Secondary schools in England will be told not to teach GCSEs early, as part of a shake-up of how children in Years 7 to 9 are taught, the BBC reported. The government wants Key Stage 3 to be a more distinct phase, with less focus on exams and more on a "richer, more engaging" experience. The Department for Education said the changes respond to two reviews that found pupils were increasingly disengaged in their early teenage years, affecting attendance and achievement. The move reverses the previous Conservative government's emphasis on using the first three years of secondary school to focus on core subjects and assessments.
Former Education Secretary Michael Gove prioritized English, maths, and science, raised grade boundaries, made exams harder, limited resits, and made GCSEs linear, so they are sat at the end of Year 11 rather than over the course of Key Stage 4. Those reforms pushed teachers to start exam preparation earlier, at the expense of unexamined parts of their subjects. Education Secretary Lucy Powell said the early years of secondary school "should be a time when children are excited to go to school and engage in the specialist and much broader teaching on offer, and where they find their passion and develop a love of learning." Ringfencing Key Stage 3, she said, would allow "more time to develop deeper understanding."
The department has pledged a "more engaging offer" in drama, PE, music, and languages, which have seen a decline in take-up, when it publishes a new curriculum later this year. It says persistent absence nearly doubles between Year 6 and Year 9. A survey commissioned by the International Baccalaureate found GCSE prep dominated Key Stage 3 learning in England, with 57% of teachers saying it was the leading influence on the curriculum. "The pressures of GCSEs and an overcrowded curriculum are resulting in too many children receiving a narrower offer during Key Stage 3 and being rushed towards exams without grasping the fundamentals," Powell said. "I'm putting a stop to that."
A 2015 Ofsted report once suggested Key Stage 3 may be "wasted years," a view that pupils aged 11 to 14 lacked a clear motivation to work hard. Critics of the earlier reforms said making each exam more significant simply caused teachers to teach only what might come up. Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Munira Wilson said school was "more than drilling kids for exams" but cautioned against "micromanaging" teachers. A new curriculum "alone won't get children back into the classroom," she said, because many pupils miss school because of anxiety and unmet mental health needs, and "schools can't offer more drama, music and languages without the teachers to teach them." The verified policy is a planned shift away from early GCSE teaching, still awaiting the new curriculum.