Reading’s Department for Education entries and results for separate GCSE Biology and Combined Science, compared school by school across every state secondary with a Year 11 cohort.
Book a Free ConsultationIn 2024/25, 43.7% of Reading’s GCSE cohort was entered for separate Biology, Chemistry and Physics — about 1.9 times England’s 23.3% national rate, according to the Department for Education. Reading’s own GCSE Biology entries (729 pupils) and Combined Science entries (866 pupils) sit far closer together than nationally, where Combined Science entries (446,554) outnumber Biology (150,259) by almost three to one.
Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Reading with both separate Biology and Combined Science, across AQA, Edexcel and OCR. Every programme starts with identifying which exam your child is actually sitting, not a borough-wide average that blends two different qualifications.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppA pupil entered for separate Biology sits three GCSEs across Year 10 and 11 — Biology, Chemistry and Physics — and receives three individual grades, each on the same 9-to-1 scale as any other GCSE. A pupil entered for Combined Science instead sits one double-award qualification covering all three sciences, producing two grades on a 17-point scale running from 9-9 down to 1-1. The two pathways are not two ways of describing the same outcome: a Combined Science pupil has no GCSE called “Biology” on their certificate at all, whatever the subject is called on their school timetable.
The Department for Education’s own Key Stage 4 performance statistics keep the two entirely separate. Its subject-level entries data reports GCSE Biology as its own row and Combined Science as a distinct double-award row, with the Department’s own footnote making the distinction explicit: “Combined Science GCSE is a Double Award and is included in this table for the purpose of comparison with other Science subjects.” A borough-wide GCSE science headline that does not say which of the two it is describing is not describing either one precisely.
Science also sits inside a wider measure that does not separate the two pathways either. The Department defines the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) plainly: “The EBacc shows how many pupils are entering GCSEs (or AS level qualifications) in core academic subjects at KS4. The EBacc consists of English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography.” Either pathway can clear the EBacc science pillar — a Combined Science entry counts, and so does triple entry, defined in the Department’s own EBacc methodology as “the best 2 results from the single sciences (3 out of 4 must be taken).” Both routes count toward the same pillar; the two produce very different results, as the next section shows with Reading’s own entries.
| Qualification | Reading entries | Reading grade 4+ | Reading grade 5+ | England entries | England grade 4+ | England grade 5+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GCSE Biology | 729 | 87% | 78% | 150,259 | 91% | 81% |
| GCSE Combined Science | 866 | 52% | 35% | 446,554 | 57% | 36% |
Of Reading’s 2024/25 GCSE cohort, 729 pupils were entered for the standalone Biology GCSE and 866 for Combined Science, according to the Department’s subject-level local authority data — a ratio of 1.19 Combined Science entries for every Biology entry. Nationally the gap is far wider: 446,554 pupils sat Combined Science against 150,259 who sat separate Biology, a ratio of 2.97 — almost three to one. Reading’s split between the two qualifications is nowhere near as lopsided as England’s.
The two qualifications also produce different outcomes, and Reading’s own figures for each run a little behind the national state-funded average rather than ahead of it. Of the pupils entered for separate Biology, 87% of Reading’s reached grade 4 or above, against 91% of England’s Biology entrants; 78% reached grade 5 or above, against England’s 81%. Combined Science shows the same pattern at a lower level: 52% of Reading’s entrants reached the equivalent of grade 4-4, against 57% nationally, and 35% reached 5-5, against England’s 36%. Every one of those percentages is a share of the pupils entered for that specific qualification — not a share of Reading’s whole Year 11, and not the same comparison as the borough’s stronger showing in GCSE maths.
Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Reading whichever science pathway your child is on. A Combined Science pupil is working toward two grades across all three sciences in one qualification; a triple-science pupil sits three separate exams — the right support looks different for each.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsApp| Cohort | Entering EBacc science | Triple science (Bio+Chem+Phys) | Combined Science path |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading – all schools | 1,569 of 1,652 (95.0%) | 722 (43.7%) | 846 (51.2%) |
| Reading – 2 selective schools | 277 of 277 (100%) | 272 (98.2%) | 5 (1.8%) |
| Reading – 8 non-selective schools | 1,288 (95.8%) | 450 (33.5%) | 837 (62.2%) |
| England – all schools | 588,875 (94.1%) | 145,726 (23.3%) | 442,902 (70.8%) |
| England – selective schools | 26,837 (99.3%) | 21,724 (80.3%) | 5,086 (18.8%) |
Reading’s 43.7% triple-science entry rate is 1.9 times England’s 23.3% — and the gap is not just its two grammar schools pulling the average up. Reading School and Kendrick School, the borough’s only two selective state secondaries, entered 272 of their 277 pupils (98.2%) for triple science, effectively the entire cohort. But even Reading’s eight other, non-selective secondaries entered 450 of about 1,288 pupils (33.5%) for triple science — 1.4 times England’s all-schools rate of 23.3%, before the grammar schools are counted at all.
