GCSE Religious Studies Tutors in Sheffield 2026

Notre Dame High School entered 205 of its 212 pupils for GCSE Religious Studies in 2024/25 — 96.7% of the cohort, DfE's own school-level data show. Nine of Sheffield's 30 state-funded secondaries entered nobody at all. Every one of those schools still has a legal duty to teach religious education to every registered pupil; entering them for the GCSE is a separate decision each makes on its own.

Which Sheffield School Enters Almost Every Pupil for GCSE Religious Studies — and Which Enter Nobody?

Every maintained school and academy in England must provide religious education to all registered pupils as part of its basic curriculum. Whether it puts any of those pupils in for a GCSE in the subject is an entirely separate decision, and DfE's own school-level exam data show Sheffield's 30 open, state-funded, non-special secondary schools making that decision in wildly different ways. This page checked all 30 directly against DfE's published 2024/25 key stage 4 institution-level data, confirming each school's URN, on 2 September 2026.

Notre Dame High School enters the highest share in the city: 205 of 212 pupils, 96.7% of the cohort. All Saints' Catholic High School is close behind at 96.1% (197 of 205), and Bradfield School enters 92.8% (194 of 209) — three schools where GCSE Religious Studies reaches almost the entire year group rather than an optional minority. King Edward VII School (92.4%, 208 of 225), Forge Valley School (90.2%, 231 of 256) and Tapton School (88.1%, 237 of 269) form a second tier still above nine in ten pupils.

At the other end, nine schools enter nobody at all: Chaucer School, King Ecgbert School, Oasis Academy Don Valley, Outwood Academy City, Sheffield Park Academy, Sheffield Springs Academy, Stocksbridge High School, UTC Sheffield City Centre and UTC Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park — both of the city's university technical colleges among them. Summing the entries independently checked for all 30 schools gives 1,889 GCSE entries against a combined 6,013-pupil cohort across those same 30 schools — 31.4% of the cohort city-wide, a figure this page calculated rather than one DfE separately publishes.

Source: Department for Education, Key stage 4 institution level 2024/25 final data (subject entries and grades; performance; school and college information), Explore Education Statistics, all checked directly for this page on 2 September 2026.

What Does the Law Actually Require a Sheffield School to Teach?

No, and the distinction between teaching the subject and examining it at GCSE is set out in law, not just this page's framing. The Education Act 2002, Section 80, sets the 'basic curriculum for every maintained school in England', and it states in terms that the curriculum 'shall comprise a basic curriculum which includes—(a) provision for religious education for all registered pupils at the school'. That duty binds maintained schools directly; it makes no mention of a GCSE, an exam board, or any qualification at all — it is a duty to teach, not to enter pupils for an assessment.

Academies are not 'maintained schools' in this legal sense, so Section 80 does not bind them directly. The government's own summary of the curriculum states plainly that 'academies must teach a broad and balanced curriculum including English, maths and science. They must also teach relationships and sex education, and religious education' — a duty academies carry through their own funding agreement with the Secretary of State, mirroring Section 80 by contract rather than by direct statute. The same government guidance adds that RE is compulsory in schools up to the age of 18, and that parents can ask to withdraw their child from all or part of the lessons. That withdrawal right is set out separately in statute, at Section 71 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, for community, foundation and voluntary schools; academies provide an equivalent right through their funding agreement rather than this section directly.

None of these duties says anything about GCSE entry, and Sheffield's own data makes the gap concrete: schools ranging from Mercia School (100% full EBacc entry, a very different measure, and zero Religious Studies GCSE entries) to Notre Dame (96.7% Religious Studies entry) are all discharging the same teaching duty while making entirely different decisions about the GCSE. GCSE Religious Studies also comes in two forms — a full course worth a whole GCSE and a short course worth half a GCSE — and AQA, Cambridge OCR and Eduqas each still publish a live specification for both. DfE's own 2024/25 key stage 4 institution-level exam data cannot be used to tell the two apart: checked across every subject in that file, not just Religious Studies, a GCSE row is only ever labelled 'GCSE (9-1) Full Course', with no 'Short Course' label appearing anywhere at all. This page cannot say from that source whether any Sheffield pupil sits the short course — the label the school-level data always shows is not evidence either way, and DfE also suppresses small cohorts, so an absence in a table is never proof of zero.

Do Sheffield's Faith Schools Really Enter More Pupils for Religious Studies?

Sheffield has exactly four secondary schools with a specific religious character, confirmed directly at GIAS, the Department for Education's own register, for this page. They do not move together as a bloc. Notre Dame High School and All Saints' Catholic High School are both designated Roman Catholic, both in the Diocese of Hallam, and both enter GCSE Religious Studies at close to their entire cohort — 96.7% and 96.1% respectively, the two highest rates of any school in the city.

Sheffield Park Academy and Sheffield Springs Academy are also religiously designated — GIAS records their religious character as 'Christian', with no diocese ('Not applicable') and a religious ethos of 'None' — and both enter zero pupils for the GCSE, identical to schools with no religious character recorded at all. A school's religious character, on this evidence, predicts almost nothing about its Religious Studies entry rate on its own: the diocesan Catholic schools sit at the very top of the table and the non-diocesan Christian-designated academies sit at the very bottom, tied with UTC Sheffield City Centre and Oasis Academy Don Valley. 'Faith school' is not one category for this purpose — a diocesan link to a specific religious tradition looks like the stronger predictor than a religious-character field on its own, at least across these four schools.

Does a High EBacc Entry Rate Explain Why Nine Sheffield Schools Enter Nobody for Religious Studies?

