Gove’s plans to replace GCSEs with O- Levels cause outcry
The Education Secretary’s plan is for students to begin studying tougher O-level style exams in English, maths and the sciences from September 2014, taking the first new exams in 2016. Less academic pupils will sit a different, more straightforward exam, like the old CSE. Other plans are for the national curriculum at secondary level to be scrapped, so that heads would decide what pupils should study – as is already the case with new academy schools. The traditional benchmark of pupils getting five good GCSEs is also going to be abolished.

