GCSE Computer Science Tutors in Reading: The 2024/25 DfE Data on Entries, Growth and Every State Secondary

In 2024/25, Reading entered 458 pupils for GCSE Computer Science — 27.7% of the borough’s 1,652-pupil cohort, and more than triple the 148 pupils entered in 2018/19, according to the Department for Education. England’s own entries grew just 9.9% over the same six years, so Reading’s growth is not a national trend; it is something happening specifically in this borough’s ten state secondaries.

What Is GCSE Computer Science, and How Does It Differ From Reading’s Other Computing Qualifications?

GCSE Computer Science is a standalone academic GCSE, graded on the usual 9-to-1 scale, and it is one of four qualifications with a computing-sounding name that DfE tracks as entirely separate things. Reading schools also teach a Technical Award — a vocational, non-GCSE qualification — and DfE’s own subject-entries dataset separately tracks two further vocational subjects, Multimedia and Information and Communication Technology, neither of which is a GCSE. A fourth qualification, GCSE Information and Communication Technology, does not appear anywhere in this dataset, which runs from 2018/19 to 2024/25: in every one of those seven years, ICT appears only under the “Vocational” qualification type, never as a GCSE, for Reading or for England as a whole. A school entering pupils for one of these and not another is not a school that ignores computing — it is a school that has chosen a different qualification, and the two cannot be added together or substituted for each other in any of the figures below.

Nationally, four exam boards currently offer GCSE Computer Science, each verified against its own live specification rather than trusted from memory. AQA’s specification is Computer Science, 8525, published in two editions under that one code: the edition first taught from September 2020, which examined the pupils in this page’s 2024/25 entry figures and has its last exams in 2026, and the edition first taught from September 2025 and assessed for the first time in Summer 2027, which is what a pupil beginning the course in September 2026 is taught. Pearson Edexcel’s equivalent is Computer Science, 1CP2, confirmed from the specification PDF’s own cover page, also first taught in September 2020. OCR’s is Computer Science, J277, first assessed in 2022. WJEC Eduqas also currently offers the subject, but its own specification document carries no short code of the kind the other three boards use — only a Qualification Accreditation Number, 601/8291/X, stated on the specification’s own assessment-summary page. DfE does not publish which board an individual Reading school uses, so the reliable way to check is your child’s own specification sheet or their school’s exams office.

How Has Reading’s GCSE Computer Science Entry Grown Since 2018/19, and How Does That Compare With England?

Reading’s entries have climbed every year but one since 2018/19, and the overall shape is unlike anything the borough’s other GCSE subjects show. The table below sets both populations side by side; both are DfE’s state-funded figures, so the comparison is like for like.

Over those six years Reading’s entries rose from 148 to 458 — an increase of 209.5%, more than tripling — while England’s rose from 73,682 to 80,991, an increase of 9.9%. Reading’s own Key Stage 4 cohort has not tripled over the same period, so this is not simply more pupils overall; it is a genuine shift in which subject a growing share of Reading pupils sit. By 2024/25, Computer Science accounted for 27.7% of Reading’s 1,652-pupil cohort, against 12.9% of England’s 625,648-pupil state-funded cohort — Reading’s pupils are now more than twice as likely to be entered for the subject as pupils nationally. Grade 4+ rates for both populations peaked around 2020/21 and have fallen since, landing close together in 2024/25 — 66% in Reading against 67% in England — so the growth in entries has not come with a widening gap in outcomes either way.

Which Reading Schools Enter the Most Pupils for GCSE Computer Science?

The borough-wide total blends all ten of Reading’s state secondaries into one figure. The school list comes from an independent GIAS search, re-run today: fetching all 126 Reading local authority establishments across every phase and filtering to Secondary phase and Open status returns 11 schools. One of the 11, River Academy, opened on 1 September 2024 and had no Year 11 pupils at all in 2024/25 — its first Year 7 intake will not reach Year 11 until 2028/29 — so it carries no 2024/25 results and is excluded below. The other 10 all reported outcomes. John Madejski Academy closed on 31 December 2024 and was succeeded by Hartland High School at the same address under a new URN; the 2024/25 results below are still published under the predecessor’s name and URN because DfE’s performance tables have not yet carried results across to the new one.

