GCSE Computer Science Tutors in Nottingham: The School With Zero GCSE Entries

Nottingham Academy enters zero pupils for GCSE Computer Science in the Department for Education's 2024/25 data, yet 48 across two separate vocational computing qualifications DfE files under a different heading. Computer Science is not universal across Nottingham's schools, and the qualification a school chooses is not always what its name suggests.

Nottingham City or Nottinghamshire? Confirming Where GCSE Computer Science Students' Schools Sit

Nottingham City is a unitary authority in its own right, registered on the Department for Education's own systems under local-authority code 892 - entirely separate from Nottinghamshire, the much larger surrounding county, which carries code 891. Both are shortened to "Nottingham" in everyday conversation, and DfE's own register shows the confusion runs in both directions: The West Bridgford School gives a Nottingham postal address but is registered in Nottinghamshire, while The Nottingham Emmanuel School sits inside Nottingham City despite giving West Bridgford as its postal town. Every school named on this page was checked individually at GIAS by its own unique reference number (URN) rather than assumed from its name or postcode.

Nottingham University Academy of Science and Technology (NUAST), Fernwood School, Nottingham Academy, Nottingham Girls' Academy, The Oakwood Academy, Ellis Guilford School, Nottingham University Samworth Academy, Farnborough Spencer Academy, Djanogly City Academy and The Nottingham Emmanuel School are all confirmed Open and registered inside Nottingham City's own local authority. So are two independent schools this page also checks, Nottingham High School and Nottingham Girls' High School GDST, whose figures are published separately from the state-funded totals used elsewhere on this page.

Is GCSE Computer Science the Same Qualification as Creative iMedia or BTEC Digital Information Technology?

No, and DfE's own data makes the distinction by qualification type rather than by subject label alone - exactly the trap a sibling page on this site found in a different subject area, where a vocational qualification and an academic one were filed under a single subject heading. GCSE Computer Science is an academic GCSE that counts towards the EBacc science pillar. Creative iMedia (a Cambridge National from OCR) and Digital Information Technology-style Technical Awards are vocational qualifications that do not, whatever a school's own marketing calls its "computing" provision.

Checked directly against every Nottingham City school's own subject-entry page on DfE's Compare School and College Performance service, the pattern is stark. Fernwood School's data lists two separate rows under a generic "Computer Appreciation / Introduction" heading with qualification type "Technical Award" - 18 pupils and 9 pupils, two different vocational qualifications sharing one display label - alongside 43 pupils entered for the GCSE itself. Nottingham Academy's data shows the same generic vocational heading appearing twice, 25 and 23 pupils, but carries no GCSE Computer Science row at all: not one of its 287 Year 11 pupils in 2024/25 was entered for the academic qualification. A school with zero Computer Science GCSE entries and 48 vocational entries is not a school that ignores computing; it is a school that has chosen a different qualification for it.

Does Computer Science Count as a Science for the EBacc, and Does It Change Nottingham's Own Numbers?

Yes. The Department for Education's own EBacc guidance sets out two ways to satisfy the science pillar: "GCSE combined science" (two GCSEs covering biology, chemistry and physics), or "3 single sciences at GCSE - pupils choose 3 subjects from biology, chemistry, physics and computer science". A pupil taking biology, chemistry and Computer Science therefore satisfies the science pillar without ever sitting GCSE Physics - a route this site's sibling Nottingham Physics page did not check, because its own measure counted the exact biology-chemistry-physics triple only.

Both measures are separately published, and Nottingham City's own 2024/25 figures show just how close they sit together locally, against a much wider gap nationally.

Nottingham City's own gap is a single pupil: 960 pupils entered the wider three-of-four measure against 959 for the exact triple, and both round to the same 27.8% - a difference too small to see without the raw counts DfE publishes underneath. Nottinghamshire's two measures are identical, 2,036 pupils each, meaning not one Nottinghamshire pupil relies on Computer Science to complete the science pillar this way. England's own state-funded figures tell a different story at scale: 145,985 against 145,726 is a gap of 259 pupils nationally - a difference too small to move the rounded percentage, but a real, countable group the exact-triple measure alone would miss entirely. Both figures come from the same Department for Education release; neither can be derived from the other, and a page that only reports the exact triple - as this site's own Physics page for Nottingham does, correctly, since it measures something different - is not wrong, but it is not counting Computer Science pupils in the science pillar either.

Which Nottingham School Enters No Pupils for GCSE Computer Science, and Which Enters the Most?

Checked school by school against DfE's 2024/25 subject-entry data, GCSE Computer Science entry rates across Nottingham City range from zero to well over four in ten pupils - and the school with the highest rate is not the one most associated with computing in the city.

