As an Australian educator, who hasn’t worked in the UK education system I am curious about this discussion. We don’t have any standardised testing at the end of year 10 (4th form). Students simply finish year 10, work with career councillors to choose senior subjects, school based apprenticeships or other pathways. Our Australian system is far, far from perfect. However, there is not a chorus of educators, politicians or media demanding we introduce standardised assessment in year 10. I have never heard a whisper of it.
Our conversations on this topic start at the end of our school year when year 12’s start their final exams. That’s when we have similar discussions about mental health, university entry, etc. Most Australian students only experience this intense pressure once.
Education is an incredibly slow moving beast when looking at systemic change. It also doesn’t help that everyone is an expert due to exposure to the education system as students.
Thanks for your writings David, I enjoy reading them from afar!
Thoughtful and balanced. I find the word ‘paralysed’ is key. The complexity of the systems involved is daunting, and even though I argue for reform, it scares me too. But I think that makes it all the more essential that we do the necessary thinking around the specifics of what a better system might be - and take our time over it. Paradoxically, to be cautious in implementation we need to be bold in our thinking.
Thank you, Sammy. That paradox - bold in thinking, cautious in implementation - feels right. It’s easy to call for change; far harder to design something better that doesn’t just reproduce the same inequities in new forms.
“Paralysed” is the word, yes, but not because we lack alternatives. It’s the weight of interlocking interests, risk-averse system leadership, and the sheer gravitational pull of the status quo that makes radical reform feel like stepping off a cliff. And yet, as you say, if we let that fear lead, nothing improves.
We need the courage to imagine something more humane, more intelligent, and more aligned with what we actually value in education but also the discipline to test it, refine it, and resist the seduction of magic bullets. Thoughtful reform takes time. But the longer we delay it, the more damage the current system does.
Interesting. I would argue that GCSE's are not standardised. There may be a standard curriculum but it is obviously too broad, for I fail to see how there can be so many different exam boards otherwise. So, not standardised.
AI is a game changer in discussions about assessment. This is a massive disruptor, as most new tech is. At the current stage, there is no way to standardise assessment in non-exam conditions due to access to AI and no definite way to check for it's use other than direct examination of the student - ah, exams! Maybe a more relaxed viva voce, good training for the real world.
Incremental change is not the answer. Change the curriculum first, so it is genuinely standardised with only one exam board, so everyone sits the exact same paper as everyone else that year. That's standardised.
Continuous assessment is to open to abuse, why else was it removed from the GCSE, it was touted as the big new thing when introduced. It might have been if the Govt has understood anything about education. They shot themselves in the foot when introducing the league tables, which resulted in pressue being applied to marking to improve leagure tables.
With children now being required to remain in full time education until 18 GCSE's are now useless, they serve no purpose at all.
However, full time education does not have to mean "school". It could be A levels, IB, technical college, apprenticeship (leading or not leading to a degree) et al.
Therefore my proposal is quite simple, for a child remaining where they are into the 6th form the school mentors them to choose the appropriate courses. If leaving to go elsewhere then wherever they are going provides an entrance exam for the child to prove they have the potential to handle the studies.
These can also be standardised. Same process - standard curriculum, standard assessment, no multiple exam boards.
If an apprenticeship, for example, the company should know exactly where they want their apprentices to start, so they proviode their own assessment.
By reducing the complexity of the system, we can also remove some of the political oversight that appears to have caused many of the issues being faced currently.
More importantly, the entire system becomes more flexible and thus easier to adapt to change.
Thank you for this thoughtful provocation. It’s certainly true that the GCSE system looks fragmented from the outside: multiple exam boards, different papers, and a sometimes baffling array of specifications. But it’s worth clarifying that GCSEs are, in fact, standardised, just not in the way many assume.
While AQA, OCR, Edexcel etc. write their own papers, they are all regulated by Ofqual, which ensures alignment to a national curriculum and enforces comparability of outcomes. This is achieved not just through shared subject content, but through a statistical process called comparable outcomes. Grade boundaries are adjusted each year to maintain consistency, typically anchored to prior attainment data (usually KS2 SATs). So a 7 in English from AQA is intended to reflect the same level of performance as a 7 from Edexcel. Standardisation here doesn’t mean identical papers; it means equivalent results.
That said, I agree that the appearance of variety can be confusing and sometimes gamed. And yes, AI changes everything. The integrity of out-of-class assessment becomes questionable when ChatGPT can draft your essay in seconds. Which is partly why we’ve returned to terminal exams: flawed, stressful, yes, but, for now, the most secure form of assessment we have.
