries compared school by school across three London boroughs, from DfE's own 2024/25 results -- not just the borough average.
Book a Free ConsultationGCSE Chemistry tutors in London work with two different qualifications, and DfE reports them separately. Separate Chemistry produced 159,740 entries across England in summer 2026, while Combined Science, the double award that carries no Chemistry GCSE of its own, produced 471,390. Our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR.
Already know whether your child is sitting separate Chemistry or Combined Science? Our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both separate Chemistry and Combined Science, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR. Building every programme around a student's own school, tier and exam board.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsApp"GCSE Chemistry" and "Combined Science" are different qualifications, and Ofqual's own subject-outcomes dashboard reports them in separate rows. Summer 2026, England, all school types, all ages: separate Chemistry recorded 159,740 students receiving results, of which 92.1% reached grade 4 or above, 47.0% reached grade 7 or above, and 14.7% reached the top grade 9. Combined Science recorded 471,390 students receiving results -- already a per-pupil count, not doubled -- of which 58.06% reached grade 4-4 or above and 9.19% reached grade 7-7 or above.
That 471,390 figure is worth pausing on, because Ofqual states plainly in the same release: "Results for GCSE combined science are double-counted in this release, because the qualification is the size of 2 single GCSEs; students are only counted once." In other words, unlike some results-day tables that count a Combined Science candidate's pair of grades as two separate entries, the 471,390 here already reflects real pupils, one line each. Combined Science outnumbers separate Chemistry by roughly 3 to 1 nationally -- most GCSE science pupils in England have no Chemistry grade to show a tutor at all; they have a Combined Science double award instead.
Two more figures get miscited around GCSE Chemistry, and both matter to a family choosing a tutor. First, there is no "Attainment 8 Chemistry element." Attainment 8 has eight slots: English and maths, each double-weighted, three EBacc slots and three open slots. DfE's own guidance defines the science slot precisely: "EBacc science includes double award GCSE for pupils on the combined science pathway or the average of a pupil's best two science grades for pupils on the single science pathway." Chemistry sits inside that shared EBacc bucket alongside Biology, Physics, languages, history and geography -- there is no separate weighted "Chemistry element" the way English and maths each get one. Second, there is no Progress 8 score for this cohort, or the next one. DfE's own data guidance states it directly: "It is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26 due to gaps in the baseline caused by COVID-19 disruption." A school or tutor quoting a 2024/25 or 2025/26 Progress 8 figure for Chemistry, or any subject, is quoting a number DfE has not published.
The three exam boards' Chemistry and Combined Science specifications carry different codes, confirmed directly against AQA's and OCR's own qualification pages and, for Edexcel, against Pearson's own mark scheme documents: AQA Chemistry (8462) and Combined Science: Trilogy (8464); Edexcel Chemistry (1CH0) and Combined Science (1SC0); OCR Gateway Science Chemistry A (J248) and Combined Science A (J250). Our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both, across all three boards.
London is not a local authority, so it has no results row of its own in DfE's tables. London Councils, the umbrella body for London local government, describes itself as "the collective of London local government, the 32 boroughs and the City of London Corporation" -- and the City of London has no state-funded secondary school of its own. Any figure that simply says "London" is really one of these units: a named borough, a grouping of boroughs, or an England-wide average, and every figure on this page states which.
Rather than reconstruct a borough-wide average from all of London's schools -- something no single page can do honestly -- this page checks eleven named, individually verified state-funded secondary schools across three boroughs: Sutton, Ealing and Redbridge. These are three boroughs Leading Tuition already serves locally, and they were chosen deliberately for contrast: Sutton has a five-school selective grammar consortium sitting inside the same borough as several non-selective academies; Ealing and Redbridge between them offer both non-selective comprehensives and, in Redbridge, two more academically selective schools. All eleven are confirmed open, and correctly located in the borough named, on the same DfE Compare School and College Performance export used for every entry figure below, checked 1 September 2026. This is not a claim to have checked all 32 boroughs plus the City, or every secondary school within these three -- eleven schools, named individually, is the honest scope of what follows.
