REFORMING GCSEs
Latymer Upper overhaul GCSEs A whole school curriculum reform
A leading independent day school in London will remove GCSEs from the curriculum and replace them with their own assessed courses. What changes are being made?
At Latymer Upper School, we have decided that students from 2027 (the new Year 7 students joining us in 2024) will no longer take GCSE exams, apart from the legally required Maths and English Language. We believe the exams no longer meet the needs of our students. In a school where our students are staying through to eighteen (we have no intention to alter the A Levels process), we no longer see them as desirable and we know we can do so much better. Why was this decision made?
At the time when young people are undergoing serious neurological development, we are slowing 74 | EDUCATION CHOICES MAGAZINE | AU T U M N 2 02 3
down their learning and pushing them through an exam system which does not take into account teens at different stages of development. We also lose a vast amount of teaching time with examinations, study leave, exam preparation and technique when we could be preparing them better for A Level study. We want our young people to be independent and original thinkers and we don’t think traditional (written) exams are proof of what they know. We also want to be able to stretch the most able - those who end up with all grade 8s and 9s, but who more or less got those grades months before in their mocks. What real learning have they done in those subsequent months? Our proposals are based on years of conversations, research and development of ideas. We have held workshops and focus groups with employers, universities in the UK and internationally, parents, other schools, students,