I’d be more cautious about abolishing GCSEs entirely. While staying in education until 18 is now mandatory, not all 16-year-olds follow the same path. GCSEs still matter for apprenticeships, sixth-form choices, and university access down the line. Scrap them, and we risk replacing a flawed but known system with one that’s ripe for inequity.
Where I strongly agree is on coherence. Our current system is a patchwork. If curriculum, assessment, and progression routes were better aligned—and less subject to political interference, we’d have fewer of these perennial crises. The solution isn’t necessarily a single board, but a shared sense of purpose. Right now, we’ve got too many moving parts and too little trust.
Happy to continue the conversation. It’s one we need.
I look back at my days working in an outstanding secondary comprehensive school in London with fondness. However, my experiences in Switzerland and on the continent of Europe indicate that the obsession the Brits have with GCSEs is unhealthy, at best. The European and Swiss system is not perfect, of course but using the GCSEs as a system of compliance, quality control and comparison indicates a significant lack of confidence and trust in the system. The international school I teach in abolished IGCSEs over 20 years ago and the school has flourished as a result. We are more creative and more ambitious and not restrained by the tight frameworks of unnecessary examinations at age 16.
Thank you, Kim. It’s refreshing to hear from someone with experience across systems and I think you’re absolutely right to highlight the UK’s unhealthy fixation with GCSEs as a mechanism of control and compliance. It’s a legacy system that often feels more about sorting than educating.
That said, while I admire the flexibility and ambition of many international schools, it’s also worth noting that they tend to serve students who are already significantly advantaged, socially, economically, and educationally. The absence of external exams at 16 may feel liberating in that context, but it’s also buffered by stable home environments, high parental engagement, and often much smaller class sizes.
For many students in comprehensive schools - particularly those from less privileged backgrounds - GCSEs, flawed as they are, still represent the only formal recognition of academic achievement they’re likely to receive. If we remove them, we need to be very sure we’re replacing them with something fairer, not just something freer for the already fortunate.
In short: abolishing exams works beautifully in schools that don’t need them. But the broader system has to reckon with what fills the vacuum.
Thanks, David. You are right to say that International schools have certain privileges and advantages that make a decision to end with GCSEs much easier. Edufest, (https://www.edufest-rosey.ch/) which you presented at in 2019, is perhaps a good example of the liberty we have. However, state schools on the continent do not obsess about high stakes 16+ examinations either. Again, not saying the the school system on the continent is perfect - far from it - but students have many well established and funded pathways to excellent future careers that do not include formal and 'academic' university education which seems to me to be part of the GCSE raison d'etre.
It's true, the UK government, teachers and parents need to work together to create a system that is fair and accessible, I agree. In the meantime, and until that coalition of the willing forms, nothing much will change much to the detriment of the young in UK schools.
Le Rosey was as beautiful as it was surreal. The privilege was palpable, and you’re right to point out that international schools operate with freedoms that allow them to move beyond GCSEs without facing the same consequences as others.
I want to push back on the idea that continental systems are inherently more humane or equitable just because they lack high-stakes exams at 16. While many European countries delay formal qualifications, the PISA data tells a more complicated story. In countries like Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, students are often streamed into different educational tracks as early as age ten or twelve. These placements are difficult to reverse and are frequently influenced more by family background than ability.
It’s true that vocational routes in some of these systems are better funded and more socially respected than their equivalents in the UK. But that can also entrench social divisions rather than soften them. The UK’s focus on academic qualifications is exhausting and often reductive, but at its best, the GCSE can act as a second chance. It provides a route to university for students whose early schooling did not go to plan. That opportunity does not always exist in systems where decisions are made much earlier.
As you rightly say, the real issue is not whether exams happen at 16, 18, or somewhere else, but whether the wider system offers flexibility, clarity, and real opportunity. Sometimes, the absence of formal assessment just makes the inequality less visible.
It's true that the Swiss system, for example, does stream kids at age 12 in to either the voie général (general pathway) or voie pré gymnasiale (academic pathway - essentially the 11+ equivalent). There is a very sophisticated system of 'bridges' that allows kids to cross over from one to the other but, to be fair, that's not very easy and most, I think, continue on the pathway decided at age 12. Does it entrench social inequality? Possibly. However, I don't get the feeling that there is the snobbism that one might encounter in the UK if a student joins apprenticeships and so on. Here, the apprenticeship pathway leads to the CFC and professional diplomas which open all sorts of wonderfully well paid jobs. Anyway, there's no perfect system. See you at Edufest? :)
As an Australian educator, who hasn’t worked in the UK education system I am curious about this discussion. We don’t have any standardised testing at the end of year 10 (4th form). Students simply finish year 10, work with career councillors to choose senior subjects, school based apprenticeships or other pathways. Our Australian system is far, far from perfect. However, there is not a chorus of educators, politicians or media demanding we introduce standardised assessment in year 10. I have never heard a whisper of it.