Achievement follows the same pattern. 55.2% of Reading’s EBacc science entrants reached grade 5 or above in the science pillar, against 47.9% nationally, and Reading’s own two selective schools reached 100% — itself ahead of the 94.3% England records across grammar schools generally.
One nuance worth stating plainly: the Department’s own school-classification system does not treat Reading as one of England’s officially designated “highly selective areas” — the category used for wholesale grammar counties such as Kent or Buckinghamshire — even though the borough has two grammar schools. DfE groups Reading’s eight non-selective secondaries under “non-selective schools in other areas” instead, the same bucket used for a comprehensive with no grammar school anywhere nearby.
To list every state-funded secondary school in Reading, we searched the Department’s own Get Information about Schools register, filtered to Reading local authority (GIAS reference 112, DfE local authority code 870), open establishments, secondary phase. That search returns 11 open, state-funded secondary schools. One of them, River Academy, is a free school that opened on 1 September 2024 and had no Year 11 pupils at all in 2024/25 — its first GCSE cohort is not due until 2028/29 — so it carries no results and is excluded from every figure on this page. The other 10 all reported 2024/25 Key Stage 4 outcomes to the Department, and every one is named in the table below.
One further complication is worth flagging rather than smoothing over: Hartland High School was created as a new establishment on 1 January 2025, the direct successor to John Madejski Academy on the same site with the same pupils. Because the rename took effect part-way through the 2024/25 academic year, the Department’s published 2024/25 results for this cohort are recorded under the old name and URN, John Madejski Academy — the table below carries that name against the 2024/25 figures, alongside Hartland High School as the school’s name from 1 January 2025 onward.
UTC Reading is also a special case: it is a university technical college taking pupils only from Year 10 (age 14), not Year 7, so its 79-pupil cohort has spent just two years there rather than five. The Department’s own guidance is explicit that “it is not appropriate to expect the same rates of EBacc entry from these types of schools,” which is the documented reason its EBacc entry rate below is 0.0% rather than a merely low number.
| School | Pupils | Admissions | Attainment 8 | EBacc entry rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reading School | 149 | Selective (boys) | 83 | 97.3% |
| Kendrick School | 128 | Selective (girls) | 84 | 93.8% |
| Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre | 248 | Non-selective | 50.4 | 38.7% |
| Reading Girls’ School | 167 | Non-selective | 51.8 | 55.1% |
| Maiden Erlegh School in Reading | 180 | Non-selective | 45.6 | 63.3% |
| The WREN School | 156 | Not recorded | 44.8 | 13.5% |
| Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School | 186 | Non-selective | 46 | 42.5% |
| John Madejski Academy (now Hartland High School) | 125 | Not recorded | 31.9 | 54.4% |
| King’s Academy Prospect | 205 | Non-selective | 36.8 | 71.7% |
| UTC Reading | 79 | Non-selective, 14-19 entry | 42 | 0.0% |
| Reading local authority average | 1,652 | — | 50.2 | 53.3% |
| England average (state-funded) | 625,647 | — | 46.1 | 40.5% |
These 10 schools account for 1,623 of Reading’s 1,652-pupil GCSE cohort (98.2%); the remaining 29 pupils are spread across small alternative-provision and special-school settings that DfE does not itemise separately in this table. Reading School (boys) and Kendrick School (girls) are the borough’s two grammar schools, admitting through a selective entrance test at 11; every other school above is recorded by GIAS as non-selective, except The WREN School, for which GIAS records no admissions-policy value at all.
Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Reading whether at one of the borough’s two grammar schools or one of its eight comprehensives. Book a free consultation and we’ll check your child’s specific qualification, exam board and current grade before recommending a plan.
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Attainment 8 measures a pupil’s best results across eight qualification slots, and the Department’s own definition sets out exactly what they are: “Attainment 8 measures the average achievement of pupils in up to 8 qualifications. This includes: English language; English literature (double weighted providing both English language and English literature are taken); maths (double weighted); three further qualifications that count in the English Baccalaureate (EBacc); and three further qualifications that can be GCSE qualifications.” Science sits inside that middle group of three EBacc slots, alongside a language and history or geography — there is no separate “science element” of Attainment 8 the way there is an English element and a maths element. DfE’s own school comparison tool bears this out: a school’s Attainment 8 breakdown splits into English, Maths, EBacc slots and Open slots only, with science, languages and humanities bundled together inside EBacc slots and never separated back out per subject.
Progress 8, the companion measure that tracks a pupil’s results against similar pupils’ Key Stage 2 starting points, is not published at all for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 cohorts. The Department’s own release states it plainly: “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.” Any Progress 8 figure quoted for a Reading school’s 2024/25 results is therefore either an older, pre-2024 number, or not a real one.
