Named 2025 entry data show which Oxford schools push GCSE History over Geography — and the one state school that runs the opposite way to every other school in the city.
Book a Free ConsultationAcross Oxford's state secondary schools, which EBacc humanity a pupil actually sits varies enormously: at Matthew Arnold School, 115 pupils took GCSE History against just 41 for Geography in 2025 — a 2.8-to-1 lead — while at Cheney School the pattern reverses hard, 150 Geography entries against only 90 for History. Leading Tuition's expert GCSE History tutors help students across Oxford across AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas.
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Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe English Baccalaureate's humanities pillar is not "History" on its own: a pupil satisfies it by being entered for History or Geography, and no other subject counts — not religious studies, not classical civilisation, not sociology. DfE publishes both subjects' entries for every state-funded secondary school, which means History and Geography compete directly for the same option block at the same schools, and which one a school's pupils actually sit turns out to be a genuinely local fact rather than a national default. The EBacc itself has five pillars in total: English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography — and entering all five is a different measure from achieving all five, a distinction DfE keeps as two separate published figures. This page reports entry throughout, not achievement, and names the two apart wherever they appear.
Exam-board specification codes confirm History is its own qualification family, and every code below is checked directly against the awarding body's own specification or website, not assumed from a list. AQA's GCSE History carries specification code 8145. Pearson Edexcel's GCSE History is 1HI0, a code that appears inside the specification's own PDF text rather than on Pearson's public qualification-listing page. OCR runs two separate History specifications of its own — History A, Explaining the Modern World (J410), and History B, the Schools History Project (J411) — each a distinct qualification, not tiers of the same one. WJEC Eduqas's own specification lists its qualification cash-in code, the entry that actually produces the overall GCSE grade, as C100QS; "C100" by itself is only the shared prefix stamped across all eight of its component and option-entry codes (C100UA through C100U8) and the cash-in code, never a valid standalone entry in its own right.
Unlike GCSE Maths and the three separate sciences, History carries no Foundation and Higher tier split at all — every pupil sits the same papers regardless of target grade, so there is no tier choice for a family to get right the way there is for Maths or Combined Science. GCSE History is also a different qualification from GCSE Ancient History and from Classical Civilisation, both separate DfE subject rows with their own specification codes; none of the seven state-funded Oxford schools surveyed below entered any pupils under either of those rows in 2025, only under History itself.
Not sure which exam board your child's school uses for History? Our expert GCSE History tutors help students across Oxford build a revision plan around the actual specification and options their own school teaches.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppOxfordshire's own EBacc humanities entry rate sits below the national figure: in the 2025 results, 75.0% of the county's state-funded Key Stage 4 pupils were entered for History or Geography, against 81.2% across England's state-funded schools. That county-wide average hides sharp swings between individual Oxford schools, and, unlike a simple assumption that most schools lean the same way, which subject actually wins at each school varies by a wide margin, as DfE's own subject-by-subject entry data below shows.
| Oxford school (2025 entries) | GCSE History | GCSE Geography | Humanities pillar entry | KS4 cohort |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Arnold School | 115 | 41 | 70.0% | 207 |
| The Cherwell School | 127 | 143 | 79.2% | 269 |
| Cheney School | 90 | 150 | 69.5% | 282 |
| Oxford Spires Academy | 107 | 111 | 82.8% | 215 |
| The Swan School | 45 | 66 | 92.5% | 120 |
| The Oxford Academy | 68 | 73 | 67.0% | 200 |
| Greyfriars Catholic School | 13 | 27 | 38.9% | 90 |
Line the two subjects up school by school and one direction dominates, with a single sharp exception. At Matthew Arnold School, on Arnolds Way, 115 pupils were entered for GCSE History against just 41 for Geography in 2025 — History outnumbers Geography by a factor of 2.8, from a 207-pupil cohort, and no other school in this survey runs that way by anything close to that margin. Every other state school favours Geography instead: The Cherwell School enters 143 pupils for Geography against 127 for History (a 269-pupil cohort); Cheney School, in Headington, shows the widest absolute gap of any school here, 150 Geography entries against only 90 for History, a 60-pupil difference from a 282-pupil cohort; Oxford Spires Academy is nearly balanced, 111 Geography against 107 History; The Oxford Academy, in Littlemore, sits close too, 73 against 68; The Swan School leans towards Geography by a wider margin, 66 against 45; and Greyfriars Catholic School, in Cowley, shows the steepest proportional Geography lead of any school surveyed — 27 entries against 13 for History, a factor of 2.1 — though from the smallest cohort here and alongside the lowest EBacc entry rates of any school in this survey (its full five-pillar EBacc entry rate is 5.6%, against 50.9% at Cherwell and 53.6% at Matthew Arnold).