Whichever London borough your child's school sits in, and whichever pathway they are on, our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both separate Chemistry and Combined Science, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsAppDfE's own measure for this is "the % of pupils entering biology, chemistry and physics" -- the triple-science rate -- and it is set by whichever of the three subjects has the fewest entries at that school, not by an average of the three. Here is what that looks like at each of the eleven schools checked for this page, all state-funded, all confirmed open in the borough shown, 2024/25:
| School (2024/25) | Borough | Admissions | Biology | Chemistry | Physics | Combined Sci. | Triple-science % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wilson's School | Sutton | Selective (boys) | 180 | 180 | 180 | 6 | 96.8% |
| Sutton Grammar School | Sutton | Selective (boys) | 133 | 133 | 133 | -- | 100.0% |
| Nonsuch High School for Girls | Sutton | Selective (girls) | 231 | 231 | 231 | 1 | 99.1% |
| Wallington County Grammar School | Sutton | Selective (boys) | 150 | 150 | 150 | -- | 100.0% |
| Wallington High School for Girls | Sutton | Selective (girls) | 210 | 210 | 210 | -- | 100.0% |
| Greenshaw High School | Sutton | Non-selective (mixed) | 125 | 125 | 125 | 172 | 41.4% |
| Greenford High School | Ealing | Non-selective (mixed) | 90 | 90 | 90 | 206 | 29.9% |
| Twyford C of E High School | Ealing | Non-selective (mixed) | 59 | 59 | 59 | 130 | 31.2% |
| Ilford County High School | Redbridge | Selective (boys) | 179 | 179 | 179 | -- | 99.4% |
| Woodford County High School | Redbridge | Selective (girls) | 180 | 179 | 180 | 1 | 98.9% |
| Wanstead High School | Redbridge | Non-selective (mixed) | 85 | 84 | 84 | 144 | 36.7% |
Look down the Biology, Chemistry and Physics columns together and a pattern appears immediately: at nine of the eleven schools, the three entries are exactly identical -- a school that puts a pupil forward for Biology puts the same pupil forward for Chemistry and Physics too, with no separate "Chemistry-only" cohort at all. Only two schools break that pattern -- Woodford County High School and Wanstead High School, both in Redbridge -- and at both of them Chemistry (tied with Physics at Wanstead) is the subject with fewer entries, not Biology. That divergence is covered in full in the next section. The wider split is between selective and non-selective admissions, not between boroughs: every selective school checked here recorded a triple-science rate of 96.8% or higher, while every non-selective school checked recorded 41.4% or lower -- a gap of more than fifty percentage points that has nothing to do with which of the three boroughs the school happens to sit in.
Woodford County High School, a selective girls' grammar in Redbridge, recorded 180 Biology entries and 180 Physics entries in 2024/25 -- and 179 Chemistry entries, one fewer than either of the other two sciences. DfE's own triple-science measure for the school comes out at 98.9%, one place behind what Biology and Physics alone would give it, because the single pupil missing from Chemistry, not from Biology or Physics, is what stops the school reaching 100%. The school also recorded a single residual Combined Science entry -- a real pupil on a different pathway, not a suppressed or rounded count.
Wanstead High School, a non-selective Redbridge academy, shows the same pattern on a larger scale. Its 2024/25 entries were 85 for Biology against 84 each for Chemistry and Physics -- Chemistry and Physics tied as the joint bottleneck this time, one entry short of Biology. Wanstead's overall triple-science rate is far lower than Woodford's, at 36.7%, because most of its science cohort (144 entries) sat Combined Science instead; but even within the smaller group who did take all three separate sciences, it is Chemistry (and Physics), not Biology, that caps the count.
Ilford County High School, the third Redbridge school checked, shows no such gap: 179 entries in Biology, Chemistry and Physics alike, and a 99.4% triple-science rate. Three schools in one borough, then, and two different stories -- a reminder that even inside Redbridge, checking the school by name tells you something the borough label alone cannot.
Whether your child's school enters almost everyone for all three sciences, like Ilford County High, or mostly Combined Science, like Wanstead High, our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both separate Chemistry and Combined Science, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsAppSutton is home to five academically selective state grammar schools, and all five were checked individually for this page: Wilson's School, Sutton Grammar School, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Wallington County Grammar School and Wallington High School for Girls. Every one of the five recorded a triple-science entry rate of 96.8% or higher in 2024/25 -- Sutton Grammar School, Wallington County Grammar School and Wallington High School for Girls all reached 100.0% outright, meaning DfE's data shows no pupil at any of those three schools on the Combined Science pathway at all. Wilson's School (96.8%) and Nonsuch High School for Girls (99.1%) each carry a small residual Combined Science entry -- 6 pupils at Wilson's, 1 at Nonsuch -- rather than a rounded zero.
Outcomes track the same pattern. DfE's EBacc-science measure -- the combined bucket covering both pathways, not a Chemistry-only grade -- shows at least 98.7% of entrants reaching grade 9-5 at every one of the five grammars: 100.0% at Wilson's and Sutton Grammar, 98.7% at Wallington County Grammar, 99.0% at Wallington High School for Girls, and 98.7% at Nonsuch.
Greenshaw High School, a non-selective Sutton academy checked for direct comparison, sits at the opposite end of the same borough: a 41.4% triple-science rate, with 172 of its science cohort on Combined Science against 125 on all three separate sciences. Its EBacc-science grade 9-5 rate is 65.3% -- still a solid outcome, but on a different pathway entirely for the majority of its pupils. A parent judging a Sutton school by the borough's grammar-school reputation alone would badly misjudge Greenshaw specifically; the honest comparison has to be made school by school, not from a borough-wide impression down.
