GCSE Biology Tutors in Nottingham: City, County and Two Different Science GCSEs

Nottingham City is a unitary authority in its own right, separate from the much larger Nottinghamshire, and its 2024/25 Attainment 8 score of 43 sits below England's 46.1 average. GCSE Biology is also a different qualification from Combined Science: at Ellis Guilford School, in the city, only 2 pupils sat separate Biology against 255 who sat Combined Science. Leading Tuition's expert GCSE Biology tutors work with Nottingham students in both.

Nottingham City or Nottinghamshire? Why the Boundary Splits the Data

Nottingham City is a unitary authority in its own right, registered on the Department for Education's Compare School and College Performance service under local-authority code 892, with 115 schools and colleges attached to it. Nottinghamshire is a separate, much larger local authority, code 891, covering 393 schools and colleges - nearly three and a half times as many as the city on its own. The two share a name, a postcode area and, in a lot of everyday usage, a single identity as "Nottingham," but the Department for Education's own results tables keep them entirely apart, and a figure filed under one has nothing to do with the other.

That split matters because plenty of well-known "Nottingham" schools sit on the Nottinghamshire side of the line. The West Bridgford School, on Loughborough Road, gives its postal town as Nottingham and its postcode as NG2 7FA, but the Department for Education registers it in Nottinghamshire, not Nottingham City. George Spencer Academy, on Arthur Mee Road, NG9 7EW, and Redhill Academy, on Redhill Road, NG5 8GX, carry the same pattern: Nottingham addresses, Nottinghamshire registration. The confusion runs in both directions, too. The Nottingham Emmanuel School gives its postal town as West Bridgford - the same place associated with a Nottinghamshire school above - yet the Department for Education registers it inside Nottingham City itself.

Every figure on this page that says simply "Nottingham" means Nottingham City - local authority code 892 - unless it is explicitly labelled Nottinghamshire. Every named school below was checked individually against the Department for Education's own register rather than assumed from its postal address, because, as the four schools above show, the address alone gets the answer wrong about as often as it gets it right.

GCSE Biology and Combined Science Are Different Qualifications, Counted Differently

GCSE Biology and Combined Science are not two names for the same exam. Biology is a separate-sciences qualification: a pupil taking it also sits Chemistry and Physics as two further GCSEs, and receives three individual grades. Combined Science, which the exam boards and the Department for Education label Science: Double Award, is one qualification covering all three sciences at once, producing two grades on a 17-point scale running from 9-9 down to 1-1 rather than three separate 9-to-1 grades. A pupil doing Combined Science has no GCSE Biology qualification at all, and nationally, most pupils take Combined Science, not separate Biology.

The Joint Council for Qualifications' most recent results, published 20 August 2026, recorded 167,911 GCSE Biology entries in England, with 89.6% reaching grade 4 or above and 13.7% reaching the top grade 9. Combined Science recorded 942,776 entries in the same results, but JCQ's own published methodology explains why that number looks so large: "Science: Double Award counts as two GCSE entries. These entries, therefore, are counted twice both in the subject and in the overall figures." Halving that figure gives 471,388 Combined Science candidates - nearly 2.8 times as many pupils as sat separate Biology. Because a Combined Science candidate contributes two grade entries to every published percentage and a Biology candidate contributes one, the two subjects' grade-4-or-above rates - 89.6% for Biology against 58.1% for Combined Science - cannot be read as a straightforward pass-rate comparison; they are shares of two differently-built totals, not the same population measured twice.

Nottingham City's own schools show exactly this split in practice. At Ellis Guilford School, in the 2024/25 results, just 2 pupils were entered for separate GCSE Biology against 255 entered for Combined Science - a school where "GCSE Biology tutoring" would mean Combined Science for all but a handful of families. At Fernwood School, the pattern reverses: 166 pupils each for Biology, Chemistry and Physics against 127 for Combined Science, making separate science the more common route there. Djanogly City Academy (69 Biology entries against 158 Combined Science), Nottingham University Samworth Academy (28 against 125), Farnborough Spencer Academy (39 against 134) and Nottingham Academy (66 Biology, 57 Chemistry, 64 Physics, against 219 Combined Science) all sit between these two extremes, so which qualification a Nottingham family actually needs depends on the specific school, not the city as a whole.

How Do Nottingham City's GCSE Results Compare With England?

Nottingham City's state-funded schools entered a Key Stage 4 cohort of 3,455 pupils in the 2024/25 results, against an England-wide cohort of 625,647. On every headline measure the Department for Education publishes, the city sits behind the national average: an Attainment 8 score of 43 against England's 46.1, 39.8% of pupils reaching grade 5 or above in English and maths GCSEs against England's 45.4%, an EBacc entry rate of 26.9% against England's 40.5%, and an EBacc average point score of 3.73 against England's 4.09. That EBacc entry gap is the widest of the four: Nottingham City enters pupils for the full EBacc at about two-thirds the rate England does.