These are DfE's own "total number of entries" figures, not a headcount of pupils achieving any particular grade, and every school shown above was confirmed open at DfE's Get Information about Schools register on 2 September 2026. One correction was necessary before any of this data could be trusted: DfE's national school directory lists two different schools called "The Matthew Arnold School" — the Oxfordshire academy on Arnolds Way (URN 142104) used throughout this page, and an entirely unconnected school of the same name in Surrey (URN 138765). Only the Oxfordshire URN's figures appear here.
From a 2.8-to-1 History lead at Matthew Arnold to a 2.1-to-1 Geography lead at Greyfriars — our expert GCSE History tutors help students across Oxford whichever subject their own school actually pushes.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppDfE's humanities pillar counts a pupil once if they are entered for History, Geography, or both — so a school's History entries plus its Geography entries can never be lower than its published humanities pillar count, and usually sit above it. The gap between the two totals is not noise; it is the number of pupils who sat both subjects, and it can be worked out directly from figures DfE already publishes, without ever asking DfE for a number it does not report.
At The Cherwell School, 127 History entries plus 143 Geography entries add up to 270, against a humanities pillar entry rate of 79.2% on a 269-pupil cohort — DERIVED (declared): 79.2% of 269 is 213 pupils to the nearest whole pupil, so 270 minus 213 implies 57 pupils sat both History and Geography. At Oxford Spires Academy, 107 plus 111 is 218 against a humanities rate of 82.8% on 215 pupils (178 pupils), implying an overlap of 40. At The Swan School, though, 45 History and 66 Geography entries sum to exactly 111 — and 92.5% of its 120-pupil cohort is also exactly 111, the only whole-pupil count on that cohort size that rounds to 92.5% at one decimal place. The two figures matching exactly implies zero overlap: on DfE's own published rates, no Swan School pupil sat both History and Geography in 2025, unlike every other school in this survey.
The same identity holds at d'Overbroeck's, Oxford's selective independent school, which does publish EBacc humanities data despite DfE not publishing Progress 8 or disadvantaged-pupil breakdowns for independent schools: its 24 History and 20 Geography entries sum to 44, against a humanities rate of 76.1% on a 46-pupil cohort (35 pupils), implying an overlap of 9. None of these overlap figures is published by DfE as a single number; each is calculated here from two figures DfE does publish, and shown with its inputs rather than asserted on its own.
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Whichever subject your child's school pushes, or whichever one they're weaker in — our expert GCSE History tutors help students across Oxford build a plan around their own school's actual entry pattern.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppThe organic results actually ranking for "gcse history tutors in oxford" are dominated by tutor marketplaces that pad their "Oxford" results with tutors based well outside the city, and none of them checks which subject a specific Oxford school's pupils actually sit. Tutor Hunt's own Oxford History directory states plainly that it has "ordered our results by proximity to Oxford town centre," yet its top-ranked "Oxford History Tutor" is based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, 6.1 miles from the centre — ahead of several tutors who are genuinely based in Oxford itself.
TutorLab's Oxford GCSE History page is more direct about the gap: it states outright that "No tutor currently lists Oxford, so these are UK-wide GCSE History tutors who teach online," then lists profiles including a primary-level tutor based in Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, under a page titled "GCSE History tutors in Oxford." Neither result, nor any other sponsored or organic listing for this exact term, names a single Oxford secondary school, distinguishes EBacc entry from EBacc achievement, or checks which of History and Geography a specific school's pupils actually sit more of.
d'Overbroeck's, a selective independent school with teaching sites across north Oxford, including Banbury Road, according to its own website, leans towards History rather than Geography — its 2025 subject-entry data records 24 GCSE History entries against 20 for Geography, from a 46-pupil cohort, with Classical Civilisation entered as its own separate line. DfE's Get Information about Schools register confirms d'Overbroeck's remains open, though its own registered correspondence address there (Spring Hill Road, Begbroke) does not match either of the addresses the school publishes for its own teaching sites — a discrepancy this page could not fully resolve and has therefore avoided pinning to a single street.
Unusually for an independent school — DfE does not publish Progress 8 or disadvantaged-pupil breakdowns for independent schools, but does publish EBacc subject-group entries — d'Overbroeck's Humanities pillar entry rate is 76.1%, above Oxfordshire's state-funded county average of 75.0%. Its full five-pillar EBacc entry rate is a different story: just 10.9%, the lowest of any school in this survey, and the reason is not History or Geography at all. DfE's own subject-group breakdown for the school shows English and Maths both entered at 100.0% and Humanities at 76.1%, but Languages at only 21.7%, against 42.0% across Oxfordshire's state-funded schools and 45.9% across England's state-funded schools — it is the language pillar, not the humanities pillar this page is about, that keeps d'Overbroeck's full EBacc entry rate so low.