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No, and two Ealing schools with almost identical triple-science rates show why a family should not stop at that one number. Twyford Church of England High School recorded a 31.2% triple-science rate in 2024/25 (59 pupils on all three separate sciences, 130 on Combined Science), close to Greenford High School's 29.9% (90 on triple science, 206 on Combined Science). But their EBacc-science outcomes diverge sharply: 94.7% of Twyford's EBacc-science entrants reached grade 9-4, against 66.8% at Greenford. Two schools with a near-identical split between the two science pathways, in the same borough, produced very different results once you look past the pathway split itself.
Wanstead High School in Redbridge, covered above for its Chemistry-specific entry gap, recorded a 73.1% EBacc-science grade 9-4 rate -- between Twyford's and Greenford's, and again a reminder that "non-selective" does not mean uniform. Ilford County High School, Redbridge's selective comparison point, reached 100.0% on the same measure. Whichever of these three boroughs a family is choosing between, the school-level figures tell a different story from the borough-level one, and sometimes a different story from a neighbouring school with an almost identical pathway split.
Choosing between two London schools with very different science pathways, or a programme that fits your child's own school? Our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both separate Chemistry and Combined Science, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR, tailored to the specific school and tier a student is already on.
Book a Free ConsultationMessage us on WhatsAppGCSE Chemistry is a single-subject qualification -- a pupil sits it alongside separate Biology and Physics GCSEs and receives one Chemistry grade. Combined Science is a double-award GCSE covering all three sciences in one course, producing two grades on a 17-point scale from 9-9 down to 1-1, and it carries no Chemistry grade at all. Nationally in summer 2026, separate Chemistry recorded 159,740 entries in England against 471,390 Combined Science entries (Ofqual's own subject-outcomes dashboard, which counts each pupil once, not twice).
DfE's 'entering biology, chemistry and physics' triple-science measure is capped by whichever of the three subjects has the fewest entries at that school, and it is not always Biology. At Woodford County High School in Redbridge, 2024/25 entries were 180 for Biology, 180 for Physics and 179 for Chemistry -- one pupil short of the other two -- so the school's own triple-science rate (98.9%) is set by Chemistry, not by Biology. At Wanstead High School, also in Redbridge, Chemistry and Physics were tied at 84 entries against 85 for Biology, again capping the rate below what Biology alone would suggest. Nine of the eleven schools checked for this page showed identical Biology, Chemistry and Physics entries -- this divergence is the exception, not the rule, but it is real where it happens.
London has 32 boroughs plus the City of London, and no single page can check every secondary school in all of them. This page covers Sutton, Ealing and Redbridge -- three boroughs Leading Tuition already serves locally, chosen because between them they cover the full range from a five-school selective grammar consortium (Sutton) to boroughs with no academically selective state schools among those checked (Ealing). It is not a claim to have checked all 32 boroughs, or even every secondary school within these three -- eleven named schools, not an exhaustive borough census.
No. The Department for Education's own data guidance states: “It is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26 due to gaps in the baseline caused by COVID-19 disruption.” Both cohorts sat their Key Stage 2 assessments during pandemic disruption, so no comparable baseline exists. Any figure presented as a 2024/25 or 2025/26 Progress 8 score, for GCSE Chemistry or any other subject, at school, borough or national level, is not a DfE-published number.
No. Attainment 8 has eight slots: English and maths, each double-weighted, three EBacc slots and three open slots. DfE's own guidance defines EBacc science as “double award GCSE for pupils on the combined science pathway or the average of a pupil's best two science grades for pupils on the single science pathway”. Chemistry -- like Biology and Physics -- sits inside the three EBacc slots alongside languages, history and geography; there is no separate weighted 'Chemistry element' the way English and maths each get one.
DfE's published performance data does not record which exam board an individual school uses, so this varies school by school. The three boards' Chemistry and Combined Science specifications carry different codes: AQA Chemistry (8462) and Combined Science: Trilogy (8464); Edexcel Chemistry (1CH0) and Combined Science (1SC0); OCR Gateway Science Chemistry A (J248) and Combined Science A (J250). Our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors work across all three and confirm a student's own board and tier before building a programme, rather than assuming one from their postcode.
No. The five academically selective schools checked in Sutton -- Wilson's School, Sutton Grammar School, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Wallington County Grammar School and Wallington High School for Girls -- all recorded a triple-science entry rate of 96.8% or higher in 2024/25, with three of the five at 100.0%. Greenshaw High School, a non-selective Sutton academy checked for comparison, recorded 41.4%. That is a real difference within one borough, not between boroughs, and a parent judging a Sutton school by the borough's grammar reputation alone would badly misjudge a non-selective school in the same postcode area.
Entries. A pupil entered for both separate Chemistry and Combined Science in the same year would appear in both rows, though DfE's underlying data does not show meaningful numbers of pupils doing that at any of the eleven schools checked here. Where a school shows Combined Science entries alongside separate-science entries (Greenshaw, Greenford, Twyford, Wanstead and Wilson's School, plus a single residual entry each at Nonsuch and Woodford County High), those are different pupils on a different pathway, not a double-count of the same pupils.
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Our expert GCSE Chemistry tutors help students across London with both separate Chemistry and Combined Science, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR, wherever in the capital your child's school sits.
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