Religious Studies is not an EBacc subject — the EBacc humanities pillar counts history or geography, not RS — so it competes for the school's optional timetable blocks alongside subjects like Business Studies or Computer Science. DfE also publishes, for every school, the percentage of pupils entered for the full 2024/25 EBacc; this is the most recent version of that measure, since the government has confirmed it will remove the EBacc headline and additional measures from the 2025/26 key stage 4 performance measures, published in autumn 2026. One theory holds that a school pushing hard on the full EBacc has less option-block room left for a non-EBacc subject like Religious Studies. This page tested that theory directly against its own 30 Sheffield schools rather than assuming it.

It does not hold. Calculated across all 30 schools checked for this page, 2024/25 full EBacc entry and Religious Studies entry move together with a weak positive correlation (Pearson r = 0.23, n = 30) — the opposite of the squeeze the theory predicts. Excluding Mercia School, the single 100%-EBacc outlier, the remaining 29 schools show an even stronger positive relationship (r = 0.26). The clearest case against a simple squeeze is Mercia itself: its 100% full EBacc entry, the only one in the city, sits alongside zero Religious Studies entries — but High Storrs School enters 70.2% for the full EBacc, the second-highest rate in Sheffield, and still records one of the lowest Religious Studies entry rates, 7.6%. Ecclesfield School, at 64.5% EBacc entry, enters just 4.3% for Religious Studies, the lowest non-zero rate in the city. A high EBacc rate clearly does not guarantee high Religious Studies entry either. This is a correlation calculated from these 30 schools' own figures, not a demonstrated mechanism, and the likely confound is general school-level willingness to enter pupils for more subjects across the board, not something specific to EBacc timetable competition — this page has not separated the two.

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How Did Chaucer School and Fir Vale School Close and Reopen?

Two of the schools in this page's 30-school data set have since closed. This page checked both closures directly at GIAS rather than relying on a date reported anywhere else.

Fir Vale School, in the Burngreave area, closed on 30 June 2025 under a Department for Education 'Fresh Start', confirmed at GIAS; its successor, Fir Vale Academy, opened the next day, 1 July 2025, under United Learning Trust. Fir Vale School's 2024/25 Religious Studies entries were 19 pupils from a 189-pupil cohort (10.1%) — describing the closed predecessor, not the academy operating on the site today, which has no entry history of its own yet.

Chaucer School, in the Southey area, closed on 31 August 2026 — two days before this page was researched — also under a Fresh Start, confirmed at GIAS. Its successor, Mercia Northridge School, opened the next day, 1 September 2026, under the Mercia Learning Trust, the same trust behind Mercia School, the Sheffield secondary this page found with the city's only 100% full EBacc entry rate. Chaucer's own 2024/25 Religious Studies entries were zero, from a 159-pupil cohort — describing the school that closed on 31 August, not Mercia Northridge School.

Which Exam Boards Offer GCSE Religious Studies, and How Many Specifications Does Each Publish?

Every board offering GCSE Religious Studies publishes more than a single code can capture, checked directly against each board's own qualification pages and specification documents on 2 September 2026. AQA alone runs three live specifications: 8061 (short course), 8062 ('Religious Studies A') and 8063 ('Religious Studies B', a route built around Catholic Christianity with a second world faith and a choice between ethics or St Mark's gospel). AQA is even now updating only two of the three: for summer 2026 exams onward it is making changes to the 8062 and 8061 papers, and its own update notice states in terms that 'GCSE Religious Studies Specification B (8063) is not affected by these changes'.

OCR, which rebranded to Cambridge OCR from September 2025, runs two: J625 (full course) and J125 (short course), both first assessed in 2018 and both reissued as Version 2.0 in mid-2026. Eduqas, the WJEC brand used for England, also runs two — a full course and a short course, both 'teaching from 2016, for award from 2018' and both now on Version 4 (September 2025). Pearson Edexcel is the outlier in the other direction: it currently publishes one live specification, branded 'Religious Studies B' (1RB0, 'Beliefs in Action'), first teaching September 2016; it does not currently offer a 'Religious Studies A'. A code alone never identifies which of these a school has chosen, and 'GCSE Religious Studies' on a school website could mean any of the eight specifications above.

Source: AQA, Cambridge OCR (formerly OCR), Pearson Edexcel and Eduqas, own qualification pages and specification PDFs, all checked directly for this page on 2 September 2026.

How Does Leading Tuition Tutor GCSE Religious Studies Across Sheffield?

Leading Tuition works with Religious Studies students across Sheffield, whichever position their school takes — from Notre Dame or All Saints', where GCSE entry reaches almost the whole cohort, to one of the nine schools that enter nobody, where a student may be building toward a different option subject entirely. Sessions are built from the first lesson around a student's own exam board and specification, whether that is AQA's Religious Studies A or B, Cambridge OCR's J625, one of Eduqas's two courses, or Pearson Edexcel's 1RB0. See our History tutoring page for the source-analysis and extended-response skills examiners reward in a similar way across both subjects, our Sheffield GCSE History tutors page for how a different humanities option splits across the same 30 schools, or our Sheffield GCSE Maths tutors page for support alongside Religious Studies.

Sessions run one-to-one online with a shared whiteboard, so a tutor can work through source analysis, ethical argument and extended-response questions against a student's own specification and mark them against the real mark scheme. Programmes are reviewed against a student's target grade throughout, rather than assuming every Sheffield pupil is sitting the same board or the same course. See our overview of tutoring across Sheffield for support beyond Religious Studies, our GCSE tuition hub for the wider GCSE picture, or our full locations list for tutoring in other UK cities.

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