GCSE Spanish Tutors in London

GCSE Spanish entries overtook GCSE French nationally for the first time in summer 2025, and pulled further ahead in summer 2026: 132,680 Spanish entries against 121,040 for French, DfE's provisional entries release shows. AQA's current specification is GCSE Spanish 8692, not the still-published 8698, which AQA's own site now labels a legacy qualification. Our expert GCSE Spanish tutors help students across London across AQA and Pearson Edexcel.

Spanish and the EBacc languages pillar: wider than Spanish alone

The English Baccalaureate has five pillars: English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography. The languages pillar is wider than Spanish, and wider than the three big modern languages combined. DfE's own English Baccalaureate eligible-qualifications register, current for the 2026 exam series, lists GCSEs in French, German, Spanish, Latin, Classical Greek, Italian, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Panjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Gujarati, Persian, Turkish, Polish and Portuguese as all EBacc-eligible for the 2026 series. A pupil entered for any one of these satisfies the languages pillar exactly as a pupil entered for Spanish does -- a pupil who sits French, Urdu or Portuguese is not missing the languages pillar; a pupil who sits none of these subjects is.

Nationally, the languages pillar is also the hardest of the five to fill. England's state-funded languages entry rate was 45.9% in 2024/25 -- risen for a second consecutive year after falling from 50.5% in 2013/14 to a low of 44.7% in 2022/23, per DfE's own key stage 4 performance release. Of state-funded pupils who entered exactly four of the five EBacc pillars in 2024/25 (85.6% of the cohort entered four or more pillars), 88.4% were missing the languages component, against just 11.3% missing humanities. That describes only the subgroup one pillar short of a full EBacc entry, not the entire pupil population -- but within that subgroup, languages is by far the more common gap.

Has Spanish really overtaken French? Five years of national entries

DfE's provisional entries release -- schools' and colleges' submissions to exam boards by 15 April each year -- shows Spanish closing a real gap with French rather than simply growing alongside it. Spanish GCSE entries rose every single year from 116,355 in summer 2022 to 132,680 in summer 2026, a 14.0% rise over five years. French fell over the same period, from 126,185 to 121,040, down 4.1%, including a 5.5% single-year fall between summer 2025 and summer 2026. The two lines crossed in summer 2025: Spanish reached 131,985 against French's 128,155, a 3,830-entry lead that widened to 11,640 by summer 2026. German, the third EBacc modern language, moved in a narrower band throughout -- 36,000 in 2022 down to 32,525 in 2026 -- roughly a quarter of Spanish's entry volume in every year shown.

GCSE Spanish is tiered, like GCSE Maths and the three separate sciences, and unlike GCSE History: pupils sit either Foundation or Higher tier papers across all four skills -- listening, speaking, reading and writing -- and must enter the same tier throughout. DfE's own tiered-entries table shows 55% of Spanish entries went to Higher tier in summer 2026, up from 49% in summer 2025 -- part of a wider pattern DfE describes directly: "For French, German and Spanish, there has been an increase in the percentage of higher tier entries compared with the previous year." French moved from 49% to 56% Higher tier over the same year, and German from 59% to 67%.

Which GCSE Spanish specification is actually current, and which code got retired?

GCSE modern languages were re-specified for first teaching in September 2024, following a 2021 DfE consultation -- the Department's own subject content document states plainly that it sets out "the learning outcomes and content coverage required for GCSE specifications in French, German and Spanish for first teaching in September 2024 and for first examination in summer 2026." That reform changed which specification code is actually current, and it is easy to publish the wrong one. AQA's GCSE Spanish page for code 8698 -- the specification an older page, or a search result written before 2024, would very plausibly still reference -- now carries its own banner reading: "GCSE Spanish 8698 -- This is the legacy specification. Please visit GCSE Spanish 8692." The 8698 specification PDF is itself dated "For teaching from September 2016 onwards," with no mention of 2024 anywhere in its text. The current AQA specification, checked directly in its own PDF, is GCSE Spanish 8692: "For teaching from September 2024 onwards, For GCSE exams in 2026 onwards."

Pearson Edexcel's equivalent move is GCSE Spanish 1SP1, its own specification stating "First teaching from September 2024, first certification from 2026" -- a new code, not a revision carrying the previous 1SP0 forward. OCR does not publish a GCSE Spanish, French or German specification at all; its GCSE subject list carries none of the three.

WJEC Eduqas also publishes a live GCSE Spanish specification for the same reform -- "For teaching from 2024, For award from 2026" -- structured as four Components rather than Papers, each worth 25%, with Component 1 (Speaking) marked as a non-exam assessment by the class teacher rather than an externally-timetabled test. But Eduqas's own specification document has not filled in its own entry codes: section 4.1, "Making entries," reads "The entry codes appear below" followed by "WJEC Eduqas GCSE Spanish (foundation tier): xxxx" and "WJEC Eduqas GCSE Spanish (higher tier): xxxx" -- xxxx printed literally, not a redaction or an extraction fault. DfE's own EBacc-eligible-qualifications register confirms the qualification is real (Ofqual number 60189010), not withdrawn -- but not yet enterable. AQA and Pearson Edexcel are the two boards this page confirms schools can actually use for GCSE Spanish.

Both current specifications keep Speaking worth 25% of the qualification, but structure it differently. AQA's Paper 2: Speaking is recorded by the class teacher and marked by an AQA examiner inside an April-to-May test window, running a maximum nine minutes at Foundation tier and twelve at Higher, across a role-play, a reading-aloud task and a photo card. Pearson's Paper 1: Speaking in Spanish -- speaking is Paper 1 at Pearson, not Paper 2 -- runs 7-9 minutes at Foundation tier and 10-12 minutes at Higher, each after 15 minutes' preparation time, across a read-aloud task, a role play and a picture task with conversation. Both boards weight Listening, Reading and Writing at 25% each too, so no single skill dominates the qualification at either board.

