GCSE Geography Tutors in Reading: The 2024/25 DfE Entries Across 18 Schools, State and Independent

Reading's eighteen secondary schools with a 2024/25 GCSE cohort lean toward Geography over History at every count this page checked: 788 Geography entries against 709 for History among the ten state-funded schools DfE totals, widening to 935 against 788 once the borough's eight independent and alternative-provision schools are added in. England moves the opposite way on both counts, entering more pupils for History than Geography whether or not independent schools count.

How Does Reading's Geography-Versus-History Split Compare With England's?

The table below compares like with like: every figure in it, on both sides, comes from DfE's local-authority-level dataset, which counts state-funded schools only and excludes Reading's independent and alternative-provision sector entirely. The wider, all-schools picture follows in a later section, once the state-funded comparison establishes the baseline both figures are checked against.

The 79-entry Geography lead is a genuine local choice, not a reflection of how Reading's pupils perform in either subject: Reading's Geography grade 4+ rate (67%) sits four points above England's (63%), and its History rate (69%) sits six points above England's (63%) - a gap that runs the same direction in both subjects, so it explains nothing about why Reading picks Geography specifically. Set against England's own 7,176-entry lead for History - roughly ninety times the size of Reading's Geography lead, in the opposite direction - the borough is not a smaller echo of the national pattern. It is running against it.

DfE's own EBacc-humanities-pillar measure, published separately from the subject-by-subject entries above, puts Reading's combined History-or-Geography entering total at 1,369 pupils, 82.9% of the 1,652-pupil 2024/25 cohort. That figure is lower than the 1,497 you would get by simply adding Reading's 709 History entries to its 788 Geography entries, because a pupil entered for both subjects fills the pillar once but appears in both subject rows; DfE separately records 131 Reading pupils entered for both.

Which Reading Schools Push Geography Hardest, and Which Lean Toward History Instead?

A single borough figure hides as much as it shows. DfE's school-level exam dataset - the same underlying source as the local-authority table above, but held at individual-establishment level rather than summed - lets each of Reading's ten state-funded secondaries be checked on its own terms, filtered by Reading local-authority establishment number rather than taken on trust from the LA total.

The range runs from a near-double skew in one direction to an exact tie. Kendrick School enters 92 pupils for Geography against 52 for History; Reading School and The WREN School are the only two state-funded schools where the balance tips the other way, toward History; and King's Academy Prospect splits its year group precisely down the middle, 94 and 94. UTC Reading sits outside that spectrum altogether rather than at either end of it - fourteen GCSE subjects appear on its 2024/25 entries list, spanning the sciences, both English GCSEs and four modern languages, and neither Geography nor History is among them, which puts every one of its pupils outside the EBacc's humanities pillar regardless of how they perform elsewhere.

The ten state-funded schools' own Geography entries sum to 787, one pupil short of the published LA total of 788; their History entries sum to exactly 709, matching the LA total to the pupil. A gap of one pupil on a total in the high 700s is the kind of small rounding or late-entry difference that shows up in this data from time to time - not evidence that a school is missing from the table.

What Happens to Reading's Geography Lead Once Independent Schools Are Counted?

DfE's published local-authority total of 788 Geography entries and 709 History entries, used above, is explicitly a state-funded-schools figure - it does not include Reading's independent or alternative-provision schools at all. The school-level dataset behind this page's tables does include them, because it covers every school and college that appears in the underlying performance-tables exam data, state-funded or not. Filtering that dataset to every school carrying a Reading establishment number turns up eight further schools beyond the ten state-funded secondaries above.

Five of those eight schools recorded a non-zero Geography entry, and every one of the five leans toward Geography over History, several by a wide margin. Queen Anne's School enters 36 pupils for Geography and records no GCSE (9-1) History entry at all in this dataset; The Abbey School Reading and St Joseph's College both enter more for Geography than History too. Add all fourteen Reading schools that recorded a Geography entry together and the borough total rises to 935 - against a combined History total of 788 across the twelve schools that recorded one.

Counted this way, Reading's lean toward Geography widens from 79 entries to 147 - the independent and alternative-provision schools do not dilute the borough's preference for Geography, they amplify it. That is a different pattern from the national picture: England's own school-level entries, summed the same way across every English school in the same dataset, total 287,748 for Geography against at least 289,332 for History in 2024/25 (two schools nationally had their History entries suppressed under DfE's disclosure-control rules and are not included in that figure) - so England still favours History whether or not independent schools are counted, while Reading's preference for Geography only grows once they are.

DfE suppresses a small number of low-count rows in this dataset for disclosure reasons, marking them with the letter "c" rather than a number - genuinely a different thing from a zero. Nationally, exactly two of 3,841 History school-rows in 2024/25 carry that suppressed marker; not one Geography row does. None of Reading's own eighteen schools carries a suppressed value for either subject, so every zero in the tables above is a checked entry, not an assumption standing in for a small or hidden cohort.

Leighton Park School is the clearest illustration of why an absent row is not the same as a zero. It records no GCSE (9-1) entry for either Geography or History in DfE's dataset, which could easily be misread as the school not teaching either subject. It teaches both: the school's own course pages confirm History is taught as a Cambridge International GCSE (syllabus code 0977) and Geography as a Cambridge IGCSE, neither of which is a reformed "GCSE (9-1)" qualification, so neither appears in a dataset built specifically from reformed-GCSE performance-tables data. The absence describes which qualification type DfE's own reformed-GCSE data covers, not what the school teaches.