UTC Reading enters the largest share of its own pupils by a wide margin — 62.0%, against the next highest, Kendrick School’s 48.4%. Kendrick’s figure is notable for a different reason: GCSE Computer Science is well known nationally for a heavily male entry (England’s 2024/25 cohort was 78.0% boys), yet Kendrick is a selective girls’ school, and GIAS records its gender of entry as girls only. Every one of its 62 Computer Science pupils is female — 34.4% of every girl entered for the subject anywhere in Reading in 2024/25 (62 of 180) comes from this single school. Reading School, a selective boys’ school with an identical 62 entries, supplies 22.3% of the borough’s 278 male entrants (62 of 278) the same way. Between them, two single-sex grammar schools with under a fifth of Reading’s total KS4 cohort (277 of 1,652 pupils) supply 124 of the borough’s 458 Computer Science entries — 27.1% of the total. These ten schools’ own entries sum to 455, three short of the 458-pupil LA total above; both figures are state-funded only, so the gap is not Reading’s independent schools but the small number of state-funded alternative-provision and special-school pupils the LA total includes and this table does not itemise by name.

What Is the Vocational Qualification Some Reading Schools Teach Instead?

Four of Reading’s ten state secondaries — Highdown, Maiden Erlegh, Reading Girls’ School and The WREN School — also enter pupils for a Technical Award that DfE’s own school-level data titles “Computer Appreciation / Introduction”, a vocational qualification rather than a GCSE. Reading Girls’ School runs the largest such cohort: 49 pupils, alongside 56 doing GCSE Computer Science — a parallel vocational computing track almost as large as its academic one. Across all four schools, the 18 (Highdown) plus 22 (Maiden Erlegh) plus 49 (Reading Girls’ School) plus 21 (The WREN School) entries sum to 110 pupils — a figure that matches exactly the Reading LA total of DfE’s own subject-entries dataset for two separate vocational computing subjects, Multimedia (89 entries) and Information and Communication Technology (21 entries), in 2024/25. Neither of those vocational entries counts toward GCSE Computer Science’s own totals above, and neither counts toward the EBacc science pillar discussed below — they sit in a wholly different part of DfE’s own accounting, regardless of how similar the subject name looks on a school prospectus.

Does GCSE Computer Science Count as a Science for the EBacc?

Yes, but as an alternative route, not automatically. The EBacc’s science pillar is normally satisfied by the exact triple of separate Biology, Chemistry and Physics, but DfE also publishes a wider measure — the number of pupils entering any three of four separate sciences, where Computer Science can stand in for one of the other three. The two measures are genuinely different things, and neither can be derived from the other.

Reading’s gap is just one pupil: 723 pupils entering any three of the four sciences against exactly 722 entering the Biology-Chemistry-Physics triple. That is far tighter than England’s 259-pupil gap, and it means something specific: only one Reading pupil in 2024/25 relied on Computer Science to complete a three-separate-science combination that was not Biology, Chemistry and Physics itself. It does not mean only one Reading pupil takes Computer Science — 458 do — it means almost all of them are already doing three separate sciences, or Combined Science, alongside Computer Science as a genuine fourth subject, not using it to plug a gap in their science pillar. DfE’s own EBacc science pillar entry rate for Reading, a separate published figure again, stood at 95.0% of the cohort (1,569 of 1,652 pupils) in 2024/25, against an England rate of 94.1% (588,875 of 625,648 pupils).

Is There Still a Non-Exam Assessment in GCSE Computer Science?

Not in the specifications currently being taught, and this is worth stating precisely because the position has changed twice. Ofqual announced on 8 January 2018 that “non-exam assessment will not count to the final 9 to 1 grade in GCSE computer science in 2018 or 2019”, after regulators found the set tasks were being shared online in ways that undermined fair assessment; the exclusion was later extended to cover 2020 as well, while Ofqual decided on a longer-term fix. That was always framed as temporary, on specifications that still formally included a graded non-exam assessment component.