The Attainment 8 figures on this page — 83 for Reading School, 84 for Kendrick, down to 31.9 for the John Madejski Academy cohort (Hartland High School from 1 January 2025) — describe a school’s whole-curriculum performance, not its science teaching specifically. The EBacc entry rate, which does require two science GCSEs to count a pupil in, is the closest published school-level figure to a “how much science” measure, and it is the one used throughout this page.
The practical difference between the two pathways matters more than the borough-wide averages above suggest. A Combined Science pupil is working towards two grades across all three sciences inside one qualification, so a single weak topic in any of Biology, Chemistry or Physics can pull down both grades at once. A triple-science pupil sits three separate papers and receives three separate grades, so a weakness in one subject does not touch the other two — but three exams also means three separate specifications and revision timetables to manage in the same academic year.
Reading’s own entry pattern means both situations are common here. A family at Reading School or Kendrick is very likely managing a triple-science course aimed at grades 7 to 9 across three subjects; a family at one of the borough’s other eight secondaries is more likely — though far from certain, since a third of pupils there still sit triple science — managing a Combined Science course where the realistic target may be a secure grade 4 or 5 across both papers. Neither situation is served well by generic “GCSE science” support that does not first establish which of the two a child is actually sitting.
For the exam mechanics themselves — specification content, paper structure, grade boundaries — our main GCSE Biology tuition page and our wider GCSE tuition service cover both pathways in depth. Families further along in a Reading child’s school career may also find our guides to GCSE maths tutors in Reading and GCSE English tutors in Reading useful, and those earlier in it, our coverage of 11+ tuition in Reading and 13+ tuition in Reading, including the entrance tests Reading School and Kendrick set well before any pupil reaches the GCSE figures above.
Our expert GCSE Biology tutors help students across Reading at every one of these ten schools, on AQA, Edexcel and OCR specifications. Book a free consultation to find out which exam board and tier fits your child’s course.
Book a Free Consultation Message us on WhatsAppGCSE Biology is one of three separate science GCSEs — alongside Chemistry and Physics — each graded individually on the usual 9-to-1 scale. Combined Science is a single double-award qualification covering all three sciences at once, producing two grades on a 17-point scale from 9-9 down to 1-1. A pupil doing Combined Science has no GCSE actually called “Biology” on their certificate. In Reading, 729 pupils sat separate Biology in 2024/25 and 866 sat Combined Science, according to the Department for Education.
729 pupils in Reading’s 2024/25 cohort were entered for the standalone Biology GCSE, against 866 for Combined Science — a ratio of 1.19 Combined Science entries for every Biology entry. Nationally the ratio is far wider at 2.97, with 446,554 Combined Science entries against 150,259 Biology entries, so Reading’s split between the two qualifications is much closer to even than England’s.
43.7% of Reading’s GCSE cohort was entered for triple science (Biology, Chemistry and Physics together) in 2024/25, against 23.3% nationally — 1.9 times the national rate, according to the Department for Education. The pattern holds outside Reading’s two grammar schools too: even its eight non-selective secondaries entered 33.5% of pupils for triple science, 1.4 times England’s all-schools rate, before the grammar schools are counted at all.
Only two: Reading School, a boys’ grammar, and Kendrick School, a girls’ grammar, both admitting through a selective entrance test at 11. Every other Reading state secondary — Highdown, Reading Girls’ School, Maiden Erlegh School in Reading, Blessed Hugh Faringdon, King’s Academy Prospect and UTC Reading — is recorded by the Department’s Get Information about Schools register as non-selective. GIAS records no admissions-policy value at all for The WREN School.
No, not for separate Biology specifically. Of Reading’s pupils entered for the standalone Biology GCSE in 2024/25, 87% reached grade 4 or above and 78% reached grade 5 or above, against England’s 91% and 81%. Combined Science shows the same shape at a lower level: 52% against 57% at grade 4+, and 35% against 36% at grade 5+. Both qualifications in Reading run a little behind the national state-funded average, unlike the borough’s stronger GCSE maths results.
Not directly. UTC Reading takes pupils only from Year 10 (age 14) rather than Year 7, so its 79-pupil 2024/25 cohort had spent just two years at the school rather than five. The Department’s own guidance says it is “not appropriate to expect the same rates of EBacc entry from these types of schools,” which is the documented reason UTC Reading’s EBacc entry rate is 0.0% rather than simply low.
It was renamed Hartland High School on 1 January 2025, as a direct successor establishment on the same site with the same pupils. Because the change took effect part-way through the 2024/25 academic year, the Department’s published 2024/25 results for this cohort of 125 pupils are still recorded under the old name and URN, John Madejski Academy, rather than under Hartland High School.
The Department for Education has not calculated Progress 8 for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 cohorts at all. Its own release 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.” This page uses Attainment 8 and EBacc entry rates instead, which DfE does still publish.
The Department for Education’s next Key Stage 4 performance release, covering the 2025/26 cohort, is scheduled for October 2026 according to the publication’s own release timetable. That update will be the first opportunity to see whether Reading’s higher-than-national triple-science entry rate holds into a further year.
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