Nottingham High School, an independent school, posts the highest GCSE Computer Science entry rate of any Nottingham City school checked - 42.1% of its cohort, more than double the next-highest state-funded school. Yet the same school's triple-science measure is 0.0%: its own subject-entry data lists Biology and Chemistry entries but no Physics GCSE row at all, so no pupil there can complete the exact biology-chemistry-physics triple, whatever their Computer Science result. Ellis Guilford School shows the opposite pairing: a near-zero triple-science rate (0.7%, since almost every pupil takes Combined Science instead of three separate sciences) alongside the second-highest Computer Science entry rate in the city (21.3%) - proof that a school's triple-science and Computer Science populations are not the same pupils, and a high rate in one says nothing about the other. Nottingham Academy's zero is the most complete gap of all: no GCSE Computer Science, and its 48 vocational computing entries split across two separate qualifications sharing one generic DfE display label, the same pattern Fernwood School shows on a smaller scale with its own two vocational rows (18 and 9 pupils).

DfE actually publishes these figures on two different surfaces, with two different sets of labels, and this page keeps them separate rather than treating one as a translation of the other. The school-by-school table above comes from DfE's Compare School and College Performance service, which labels the academic GCSE "Computer Studies/Computing" and labels vocational computing "Computer Appreciation / Introduction" under a "Technical Award" qualification type. DfE's separate Explore Education Statistics data, at Nottingham City local-authority level for 2024/25, uses different labels again: 419 entries under "Computer Science" (GCSE), 175 under "Information and Communication Technology" (Vocational) and 189 under "Multimedia" (Vocational) - the last of these DfE's own heading for Creative iMedia-type qualifications specifically. The GCSE side reconciles cleanly, because only one GCSE-level computing qualification exists at all: this page's own state-funded schools sum to 238 GCSE entries, comfortably inside the citywide 419 from a city of 115 schools and colleges, most of them not checked here. The vocational side is not claimed to reconcile the same way. Summing the "Computer Appreciation / Introduction" rows at the seven schools named on this page that carry one gives 208 pupils, against a combined 364 across the local authority's separate "Information and Communication Technology" and "Multimedia" rows - a plausible range, not a confirmed match, since this page has not established that a single school-level "Computer Appreciation / Introduction" entry always falls under one specific local-authority-level heading rather than the other. Not one of the twelve schools checked for this page recorded an entry under DfE's own "Multimedia" heading on either surface, so none of the vocational entries described above should be assumed to be Creative iMedia specifically; an ambiguous vocational label is left unnamed rather than guessed at.

Is NUAST Actually a University Technical College?

No - and this is worth checking closely, because the name invites the assumption. Nottingham University Academy of Science and Technology carries "University" in its own name and a science and technology specialism that reads like a University Technical College (UTC), a distinct category of 14-to-19 free school built around technical and STEM subjects with a university sponsor. But GIAS, the Department for Education's own register, lists NUAST's school type simply as "Free schools", with an age range of 11 to 19 - five years wider at the bottom end than the 14-to-19 range that defines an actual UTC - and an academy trust of Nova Education Trust rather than a UTC-specific sponsorship structure. NUAST is registered Open inside Nottingham City's own local authority, confirmed independently at GIAS by its URN (140984) rather than assumed from its name.

The distinction matters for what NUAST's own figures actually show. Its 95.1% triple-science entry rate and 16 GCSE Computer Science entries sit alongside a 122-pupil cohort typical of a mainstream secondary school, not the smaller, older-entry cohorts a genuine UTC's 14-to-19 admissions model produces. A school can build its identity and its curriculum around science and technology, as NUAST clearly has, without being classified in DfE's own data as the specific institution type its name suggests - a distinction this page checked rather than assumed, in exactly the way the brief for this batch asked.

Which Exam Boards Set GCSE Computer Science, and Does the Programming Project Count?

Four awarding bodies currently offer GCSE Computer Science in England, and every code below was confirmed at the board's own live site rather than copied from a list. AQA's is Computer Science, 8525. OCR's is Computer Science, J277. Pearson Edexcel's is 1CP2 - a code that, like several other Edexcel GCSE codes on this site's sibling pages, does not appear on Pearson's own HTML qualification page and had to be confirmed inside the specification PDF itself, extracted directly rather than guessed. WJEC Eduqas's own reference-code table gives its GCSE Computer Science a Qual Code of C500QS (Qualification Number 601/8291/X). The edition caution above applies to AQA alone: OCR's J277, Pearson Edexcel's 1CP2 and WJEC Eduqas's C500QS have each been examined under one continuous specification since first award in 2022, with no second live edition of any of the three published anywhere on the boards' own sites - confirmed directly at each board rather than assumed from AQA's pattern.

