GCSE German Tutors in Reading: Entries Rose 42% Since 2018/19 as England's Fell 23%

GCSE German in Reading is examined by two boards, AQA (specification 8662) and Pearson Edexcel (specification 1GN1) — the only two currently offering it in England — and the borough's own entries run against the national trend: Reading's state-funded GCSE German entries rose 41.7% between 2018/19 and 2024/25 (139 to 197 pupils), Department for Education data shows, while England's own entries fell 23.4% (39,012 to 29,898) over the same seven years.

How Have Reading's GCSE German Entries — and Results — Changed Since 2018/19?

Reading's state-funded GCSE German entries rose from 139 in 2018/19 to 197 in 2024/25, an increase of 41.7%, according to the Department for Education's own subject pupil level local authority data. England's own GCSE German entries moved in the opposite direction over the same seven years, falling 23.4% from 39,012 to 29,898. The two figures sit alongside French and Spanish below for context — not as a fresh school-by-school comparison, which the Reading GCSE French and GCSE Spanish guides on this site already cover in full — but simply to show whether German is moving with or against the borough's other two languages.

Source: Department for Education, Subject pupil level local authority data, state-funded schools, Reading local authority (E06000038) and England totals, GCSE Total pupil entries by subject, 2018/19–2024/25.

The path was not a straight line. Reading's German entries peaked at 179 in 2020/21 — the year GCSEs were graded by teacher assessment rather than sat as exams — eased back to a low of 142 by 2022/23, then rose again to 178 and 197 over the following two years. Across the full seven-year span, though, the direction is unambiguous: up 41.7%, against a national fall of 23.4%. Reading's French entries rose faster still, up 63.8% (232 to 380), and Spanish grew fastest of all, more than quadrupling from 61 to 253 — so German is not leading Reading's language growth, but it is growing, at a time its own national entries are shrinking.

The wider entry pool changed the results, not the appetite for the subject. Reading's GCSE German grade 4+ rate stood at 91% in 2018/19 — 126 of 139 entries — sixteen percentage points above England's own rate of 75% that year. By 2024/25, with the cohort 42% larger, Reading's grade 4+ rate had fallen to 75% (147 of 197 entries), three points below England's 78%. Reading's grade 5+ rate for 2024/25 was 69% (136 of 197); DfE suppresses Reading's 2018/19 grade 5+ figure — recorded as ‘z’ rather than a number, evidently a small-cohort disclosure control rather than a published zero — so no 2018/19 grade 5+ comparison can be made. A wider entry pool naturally draws in a broader range of prior attainment than a smaller, more self-selecting one did seven years earlier; the fall in Reading's pass rate is a story about who is now sitting the exam, not evidence that fewer families want their child to take it.

These figures come from DfE's Subject pupil level local authority data, queried directly for Reading's local authority code (E06000038) and cross-checked against the department's own bulk download of the same dataset — both methods return identical figures for every year and every subject shown here. The dataset covers state-funded schools only; Reading's independent schools are not included in any of the entries or grade figures on this page, and DfE does not publish an equivalent series for them. A year with genuinely zero entries for a subject does not appear as a row at all in this dataset — it is simply absent — so every figure above is a real, published count, not a filled-in gap. Which schools are driving Reading's rising German entries, and which have dropped the subject altogether, is the next question.

Which Reading Schools Still Teach GCSE German in 2024/25?

Reading has eleven state-funded secondaries with a 2024/25 Year 11 cohort or, in one case, none at all. Four of them entered pupils for GCSE German in 2024/25; six entered none; and River Academy, an 11-to-18 free school that opened on 1 September 2024 and took its first Year 7 intake that same month, had no Year 11 pupils in 2024/25 at all — its first cohort will not reach Year 11, the GCSE year, until 2028/29, so it carries no 2024/25 subject-entry data of any kind, not a hidden zero for German. Kendrick School, a selective girls' grammar, entered the most — 81 pupils — followed by King's Academy Prospect (79), Reading School (35), a selective boys' grammar, and Maiden Erlegh School in Reading, with just 2. Those four figures sum to exactly 197, matching Reading's published local-authority total for German to the pupil, independently re-fetched from each school's own Department for Education subjects-entered page today rather than assumed from the borough-wide average above.