Our conversations on this topic start at the end of our school year when year 12’s start their final exams. That’s when we have similar discussions about mental health, university entry, etc. Most Australian students only experience this intense pressure once.
Education is an incredibly slow moving beast when looking at systemic change. It also doesn’t help that everyone is an expert due to exposure to the education system as students.
Thanks for your writings David, I enjoy reading them from afar!
Thoughtful and balanced. I find the word ‘paralysed’ is key. The complexity of the systems involved is daunting, and even though I argue for reform, it scares me too. But I think that makes it all the more essential that we do the necessary thinking around the specifics of what a better system might be - and take our time over it. Paradoxically, to be cautious in implementation we need to be bold in our thinking.
Thank you, Sammy. That paradox - bold in thinking, cautious in implementation - feels right. It’s easy to call for change; far harder to design something better that doesn’t just reproduce the same inequities in new forms.
“Paralysed” is the word, yes, but not because we lack alternatives. It’s the weight of interlocking interests, risk-averse system leadership, and the sheer gravitational pull of the status quo that makes radical reform feel like stepping off a cliff. And yet, as you say, if we let that fear lead, nothing improves.
We need the courage to imagine something more humane, more intelligent, and more aligned with what we actually value in education but also the discipline to test it, refine it, and resist the seduction of magic bullets. Thoughtful reform takes time. But the longer we delay it, the more damage the current system does.
Interesting. I would argue that GCSE's are not standardised. There may be a standard curriculum but it is obviously too broad, for I fail to see how there can be so many different exam boards otherwise. So, not standardised.
AI is a game changer in discussions about assessment. This is a massive disruptor, as most new tech is. At the current stage, there is no way to standardise assessment in non-exam conditions due to access to AI and no definite way to check for it's use other than direct examination of the student - ah, exams! Maybe a more relaxed viva voce, good training for the real world.
Incremental change is not the answer. Change the curriculum first, so it is genuinely standardised with only one exam board, so everyone sits the exact same paper as everyone else that year. That's standardised.
Continuous assessment is to open to abuse, why else was it removed from the GCSE, it was touted as the big new thing when introduced. It might have been if the Govt has understood anything about education. They shot themselves in the foot when introducing the league tables, which resulted in pressue being applied to marking to improve leagure tables.
With children now being required to remain in full time education until 18 GCSE's are now useless, they serve no purpose at all.
However, full time education does not have to mean "school". It could be A levels, IB, technical college, apprenticeship (leading or not leading to a degree) et al.
Therefore my proposal is quite simple, for a child remaining where they are into the 6th form the school mentors them to choose the appropriate courses. If leaving to go elsewhere then wherever they are going provides an entrance exam for the child to prove they have the potential to handle the studies.
These can also be standardised. Same process - standard curriculum, standard assessment, no multiple exam boards.
If an apprenticeship, for example, the company should know exactly where they want their apprentices to start, so they proviode their own assessment.
By reducing the complexity of the system, we can also remove some of the political oversight that appears to have caused many of the issues being faced currently.
More importantly, the entire system becomes more flexible and thus easier to adapt to change.
Thank you for this thoughtful provocation. It’s certainly true that the GCSE system looks fragmented from the outside: multiple exam boards, different papers, and a sometimes baffling array of specifications. But it’s worth clarifying that GCSEs are, in fact, standardised, just not in the way many assume.
While AQA, OCR, Edexcel etc. write their own papers, they are all regulated by Ofqual, which ensures alignment to a national curriculum and enforces comparability of outcomes. This is achieved not just through shared subject content, but through a statistical process called comparable outcomes. Grade boundaries are adjusted each year to maintain consistency, typically anchored to prior attainment data (usually KS2 SATs). So a 7 in English from AQA is intended to reflect the same level of performance as a 7 from Edexcel. Standardisation here doesn’t mean identical papers; it means equivalent results.
That said, I agree that the appearance of variety can be confusing and sometimes gamed. And yes, AI changes everything. The integrity of out-of-class assessment becomes questionable when ChatGPT can draft your essay in seconds. Which is partly why we’ve returned to terminal exams: flawed, stressful, yes, but, for now, the most secure form of assessment we have.