Two of the four boards examine the programming half of the course on a computer rather than on paper, and neither is the only one: Pearson Edexcel's Paper 2 (1CP2/02) is a two-hour onscreen examination worth 50% of the qualification, and WJEC Eduqas's Component 2 is also a two-hour onscreen examination worth 50% - both confirmed directly in each board's own specification PDF. AQA's and OCR's equivalent papers are both written exams instead.

Every code above names a qualification the government has already committed to replacing, not one facing a hypothetical review. The Government's response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, published November 2025, states plainly: "We will replace the computer science GCSE with a GCSE in computing that better reflects the breadth of the curriculum." The same document adds that the replacement will continue "to uphold the core principles of computer science such as programming and algorithms" while the government explores "the development of a level 3 qualification in data science and AI." No first-teaching date for this specific change appears anywhere in that document, so the four codes above remain the ones a Nottingham student sits until any replacement qualification is confirmed and phased in.

The "programming project" often associated with Computer Science does not work the way a genuine non-exam assessment does, and AQA's own specification confirms it directly. Under AQA's weighting table, Paper 1 and Paper 2 each carry 50% of the overall mark - 100% of the grade comes from the two written exams, with no separate coursework component at all. Students still complete a practical programming task, but AQA's specification states that the school or college must submit a "Practical programming statement" confirming pupils had the opportunity to complete it, and warns that failing to submit this statement "will be considered malpractice/maladministration" - it is a compliance declaration, not a marked piece of work, and it contributes no marks to the final grade.

The subject also carries a well-documented national gender gap, checkable in DfE's own school-level data rather than asserted from general knowledge. Across England's state-funded schools in 2024/25, GCSE Computer Science recorded 80,991 total entries: 63,167 from boys and 17,824 from girls - girls made up 22.0% of entries, a far narrower share than in Biology or Chemistry. The qualification GCSE Computer Science replaced, GCSE Information and Communication Technology, no longer exists at all: DfE's subject-entry data records zero GCSE entries for it in every year from 2018/19 (the earliest year this data series covers) to 2024/25. The same subject heading still carried 23,492 entries nationally in 2024/25, but every one of them was filed under a "Vocational" qualification type rather than GCSE - the label survived the GCSE's withdrawal, attached now only to non-GCSE qualifications.

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

How Leading Tuition Works With Nottingham GCSE Computer Science Students

Every programme starts by confirming exactly what a student is studying - GCSE Computer Science under AQA, Edexcel, OCR or Eduqas, or a vocational route such as a Cambridge National or Technical Award - because the skills a tutor should prioritise differ sharply between them. A GCSE student sitting two 100%-weighted written papers needs structured practice applying programming concepts on paper under timed conditions, since AQA's own specification confirms no coursework mark exists to fall back on; a vocational student needs support building a portfolio of practical work instead. Sessions run one-to-one online with a shared code editor and whiteboard, so a tutor can work through algorithm design, trace tables and past-paper programming questions in real time, then mark them against the student's own board's actual mark scheme.

Because Computer Science's assessment structure rewards accurate, exam-condition practice more than broad topic coverage alone, our tutors build revision around a student's weakest paper first, using a diagnostic assessment to identify whether the gap sits in programming fundamentals, computer systems theory, or applying algorithms under time pressure. Programmes are reviewed roughly every half-term against a student's own target grade, with pacing adjusted if a mock exam shows a gap closing faster, or slower, than expected. For students whose school enters them for Computer Science as part of the wider EBacc science route alongside Biology and Chemistry, our tutors also support the Biology and Chemistry GCSEs those pupils are typically also studying, and the Maths skills that underpin the more numerate parts of the Computer Science specification.

See our full Computer Science tuition service for how a programme is structured across a full academic year, plus our GCSE tuition overview, our sibling Nottingham GCSE Physics tutors page for the exact-triple science measure in full, and our overview of tutoring across Nottingham for other subjects and levels. Leading Tuition also covers every UK city on our full list of locations. All DfE figures above are drawn from the Department for Education's Key Stage 4 performance, 2024/25 release and its Compare School and College Performance service, checked on 2 September 2026. Every named school's registration was independently confirmed at the Department's Get Information about Schools register. Exam-board spec codes are drawn directly from AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR and WJEC Eduqas's own published pages, and the EBacc science pillar rule is quoted from DfE's own EBacc guidance.

Frequently Asked Questions