GCSE Economics Tutors in Reading: The 2024/25 DfE Entries, Concentrated in One School

GCSE Economics is a small-entry GCSE subject that most Reading schools do not teach at all: 129 pupils sat it in 2024/25, according to the Department for Education, up from 63 in 2018/19. Two thirds of that total — 87 pupils — comes from a single selective boys’ school, Reading School; only three others among Reading’s thirteen state and independent secondaries enter anyone at all.

How Many Reading Pupils Actually Sit GCSE Economics, and How Has That Changed Since 2018/19?

Reading’s Department for Education entries for GCSE Economics have grown for six consecutive years. DfE’s Key Stage 4 subject entries dataset puts the borough’s state-funded total at 129 pupils in the 2024/25 school year, up from 63 in 2018/19, a rise of 104.8% over those six years — against England’s own state-funded entries, which grew from 5,574 to 6,831 over the identical six years, a rise of 22.5%, so Reading’s state-funded growth ran at 4.6 times England’s state-funded rate across those same six years (2018/19 to 2024/25).

In the 2024/25 school year, GCSE Economics accounted for 7.81% of Reading’s 1,652-pupil state-funded Key Stage 4 cohort, against 1.09% of England’s 625,648-pupil state-funded cohort the same year — Reading entered pupils for the subject at 7.15 times the England state-funded rate, comparing the same 2024/25 state-funded cohorts on both sides. Reading’s outcomes were also stronger that year: 92% of its entrants reached grade 4 or above and 87% reached grade 5 or above, against England’s state-funded 82% and 70% the same year.

The cohort is heavily male. Of Reading’s 129 entrants in 2024/25, 116 were boys and 13 were girls — an even sharper skew than England’s own state-funded pattern of 4,983 boys to 1,848 girls that same year. That imbalance traces almost entirely to which schools enter the subject at all, covered next.

Which Reading Schools Enter GCSE Economics – and Why Is Reading School Two Thirds of the Total?

Only four of Reading’s ten state secondaries enter any pupils at all for GCSE Economics, and — checked individually against each school’s own subjects-entered page on the Department’s Compare School and College Performance service on 16 September 2026 — their entries add up to exactly 129, Reading’s full state-funded local-authority total for 2024/25, with no gap to suggest a suppressed figure sitting elsewhere among the ten.

Reading School alone supplies 87 of the 129 — 67.4% of every Reading pupil entered for the subject — from a Year 11 cohort of roughly 149, itself triangulated from four separate GCSE subjects (English Language, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics) that each independently show 149 entries on the same page. That means 58.4% of Reading School’s own Year 11 sat GCSE Economics in 2024/25, a scale no other Reading secondary approaches: Highdown enters 27, Maiden Erlegh 14, and UTC Reading a single pupil, despite UTC’s own 0.0% EBacc entry rate and vocational-first curriculum, established on our sibling GCSE Business Studies tutors in Reading page.

Five of the other six state secondaries — Kendrick School, The WREN School, King’s Academy Prospect, Reading Girls’ School and Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School — each publish a full 2024/25 subjects-entered list with no Economics row of any kind. Hartland High School is different: its own subjects-entered page (URN 151631) returns no page to check at all, because Hartland opened under its current name on 1 January 2025, succeeding John Madejski Academy at the same address. Hartland’s zero is therefore implied rather than directly read — the four entering schools’ own figures already sum exactly to the local-authority total of 129, which leaves no room for any entries at Hartland or the other five even before their own pages are checked. All ten schools were confirmed open on the Get Information About Schools register on 16 September 2026.

Do Reading’s Independent Schools Teach GCSE Economics?

Reading also has three independent secondary schools — Leighton Park School, The Abbey School Reading and Queen Anne’s School — and none of them enters any pupil for the domestic GCSE in Economics either, according to each school’s own subjects-entered page, fetched individually on 16 September 2026. That absence is not a blank or malfunctioning page: Leighton Park’s own page lists 22 other GCSE subjects, Abbey’s lists 21 and Queen Anne’s lists 17, so the pages are genuinely populated and Economics genuinely is not among them.

The Abbey School’s own website explains why. Its subjects page states that history and Theology & Philosophy run “at all Key Stages”, but that Business Management, Economics and Global Politics are “additional options in the Sixth Form” there — meaning Economics at Abbey starts at A-level, not GCSE, which is consistent with the zero found in DfE’s own school-level data rather than contradicting it.