One measure is missing from that table everywhere in England, not just in Nottingham: the Department for Education states plainly that progress measures will not be published for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 academic years, because the pupils sitting GCSEs in those years had no Key Stage 2 assessment data after primary tests were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic. A second measure is also worth naming precisely because it does not exist: there is no "Attainment 8 science element" anywhere in England's published data. Attainment 8 has exactly two named, double-weighted elements - English and maths - plus three further EBacc-qualifying slots covering science, a language, and history or geography together, and three open slots for anything else. Fernwood School's own published subject-area breakdown shows this directly: its three EBacc slots score a single combined 16.2, against a Nottingham City average of 12.6, with no science figure broken out on its own.

Which Named Nottingham City Schools Enter the Most Pupils for Separate Science?

The six Nottingham City secondary schools checked for this page - all confirmed against the Department for Education's own register, not assumed from their addresses - show a real spread in both overall results and in how many pupils they enter for separate science. The table below sets out each school's 2024/25 Attainment 8 score alongside its GCSE Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Combined Science entries.

Fernwood School, on Goodwood Road, is the only one of the six with an Attainment 8 score above both the Nottingham City and England averages, at 53.8, and it is also the only one where separate science outnumbers Combined Science among its own pupils. The other five schools all sit below the Nottingham City average of 43, and all enter more pupils for Combined Science than for separate Biology, Chemistry and Physics combined. None of this ranks the schools for admissions purposes, and a school's average score says nothing about any individual pupil's own results. What it does show is that neither "Nottingham" nor even "Nottingham City" is a single result: the schools checked for this page range from 37.1 to 53.8 on Attainment 8, and from 2 to 166 on GCSE Biology entries alone.

What Parents Say

DP

Deborah Prior

★★★★★

Confidence and progress

My son was low in confidence after COVID and the gaps in learning were building up. Using this service helped plug those gaps, rebuild confidence, and improve his ability to learn properly again.

NI

Nicola

★★★★★

Amazing tutors!

We arranged maths and English tuition ahead of GCSEs and both tutors were brilliant. My daughter's grades improved, and by results day she achieved two grades higher than in her mock exams.

S

Saifan Khan

★★★★★

Great Teaching and Focused Learning

I attended an English bootcamp with Leading Tuition and the experience was excellent. The teacher gave focused attention to the small group while keeping the lessons interactive and engaging.

See more reviews on Trustpilot

Are Nottingham's Independent Schools Included in These Figures?

No. Every figure so far, from Nottingham City's 43 Attainment 8 average to Fernwood School's 166 Biology entries, comes from the Department for Education's state-funded schools data, which excludes the independent sector by definition. Nottingham has two well-known independent schools sitting inside the very same Nottingham City boundary described above: Nottingham High School, on Waverley Mount, and Nottingham Girls' High School GDST, on Arboretum Street. Both are registered by the Department for Education as "Other independent school" - inside Nottingham City's local authority geographically, but outside every state-funded figure used throughout this page. Nottingham High School's own subjects-entered data shows 98 pupils sitting GCSE Biology and 97 sitting Chemistry in the 2024/25 results, with no Combined Science entries listed anywhere in the same table - a very different pattern from Ellis Guilford School's, where Combined Science outnumbered separate Biology by more than a hundred to one. Leading Tuition works with GCSE Biology students at both kinds of Nottingham school.

How Leading Tuition Works With Nottingham GCSE Biology Students

Whether a Nottingham student needs support with separate Biology or Combined Science is not a citywide question - it depends on their own school, as the entries above show. Our diagnostic assessment for every new Nottingham GCSE Biology student starts by confirming which qualification their own school has actually entered them for, rather than assuming from a headline city figure or a school's overall reputation. A student at a school like Ellis Guilford, where Combined Science is the near-universal route, needs a programme built around the double-award specification and its 17-point grading; a student at a school like Fernwood, where separate science is the more common choice, needs a programme built around three individual GCSEs and three separate exam papers.

Our tutors hold degrees from leading UK universities and build every programme around a student's own school, qualification and exam board - AQA, Edexcel or OCR - working one-to-one online through past-paper questions marked against the real mark scheme rather than a generic syllabus. That matters more in Biology than the headline entry numbers alone suggest: a Combined Science paper draws on the same core biology content as a separate-sciences paper, but assesses it to a different depth and alongside chemistry and physics content in the same sitting, so a revision plan built for one qualification does not transfer directly to the other.

All figures above are drawn from the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance, 2024/25 release, its Compare School and College Performance service and the Joint Council for Qualifications' summer 2026 results, all checked on 28th August 2026. For students planning beyond their GCSE results, our Nottingham A-Level Maths tuition guide and Nottingham 13+ tuition guide cover other stages, and our Nottingham GCSE Maths tutors and Nottingham GCSE English tutors pages cover other subjects. See our full GCSE Biology guide for how grade boundaries and topics work nationally, our Biology tutoring service page for how programmes are structured, and our overview of tutoring across Nottingham for our wider service in the city.

Frequently Asked Questions