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

London is not a local authority, so it carries 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 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, this page checks eight named, individually verified state-funded secondary schools across two adjacent South London boroughs: Lambeth and Southwark. Neither is a borough Leading Tuition's other London GCSE pages have already checked: our GCSE Chemistry page covers Sutton, Ealing and Redbridge; our GCSE Biology page covers Barnet, Bromley, Croydon, Harrow, Islington, Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames; our GCSE Physics page covers Enfield and Bexley; our GCSE History page covers Havering and Waltham Forest; our GCSE English page covers Islington and Newham. All eight schools here were checked against GIAS's own establishment records -- open, state-funded, secondary, with a 2024/25 KS4 cohort -- filtered from the Department's own edubase export dated 1 September 2026, and none carries a Selective admissions policy: six are recorded "Non-selective," and two (Trinity Academy and St Michael's Catholic College) carry GIAS's "Not applicable" admissions-policy code rather than an explicit label, but neither is Selective either. Entries and pillar figures below come from each school's own DfE Compare School and College Performance pages, checked 2 September 2026.

Which language does each school actually teach? Eight schools, two boroughs

The clearest pattern is Spanish displacing French, and at some schools that displacement looks complete. Platanos College in Stockwell entered 64 pupils for GCSE Spanish in 2024/25 and none for French; its own subjects-entered table lists no French row at all, down to entries as small as a single Turkish pupil elsewhere on the same page. Trinity Academy, a little under a mile away, entered the same 64 pupils for Spanish against a single French entry. The Norwood School shows the more common national shape -- Spanish ahead, but French still substantial -- with 73 Spanish entries against 39 for French, its highest raw Spanish count of the eight schools checked.

Southwark tells a less one-sided story. St Michael's Catholic College in Bermondsey entered 93 pupils for GCSE Spanish, the highest raw count of the eight schools, against 60 for French -- Spanish ahead by 55%. But barely two miles away, Ark Walworth Academy still favours French over Spanish, 73 entries against 49 -- the only one of the eight schools checked for this page where French leads, and a reminder that a national crossover does not mean every school crossed with it.

The community-language story: Portuguese and Polish, counting fully towards the same pillar as Spanish

Two of the eight schools return DfE-published entries for languages beyond the big three. City Heights E-ACT Academy, in Angell Town, Lambeth, entered 21 pupils for GCSE Portuguese in 2024/25 against 47 for Spanish and just 5 for French -- more than four times as many Portuguese entries as French at the same school. Bishop Thomas Grant Catholic Secondary School, in Streatham, entered 24 pupils for GCSE Polish, against 39 for Spanish, 29 for French and 19 for German -- a Polish cohort well over three-fifths the size of its Spanish one. Both figures are DfE Compare's own published "Subjects entered at key stage 4" counts, not derived; this page does not speculate about why either school's entries look this way, only reports that they do.

Both qualifications satisfy the EBacc languages pillar exactly as Spanish does. AQA's GCSE Polish and Pearson Edexcel's GCSE Portuguese both appear as EBacc-eligible for the 2026 series on the Department's own eligible-qualifications register, alongside GCSE Spanish, French and German -- a pupil entered for Polish or Portuguese is not a pupil the languages pillar is missing, whatever a school's raw Spanish entry count happens to be.

What do Lambeth and Southwark's own languages pillar rates say against England?

Borough-level context sits alongside these eight schools rather than replacing them. Lambeth's own published Languages pillar entry rate is 56.5% and its full EBacc entry rate is 49.1%, both against a 2,328-pupil KS4 cohort; Southwark's are 70.9% and 66.5%, against 3,266 pupils -- both boroughs sit well above England's state-funded comparator of 45.9% for languages and 40.5% for full EBacc entry, the same population throughout. At two of the eight schools, Platanos College (43.0%) and Trinity Academy (58.6%), the Languages pillar rate is identical to the full EBacc entry rate -- meaning languages, not any other pillar, is the exact ceiling on how many pupils complete all five at those two schools. At St Michael's Catholic College the numbers run the other way: a 93.2% Languages entry rate, the highest of the eight schools and far above Southwark's own 70.9% average, sits alongside an 86.4% full EBacc rate that is itself the highest of the eight.

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Progress 8 and GCSE Spanish results in 2026

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. This is because there is no KS2 prior attainment data available to use to calculate Progress 8 when the relevant cohorts reach the end of KS4 as primary tests and assessments were cancelled in academic years 2019/20 and 2020/21 due to COVID-19 disruption. In April 2024 the previous government announced that there will be no replacement for Progress 8 for 2024/25 and 2025/26." Any figure presented as a 2024/25 or 2025/26 Progress 8 score, for GCSE Spanish or any other subject, at school, borough or national level, is not a DfE-published number.

Entries and pillar-percentage figures on this page are drawn from DfE's Compare School and College Performance service, checked 2 September 2026. National entries figures are drawn from the Provisional entries for GCSE, AS and A level: summer 2026 exam series release. Exam board specification codes are drawn directly from AQA's and Pearson Edexcel's own current specification documents, and EBacc-eligible language qualifications from DfE's English Baccalaureate: eligible qualifications register. School admissions policies are drawn from GIAS's own establishment records. Families researching Leading Tuition's wider GCSE History tutors in London page, our GCSE Biology tutors in London page, our GCSE Chemistry tutors in London page, our GCSE Physics tutors in London page, our GCSE English tutors in London page, our GCSE tuition service, and our wider tutoring locations across the UK, can find each covered on its own page.

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