GCSE Physics Tutors in London

GCSE Physics tutors in London work with two different qualifications: separate Physics, and Combined Science, the double award that carries no Physics grade at all. Across England, GCSE Physics provisional entries fell to 161,305 in summer 2026, down from a peak of 174,735 two years earlier -- the lowest entry count of the three separate sciences every year since 2022. Our expert GCSE Physics tutors help students across London with both, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR.

GCSE Physics or Combined Science: which one is your child actually sitting?

"GCSE Physics" and "Combined Science" are different qualifications, and DfE's own provisional entries release reports them in separate rows every summer. These figures are entries schools and colleges in England submitted to exam boards in mid-April 2026 -- a pre-exam snapshot DfE itself labels provisional, and a different measure from JCQ's own post-results "number sat" tables, which typically come in slightly lower once late withdrawals are accounted for. Between 2022 and 2026, England's GCSE Physics entries on this provisional measure ran 166,550, 172,725, 174,735, 162,865 and 161,305 -- peaking in 2024 and falling for two years running since, a 1.0% drop in the most recent year alone. Biology (169,915 to 183,360 across the same five years) and Chemistry (161,400 to 174,745) sit close by, but Physics records the smallest entry count of the three separate sciences in every single one of the five years -- narrowly, in summer 2026, by just 95 entries against Chemistry's 161,400.

Physics also carries its own regulatory weight. Ofqual's own subject-level conditions require that "the total mark used to credit the relevant Mathematical Skills is no less than" -- for Physics -- "30 per cent of the sum of all of the marks allocated to assessment objectives AO1 to AO3," a floor rather than a fixed share. The same condition sets Chemistry's floor at 20 per cent and Biology's at 10 per cent, so Physics carries the highest minimum maths-content requirement of the three separate sciences. Ofqual confirmed on 5 May 2026 that it "will continue to require exam boards to provide students with formulae and equations sheets for GCSE mathematics, physics and combined science exams for the remaining lifetime of the current specifications" -- any change applies only to exams from 2028 onwards, so current GCSE Physics students keep the sheet.

Two figures get miscited around GCSE Physics results, and both matter to a family choosing a tutor. There is no "Attainment 8 Physics element": Attainment 8 has eight slots -- English and maths, each double-weighted, three EBacc slots and three open slots -- and DfE defines the EBacc itself as having five pillars, "English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography," with science, not Physics specifically, as the pillar. And there is no Progress 8 score for this cohort or the next: DfE's own 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," adding that the previous government confirmed in April 2024 there will be no replacement for either year.

The three exam boards' Physics and Combined Science specifications carry different codes, checked directly against AQA's, OCR's and Pearson's own qualification pages and documents: AQA Physics (8463), Combined Science: Trilogy (8464) and Combined Science: Synergy (8465); Edexcel Physics (1PH0) and Combined Science (1SC0); OCR Gateway Science Physics A (J249) and Combined Science A (J250), or, under OCR's other suite, Twenty First Century Science Physics B (J259) and Combined Science B (J260). Our expert GCSE Physics tutors help students across London with both, across all three boards.

Why doesn't London have one GCSE Physics figure the way a single school does?

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 six named, individually verified state-funded secondary schools across two boroughs: Enfield and Bexley. Neither is a borough Leading Tuition's other London GCSE science pages have already checked: our GCSE Chemistry page covers Sutton, Ealing and Redbridge, and our GCSE Biology page covers Barnet, Bromley, Croydon, Harrow, Islington, Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames. All six schools here are confirmed open, and correctly located in the borough named, on the same DfE Compare School and College Performance exports used for every entry figure below, checked 2 September 2026. This is not a claim to have checked all 32 boroughs plus the City, or every secondary school within Enfield and Bexley -- six schools, named individually, is the honest scope of what follows.

Which London schools enter every pupil for all three separate sciences?

DfE's own measure for this is "pupils entering for biology, chemistry and physics" -- the triple-science rate -- published directly on each school's additional-entry-and-achievement-measures page alongside a Local Authority and an England comparator, not derived from subject entries. That England comparator, and the Local Authority columns next to it, are state-funded schools only -- 625,647 pupils nationally, a 23.3% triple-science rate -- the same page states plainly that these measures compare "performance at state-funded schools at local authority and national level." DfE publishes a separate all-schools England row for this measure, which includes independent schools -- schools that do not report this measure at all -- and that row is never the figure quoted on this page. Here is what the state-funded comparison looks like at each of the six schools checked for this page, all state-funded, all confirmed open in the borough shown, 2024/25:

Look down the Biology, Chemistry and Physics columns and two schools break the pattern immediately: Beths Grammar School and Townley Grammar School, both selective schools in Bexley, each show identical Biology and Chemistry entries and exactly one fewer Physics entry -- 192/192/191 at Beths, 226/226/225 at Townley. At every other school checked, the three sciences either move together exactly (The Latymer School, Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School) or the separate-science rows barely apply at all (Enfield Grammar School and Bexleyheath Academy enter almost their whole cohort for Combined Science instead). As with the sibling Chemistry and Biology pages, the wider split looks at first like selective versus non-selective admissions rather than borough versus borough -- but Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, covered in full below, shows that even that rule has a real exception inside Bexley itself.