Six of Reading's eleven state secondaries — Highdown School and Sixth Form Centre, Reading Girls' School, The WREN School, Blessed Hugh Faringdon Catholic School, John Madejski Academy and UTC Reading — entered no pupils for GCSE German at all in 2024/25, each independently confirmed against its own DfE subjects-entered page and its own URN. The eleventh, River Academy, is a different case again: its own DfE subjects-entered page 404s, independently checked today, because the school had no Year 11 pupils to enter for any GCSE in 2024/25, not because it entered zero for German specifically — a distinction worth keeping straight rather than folding into the same "entered none" total as the other six. A family whose child attends one of the four schools that teach German is choosing a subject their own school already runs; a family at one of the six that do not is looking at a subject their child's school does not currently offer, whatever the borough-wide entries figure above suggests on its own.

Checked against the Department's own Get Information about Schools register today, every one of the eleven schools above shows as Open, with one exception worth explaining rather than skipping. John Madejski Academy closed on 31 December 2024, and Hartland High School opened the following day, 1 January 2025, as what GIAS records as a ‘Fresh Start’ successor establishment on the same site — Hartland's own GIAS status shows as Open. The 2024/25 entries above are published under the old name, John Madejski Academy, because the cohort that generated them sat their exams before the rename took effect. Every one of these entries sits under a live, 2024-reform specification, covered next.

What Is the Current GCSE German Specification, and Which Boards Actually Offer It?

As of 16 September 2026, only two exam boards run a live GCSE German specification: AQA, whose specification is coded 8662, and Pearson Edexcel, coded 1GN1 — both confirmed directly against each board's own site rather than carried over from any other page. Both are reformed specifications, first taught from September 2024 with first examination in May/June 2026, the qualification's first award year; AQA's own scheme-of-assessment page states the exam is “available for the first time in May/June 2026 and then every” following year. AQA's German GCSE previously ran under code 8668, which remains published as a separate, superseded specification on AQA's own site; Pearson Edexcel's German previously ran as 1GN0. Neither this page nor DfE's own dataset records which exam board an individual Reading school has chosen, so a family's reliable source is their own child's specification sheet or their school's exams office — not an assumption based on which of the four schools above they attend.

OCR does not offer GCSE German. Its own current GCSE subject list, read in full today, contains real named subjects — English, Geography, History, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Science, Computer science and ICT, Business, among others — but no German, French or Spanish, and no ‘Languages’ category of any kind. A URL resolving on ocr.org.uk proves nothing on its own, because the domain returns HTTP 200 for effectively any path; the only reliable check is reading what the board's own subject list actually contains, which is what this page does.

WJEC Eduqas, the England-facing, Ofqual-regulated brand, does not offer GCSE German either, though the position is more involved than a simple no. Eduqas published a draft German GCSE specification in 2023, alongside draft French and Spanish specifications, and its own December 2023 update stated that the French draft was “currently undergoing the accreditation process” while “Spanish and German specifications will also be submitted for accreditation soon.” Neither ever reached live accreditation: Eduqas's current qualifications directory, checked today, lists no GCSE German, French or Spanish among its subjects, and the board's old GCSE German web address now redirects — a 301, not a live page — to Eduqas's generic qualifications index. Eduqas does list AS and A Level German among its current qualifications; it is the GCSE that never launched. WJEC itself, the separate Wales-regulated exam board Eduqas is a brand of, does publish a GCSE German — but that is a Qualifications Wales qualification, not generally available to English state secondaries, and outside the scope of a Reading-based page.

For the 2019 Ofqual decision that aligned French and German grading with Spanish's, and the 2026 reform's effect on national grade boundaries, our guide to why GCSE French and German grades rose covers both in full — this page does not repeat either. Our broader GCSE tuition service covers AQA and Pearson Edexcel across every subject, and families managing more than one GCSE at once may also find our guide to GCSE Business Studies tutors in Reading useful. Our GCSE German tuition page covers the specification content and tiering in more depth than a single city page can, and our tutoring across Reading page covers the borough broadly.

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