The specifications introduced from September 2020 removed non-exam assessment from the qualification altogether, verified directly against each board’s own specification document rather than trusted from memory. AQA’s two 8525 editions are assessed identically, through Paper 1 (2 hours, 50% of the GCSE) and Paper 2 (1 hour 45 minutes, 50%), and neither specification document uses the term “non-exam assessment” or “NEA”; both instead require the school to submit a “Practical programming statement” — a written declaration, provided by AQA and completed by the school, confirming each pupil had the opportunity to design, write, test and refine a program, which AQA says schools “must provide” “to meet Ofqual’s qualification and subject criteria” — not graded work, and no part of the mark. Pearson Edexcel’s 1CP2 specification is identical in structure: Paper 1, a written examination (1 hour 30 minutes, 50%), and Paper 2, a practical on-screen assessment (50%). WJEC Eduqas’s specification splits the same way across a written Component 1 (1 hour 45 minutes, 50%) and an on-screen Component 2 (2 hours, 50%). OCR’s J277 specification is also two written papers, J277/01 and J277/02, each 50% of the GCSE. So the 2018-2020 temporary exclusion and the position since 2020 are not the same thing: the task that used to be set, completed and then excluded from grading no longer exists, as graded work, on any of the four boards’ specifications. All four instead require the school to complete a practical-programming declaration confirming pupils had the opportunity to complete a programming task — AQA and WJEC Eduqas call it a practical programming statement, Pearson Edexcel a Practical Programming Statement (PPS), and OCR a Practical Programming Statement submitted under its own administration section — and none of the four counts toward the GCSE mark.

Why Doesn’t Attainment 8 Show a Separate Score for Computer Science?

Attainment 8 measures a pupil’s best results across eight qualification slots — DfE’s own definition: “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 (including EBacc subjects) or any other non-GCSE qualifications on the DfE approved list.” Because Computer Science counts in the EBacc, a Computer Science result can sit inside either the three EBacc slots or the three open slots depending on a pupil’s other options — there is no separate “Computer Science element” the way there is an English element and a maths element. Reading Girls’ School’s own results confirm this in practice: its Attainment 8 sub-score for “EBacc slots” was 15.3 in 2024/25, against a Reading-wide EBacc-slots average of 15.2 and an England average of 13.5, next to the school’s own overall Attainment 8 score of 51.8, with no Computer Science figure broken out anywhere in that published breakdown.

Progress 8, the companion measure that tracks results against pupils’ Key Stage 2 starting points, is not published at all for the 2024/25 or 2025/26 cohorts. The Department 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.” and confirms none is coming: “In April 2024 the previous government announced that there will be no replacement for Progress 8 for 2024/25 and 2025/26.” DfE’s next Key Stage 4 release, covering the 2025/26 cohort, is due in October 2026.

How Should Families Choose the Right Computer Science Support for Reading’s Two Computing Pathways?

The practical difference between GCSE Computer Science and the vocational computing qualifications above matters more than the borough-wide averages suggest. GCSE Computer Science is examined entirely through two written or on-screen papers with no coursework element on any current specification, so consistent practice with programming and written exam technique both matter from early in the course. The vocational Technical Award route, sat by 110 Reading pupils across four schools, is assessed differently again, and a family should confirm directly with their child’s school which qualification — not just which “computing” class — their child is actually entered for.

Reading’s own entry pattern means the borough now sits well ahead of the national picture on this subject. A family at UTC Reading, Kendrick School or Reading School is very likely surrounded by classmates also taking GCSE Computer Science, given entry rates of 62.0%, 48.4% and 41.6% respectively; a family at Highdown or Blessed Hugh Faringdon is in a smaller minority, at 13.7% and 16.7%. For families weighing Computer Science against Reading’s other EBacc science options, our sibling GCSE Physics tutors in Reading page and our GCSE Biology tutors in Reading page cover the exact Biology-Chemistry-Physics triple in the same depth as this page covers Computer Science.

For the exam mechanics themselves — specification content, grade boundaries across AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas — our main Computer Science tuition page and our wider GCSE tuition service cover all four boards in depth. Families further along in a Reading child’s school career may also find our guide to GCSE maths 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 — and our UK tutoring locations page covers every city we work in beyond Reading.

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