Our diagnostic assessment for every new Oxford GCSE History student starts with the two questions the DfE data above shows cannot be assumed from a school's reputation alone: which exam board does this pupil's school actually use, and which options has that school chosen within it? AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas each set different period and depth-study options within the same specification family, so a revision plan built around the wrong board's option list does the wrong job even when the underlying skills — source analysis, interpretation, extended writing — are the same.
Once we know the specification and options, our tutors, who hold degrees from leading UK universities, build a programme around a student's own school's actual choices rather than a generic History syllabus, working one-to-one online through past-paper questions and mark schemes matched to the board and options that pupil's own school teaches.
AQA, Edexcel, OCR or Eduqas, whichever period options your child's school teaches. Our expert GCSE History tutors help students across Oxford build a programme around their own school and exam board. Leading Tuition is rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot from 58 reviews, read on 22 August 2026.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppAll figures above are drawn from the Department for Education's Compare School and College Performance service and its Key Stage 4 performance, 2024/25 release, both checked on 2nd September 2026, plus AQA's, OCR's, Pearson Edexcel's and WJEC Eduqas's own GCSE History specification documents and the Geographical Association's analysis of JCQ's summer 2025 results. For students weighing what comes after their GCSE results, our Oxford 16+ tuition guide covers sixth-form and college entry requirements, and families with a younger child can see our Oxford 13+ tuition guide for independent-school entry preparation. See our full GCSE History guide for how grade boundaries and topics work nationally, our history tutoring service page for how programmes are structured, our geography tutoring service for the EBacc's other humanity, our GCSE Maths tutors in Oxford and GCSE Physics tutors in Oxford pages for our tuition in other Oxford GCSE subjects, and our overview of tutoring across Oxford for our wider service in the city.
They are different DfE measures and this page reports entry, not achievement. EBacc entry means a pupil was entered for all five EBacc pillars — English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography — regardless of the grades they went on to get. EBacc achievement means the pupil also reached the qualifying grade threshold in every pillar entered. A school can enter a high share of pupils for the EBacc humanities pillar while a much smaller share go on to achieve it, and the two figures should never be swapped for one another.
Matthew Arnold School is the only state-funded Oxford school in this survey where History clearly outnumbers Geography: 115 History entries against just 41 for Geography in the 2025 results, from a 207-pupil Key Stage 4 cohort — a ratio of 2.8 to 1. Every other state school surveyed runs the other way, from Oxford Spires Academy's near-tie (111 Geography against 107 History) to Cheney School's 150 Geography entries against only 90 for History, a 60-pupil gap. d'Overbroeck's, Oxford's selective independent school, also leans towards History (24 entries against 20 for Geography), but by a much narrower margin than Matthew Arnold.
No. Unlike GCSE Maths and the three separate sciences, GCSE History is not split into Foundation and Higher tiers — every pupil sits the same papers regardless of target grade. AQA's and Pearson Edexcel's own GCSE History specifications describe a single set of components with no tiering language anywhere, in contrast to their Maths and Science specifications, which set out Foundation and Higher tiers explicitly. There is no tier choice to get right for History the way there is for Maths, Combined Science or the separate sciences.
No — all three are separate GCSE qualifications with separate DfE subject rows, and none of the seven state-funded Oxford schools in this survey's own DfE subject-entry data lists Ancient History or Classical Civilisation as a subject pupils sat in 2025. d'Overbroeck's, the independent school covered later on this page, does enter pupils for Classical Civilisation as its own distinct line, separate from its History entries — direct confirmation that DfE, and the schools themselves, never conflate the two.
No — and this is true for every school, city and county in England, not only Oxford. DfE's own Key Stage 4 performance release states plainly that it is not possible to calculate Progress 8 for academic years 2024/25 and 2025/26, because the pupils sitting GCSEs in those two years have no Key Stage 2 prior-attainment data after primary tests and assessments were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Attainment and entry measures, including the EBacc humanities figures throughout this page, are unaffected; no Oxford secondary school can report a Progress 8 score for either year.
It depends on the school; Oxford's secondary schools are not required to use the same exam board for History. AQA's GCSE History carries specification code 8145. Pearson Edexcel's GCSE History is 1HI0, a code confirmed inside the specification's own PDF text rather than on its public qualification-listing page. OCR runs two separate History specifications — History A, Explaining the Modern World (J410), and History B, the Schools History Project (J411). WJEC Eduqas's qualification cash-in code is C100QS; "C100" on its own is only the shared prefix across its option and component codes, not a valid entry code by itself. Check with your child's own school, since specification and option choice both affect which periods and depth studies actually apply.
No, and this page is about neither Oxford University nor its admissions process. GCSE History tuition prepares Year 10 and 11 pupils at Oxford's own secondary schools for their GCSE exam, whatever exam board their school uses. University history admissions preparation — personal statements, the History Aptitude Test some Oxford colleges historically used, or interview technique — is aimed at students already applying to university, a completely different stage and a different audience from the GCSE pupils this page covers.
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