I’d be more cautious about abolishing GCSEs entirely. While staying in education until 18 is now mandatory, not all 16-year-olds follow the same path. GCSEs still matter for apprenticeships, sixth-form choices, and university access down the line. Scrap them, and we risk replacing a flawed but known system with one that’s ripe for inequity.
Where I strongly agree is on coherence. Our current system is a patchwork. If curriculum, assessment, and progression routes were better aligned—and less subject to political interference, we’d have fewer of these perennial crises. The solution isn’t necessarily a single board, but a shared sense of purpose. Right now, we’ve got too many moving parts and too little trust.
Happy to continue the conversation. It’s one we need.
I look back at my days working in an outstanding secondary comprehensive school in London with fondness. However, my experiences in Switzerland and on the continent of Europe indicate that the obsession the Brits have with GCSEs is unhealthy, at best. The European and Swiss system is not perfect, of course but using the GCSEs as a system of compliance, quality control and comparison indicates a significant lack of confidence and trust in the system. The international school I teach in abolished IGCSEs over 20 years ago and the school has flourished as a result. We are more creative and more ambitious and not restrained by the tight frameworks of unnecessary examinations at age 16.
Thank you, Kim. It’s refreshing to hear from someone with experience across systems and I think you’re absolutely right to highlight the UK’s unhealthy fixation with GCSEs as a mechanism of control and compliance. It’s a legacy system that often feels more about sorting than educating.
That said, while I admire the flexibility and ambition of many international schools, it’s also worth noting that they tend to serve students who are already significantly advantaged, socially, economically, and educationally. The absence of external exams at 16 may feel liberating in that context, but it’s also buffered by stable home environments, high parental engagement, and often much smaller class sizes.
For many students in comprehensive schools - particularly those from less privileged backgrounds - GCSEs, flawed as they are, still represent the only formal recognition of academic achievement they’re likely to receive. If we remove them, we need to be very sure we’re replacing them with something fairer, not just something freer for the already fortunate.
In short: abolishing exams works beautifully in schools that don’t need them. But the broader system has to reckon with what fills the vacuum.
Thanks, David. You are right to say that International schools have certain privileges and advantages that make a decision to end with GCSEs much easier. Edufest, (https://www.edufest-rosey.ch/) which you presented at in 2019, is perhaps a good example of the liberty we have. However, state schools on the continent do not obsess about high stakes 16+ examinations either. Again, not saying the the school system on the continent is perfect - far from it - but students have many well established and funded pathways to excellent future careers that do not include formal and 'academic' university education which seems to me to be part of the GCSE raison d'etre.
It's true, the UK government, teachers and parents need to work together to create a system that is fair and accessible, I agree. In the meantime, and until that coalition of the willing forms, nothing much will change much to the detriment of the young in UK schools.
Le Rosey was as beautiful as it was surreal. The privilege was palpable, and you’re right to point out that international schools operate with freedoms that allow them to move beyond GCSEs without facing the same consequences as others.
I want to push back on the idea that continental systems are inherently more humane or equitable just because they lack high-stakes exams at 16. While many European countries delay formal qualifications, the PISA data tells a more complicated story. In countries like Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, students are often streamed into different educational tracks as early as age ten or twelve. These placements are difficult to reverse and are frequently influenced more by family background than ability.
It’s true that vocational routes in some of these systems are better funded and more socially respected than their equivalents in the UK. But that can also entrench social divisions rather than soften them. The UK’s focus on academic qualifications is exhausting and often reductive, but at its best, the GCSE can act as a second chance. It provides a route to university for students whose early schooling did not go to plan. That opportunity does not always exist in systems where decisions are made much earlier.
As you rightly say, the real issue is not whether exams happen at 16, 18, or somewhere else, but whether the wider system offers flexibility, clarity, and real opportunity. Sometimes, the absence of formal assessment just makes the inequality less visible.
It's true that the Swiss system, for example, does stream kids at age 12 in to either the voie général (general pathway) or voie pré gymnasiale (academic pathway - essentially the 11+ equivalent). There is a very sophisticated system of 'bridges' that allows kids to cross over from one to the other but, to be fair, that's not very easy and most, I think, continue on the pathway decided at age 12. Does it entrench social inequality? Possibly. However, I don't get the feeling that there is the snobbism that one might encounter in the UK if a student joins apprenticeships and so on. Here, the apprenticeship pathway leads to the CFC and professional diplomas which open all sorts of wonderfully well paid jobs. Anyway, there's no perfect system. See you at Edufest? :)
As always, there’s no panacea. Worth looking at PISA’s comparative data for equity though. I’d love to be invited back to Le Rosey :)