When Physics itself is the bottleneck: two Bexley grammar schools where the numbers don't match

Beths Grammar School, a selective boys' grammar in Bexley, recorded 192 Biology entries and 192 Chemistry entries in 2024/25 -- and 191 Physics entries, one fewer than either of the other two sciences. DfE's own additional-entry-and-achievement-measures page rounds the school's triple-science rate to 100.0% against a 191-pupil KS4 cohort, but the single pupil missing from Physics, not from Biology or Chemistry, is what stops the school's three separate-science entries from lining up exactly.

Townley Grammar School, a selective girls' grammar also in Bexley, shows the identical pattern at a larger scale: 226 Biology entries, 226 Chemistry entries and 225 Physics entries in 2024/25, against a published KS4 cohort of 224 and a 99.6% triple-science rate. Two different Bexley grammars, a different sex intake at each, and in both cases it is Physics -- not Chemistry, and not Biology -- that is the strict bottleneck subject.

This is not a Bexley quirk. DfE and JCQ's own provisional entries release shows GCSE Physics recording the smallest entries of the three separate sciences across the whole of England, in every single year from 2022 to 2026. At the two schools where Beths' and Townley's numbers actually diverge, they diverge in exactly the direction the national data predicts.

Selective doesn't mean uniform: a third Bexley grammar splits its cohort down the middle

Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School is a selective, mixed grammar in Bexley -- the same admissions category, confirmed on the same DfE export, as both Beths Grammar School and Townley Grammar School. Its 2024/25 entries were 92 each for Biology, Chemistry and Physics, alongside 96 entries for Science: Double Award, out of a published KS4 cohort of 189 pupils. Its triple-science rate is 48.7%, close to Bexley's own borough-wide rate of 34.0% and a very long way from Beths' 100.0% and Townley's 99.6%.

A parent judging a Bexley grammar school by its admissions category alone -- selective, therefore near-universal triple science -- would badly misjudge Chislehurst and Sidcup specifically. Roughly half of its Year 11 sits Combined Science instead, inside a school that turns away the majority of its applicants at 11+. Selective and non-selective is a real distinction on this page, but it is not the only one that matters, and it is not even reliable within a single borough.

Families across these boroughs on Trustpilot:

Enfield Grammar School: a name that doesn't mean what it says

Enfield is home to The Latymer School, a genuinely selective, mixed state grammar that entered 189 pupils each for Biology, Chemistry and Physics in 2024/25 out of a 191-pupil KS4 cohort -- a 99.0% triple-science rate, with no separate-science pupil left over on a Combined Science pathway at all. Checked against the same DfE export, Enfield's own borough-wide triple-science rate sits at 17.9%, against England's state-funded rate of 23.3% -- The Latymer School sits far above both.

Enfield Grammar School, also in the borough, carries the word "Grammar" in its name -- but DfE Compare's own export lists its admissions policy, self-declared on Get Information about Schools (GIAS), as Non-selective, and its 2024/25 subjects-entered table has no Biology, Chemistry or Physics row at all: 170 entries for Science: Double Award out of a 171-pupil cohort, and a 0.0% triple-science rate. The school's name is a historical one (it also runs a boys-only main-school intake, with a mixed sixth form only since 2023) and is not a reliable guide to either its admissions policy or its science pathway -- the same trap as judging a school by which town its postcode names, applied here to an admissions label instead of a place name.

Bexley shows the same borough-wide gap from the opposite direction. Its published triple-science rate, 34.0%, is nearly double Enfield's 17.9% and well above England's state-funded rate of 23.3% -- yet inside that same higher-scoring borough sits Bexleyheath Academy (now renamed Lift Bexleyheath), which entered just 3 pupils for separate Biology and none at all for Chemistry or Physics, against 174 Combined Science entries and a 0.0% triple-science rate. A borough-level number this page states plainly, but never uses as a substitute for checking the school.

Is GCSE Physics entry growing or shrinking nationally -- and does it matter for a London tutor search?

GCSE Physics provisional entries in England have fallen for two years running: 174,735 in 2024, 162,865 in 2025, 161,305 in 2026, a 1.0% year-on-year drop. The Higher tier share has held close to steady over the same period -- 88% in 2022, dipping to 85% in 2024, recovering to 86% for the last two years -- so the fall is not obviously weaker cohorts avoiding the harder tier.

A-level Physics moves the other way: entries rose from 40,315 in 2024 to 42,025 in 2025 and 42,765 in 2026, up 1.8% in the latest year, even as the smaller AS Physics entry fell 9.9%. A London family choosing a GCSE Physics tutor sits at an unusual point on the trend line -- fewer pupils entered at GCSE, more continuing to A-level -- context no borough figure shows.

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Leading Tuition is rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot. See also our national GCSE Physics tuition service, our GCSE Chemistry tutors in London page, our GCSE Biology tutors in London page, and our wider tutoring locations across the UK.