Because all three independent schools contribute zero, Reading’s full city total for GCSE Economics — state-funded and independent secondaries together, all thirteen checked individually — is the same 129 pupils established above for 2024/25. The state-funded local-authority figure is not a subset that leaves an unchecked sector out; it is also the complete city figure.

Where Can a Reading Student Study A-Level Economics Without Having Taken the GCSE?

A GCSE in Economics is not the only route into the A-level, and most of Reading’s A-level Economics students never took the GCSE at their own school. Seven Reading sixth forms record A-level Economics exam entries on their own subjects-entered pages for the most recent published year: Reading School (69), Kendrick School (41, plus 8 at AS level), The Abbey School Reading (26, plus 7 IB Economics components), Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre (24), Leighton Park School (15), King’s Academy Prospect (12) and Queen Anne’s School (10). Kendrick makes the point most clearly: it enters zero pupils for GCSE Economics, shown above, yet runs the second-largest A-level Economics cohort of any Reading school — evidence, not assumption, that the GCSE is not a precondition locally.

Neither of the two schools whose own published entry requirements this page checked makes GCSE Economics a condition of starting the A-level, and each says so in its own subject-specific line rather than by omission. Reading School’s own Sixth Form Admissions Policy for Year 12 entry in September 2026 sets a general bar — “For entry into the Sixth Form students must have achieved the equivalent of a total of at least 56 points from 8 GCSE subjects and at least a grade 5 at GCSE in Mathematics and English or a DfE recognised equivalency” — and states that individual subject requirements are published separately, in the school’s own Sixth Form Information Booklet. That booklet’s own Economics entry, fetched for this page, reads in full: “GCSE grade 7 in Mathematics. Economics GCSE is not a requirement, but if it has been studied, then a grade 7 in GCSE Economics is required.” Highdown’s own Sixth Form entry requirements page uses the identical mechanism at a different grade: “Economics* 5+ in Mathematics and 5+ in English, 5+ in Economics (if studied)” — at both schools, the “if studied” wording means a pupil who has never taken GCSE Economics can still start the A-level, provided they meet the Mathematics (and, at Highdown, English) grade.

DfE’s own data does not record which exam board — AQA or OCR, the only two boards that run a domestic GCSE in Economics — any individual Reading school uses; our full board comparison, including the current specification codes and paper structures, is on our GCSE Economics subject guide. Reading Girls’ School and Hartland High School have no published 16-to-18 subjects-entered page at all, so no claim is made about their A-level Economics provision either way; Hartland opened under its current name on 1 January 2025 and is unlikely to have a Key Stage 5 leaver cohort published yet.

How Does Reading’s GCSE Economics Entry Compare With England, and With Reading’s Own GCSE Business Studies?

An original comparison, not published elsewhere on this site, sets Reading’s GCSE Economics entries against its own GCSE Business Studies entries — 615 pupils in 2024/25, established on our sibling GCSE Business Studies tutors in Reading page. In that single year, 2024/25, Reading’s 129 state-funded Economics entries were 21.0% the size of its 615 state-funded Business Studies entries, against a national state-funded ratio of 5.6% the same year (6,831 Economics entries to 120,941 Business Studies entries) — Reading pupils were entered for Economics, relative to Business Studies, at 3.71 times the rate England’s state-funded pupils were, in that one year.

The method is simple division of two already-sourced DfE figures, and its limit is stated plainly: it compares one year, two subjects, and state-funded schools only. It says nothing about independent-sector entries, about earlier or later years, or about any other GCSE option a Reading pupil might choose instead of either subject.

What Should Families Check Before Choosing GCSE Economics Support in Reading?

The practical consequence of the figures above is that a Reading family’s starting point depends almost entirely on which school their child attends. A family at Reading School is part of a genuine local majority — 58.4% of the school’s own Year 11 sat the subject in 2024/25 — and can expect classmates and past papers in common supply. A family at any of the other nine state secondaries, or at any of Reading’s three independent schools, will not find GCSE Economics on their child’s own option list under the current curriculum, and the practical route in, for most of the city, is the A-level rather than the GCSE.

For the exam mechanics themselves — the AQA and OCR specification codes, the two boards’ paper structures, national entry and grade figures, and whether GCSE Economics is required before starting the A-level — our GCSE Economics subject guide covers all of that in depth and is not repeated here. This page sits alongside our sibling GCSE Business Studies tutors in Reading page, another optional, non-EBacc subject with its own, very different entry pattern across the same ten state secondaries. Our Economics tuition page and our wider GCSE tuition service cover every exam board we support, and our guide to tutoring across Reading covers every subject and level we work with in the city.

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