How Is GCSE Geography's Two-Enquiry Fieldwork Requirement Actually Assessed?

Fieldwork is the one requirement that sets Geography apart from History in this comparison, and it is easy to assume it works like the non-exam assessment or coursework components other subjects carry. It does not. Verified directly against AQA's specification (8035): students complete two geographical enquiries, each including primary data collected in the field, in two contrasting environments, with the fieldwork itself taking place outside the classroom and school grounds on at least two occasions - and none of it is submitted for marking. It is examined in Paper 3, through questions on an unfamiliar fieldwork context and on the pupil's own enquiry, and the physical fieldwork itself is enforced separately, through a written statement the Head of Centre must sign. Our own GCSE Geography boards and papers guide sets out exactly where every board examines fieldwork, how many marks each paper carries, and each board's own statement deadline, board by board.

One detail that guide does not yet carry, because it changed after last being checked: WJEC Eduqas's Geography A specification (C111QS) confirms the same exam-not-coursework structure under its own name, Component 3: Applied Fieldwork Enquiry - a second board, independently verified, following the same pattern as AQA rather than assumed to.

Which Exam Boards Set GCSE Geography, and Do They All Run Just One Specification?

Four boards set GCSE Geography, and only one of them runs a single version of it. AQA offers one specification, Geography (8035). The other three boards each run two parallel specifications, labelled A and B, with their own codes: Edexcel's are 1GA0 and 1GB0, OCR's are J383 and J384, and WJEC Eduqas's are C111QS and C112QS - seven specifications in total, not the four a subject name alone would suggest. Our GCSE Geography boards and papers guide compares all seven on paper structure, timing and marks in full; this page's own school and entries data does not need repeating that table to make its point.

What this page did check, and found current at the time of writing, is which of those seven specifications are mid-change. Pearson Edexcel's own qualification pages for both Geography A and Geography B state that a new issue specification is in place for first teaching 2024, first assessment 2026 - meaning the 2024/25 results analysed throughout this page were sat under the outgoing 2016-dated issues of both A and B, not the incoming one. OCR's Geography B has itself been reissued under the same code, J384, for first teaching September 2025, first assessed summer 2027 - so a pupil starting the course now sits that new edition, while any Reading pupil in this page's 2024/25 figures who followed Geography B sat the outgoing, pre-2025 edition instead. The code J384 alone does not distinguish the two. Every entry in the tables above, regardless of board or edition, is recorded under the same DfE qualification-type label, GCSE (9-1) Full Course - a label that cannot tell a reader which of the seven specifications, or which edition of one, a given school's pupils actually sat.

Is the EBacc Humanities Measure Continuing Beyond 2025/26?

No. The government's response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, published 5 November 2025, states plainly: "In advance, we will remove EBacc headline and additional measures at key stage 4. This will take effect for the key stage 4 performance measures for the 2025 to 2026 academic year to be published in autumn 2026." Every EBacc figure on this page - the humanities pillar, the subject entries, the school-by-school split - describes the 2024/25 measure, the last complete cycle the current EBacc headline will cover before it is withdrawn.

The same document sets out what replaces it: an updated Progress 8 and Attainment 8 model with two English-and-maths slots, two dedicated science slots, and four breadth slots, at least two of which must come from two of three named categories - Category A, Humanities; Category B, Creative subjects; Category C, Languages - with a possible fourth science-and-computing category still under consultation. Geography and History would both sit inside that Humanities category rather than in a dedicated history-or-geography pillar of their own, so the specific either-or substitution this page measures is itself a feature of a measure that is due to end, not a permanent structure of the qualifications system.

What Should Families Do With This, School by School?

Three different questions face three different kinds of Reading family here, and none of them is answered by the borough total alone. At a school like Kendrick, where Geography outnumbers History by nearly two to one, a pupil doing History is one of the smaller group in their year, not the majority - worth knowing before assuming class sizes or set numbers follow the borough-wide pattern. At Reading School or The WREN School, where the balance runs the other way, it is a Geography pupil in the minority instead. And at UTC Reading or Leighton Park, the question of which EBacc humanities subject to pick does not arise in the same form at all - one school offers neither GCSE (9-1) subject, the other offers both, but only as an international qualification outside this page's figures.

Twice as much can be riding on a single pupil's timetable as the entries figures suggest. Someone entered for both subjects - 131 Reading pupils fall into that group - is carrying two full specifications, two independent sets of topic choices and, if Geography is one of them, two field visits in contrasting environments, all inside one academic year. None of that detail - which board a school has picked, or which topic options within it - is something DfE publishes at local-authority level; it lives with the school's own exams office, or nowhere published at all.

Our sibling page, GCSE History tutors in Reading, sets out the same eighteen schools' History figures and the qualification's own Ancient History distinction, for the family working through both sides of the EBacc humanities choice at once. Board-by-board paper structure, marks and fieldwork deadlines for all seven Geography specifications sit on our GCSE Geography boards and papers guide, and what a programme of Geography tuition itself looks like is on our GCSE Geography tuition page. For the rest of an EBacc-heavy timetable, our Reading pages for Biology, Chemistry and English cover the same ten state-funded schools from each subject's own angle, our wider GCSE tuition service spans every subject a family might be juggling, and 11+ and 13+ tuition in Reading cover the entrance routes some of these same schools set well before any GCSE figure applies. Our UK tutoring locations hub lists every city beyond Reading where we work.

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