GCSEs are spoon-feeding the next generation. What is the alternative?

GCSEs have been a point of contention for students, parents and teachers for many years now. Should they be reformed? Should they be scrapped entirely? Why are young people put through such stressful exams? ACS Egham‘s Head of School, Jeremy Lewis, asks why UK schools are “spoon-feeding the next generation with an archaic, uninspiring curriculum.”

In my opinion, it is a tragedy that the large majority of our country’s young people are still being taught an archaic curriculum – that feels around 30 years out of date – and which, unforgivably, does not enable or encourage young people to think for themselves.

In the GCSE system, students are largely spoon-fed information and prepared to take exams. But what good is that for anyone?

I think we can all agree that our wellbeing is easily enhanced when we’re working on or studying what we’re interested in. We need to be able to teach in a way that is motivating and engaging for young people, so that they can drive their own learning forward and be happy in what they’re doing. But, even with the best teachers in the world, it is hard to achieve this through GCSEs due to the fundamental way they are structured and delivered. Both students and teachers are being strait-jacketed by old fashioned ways of teaching content, and I think this inevitably prevents young people from reaching their full potential.

So, what is the answer? If you scrap GCSEs without a replacement, there would be a huge vacuum left for students at an important stage of their education and personal development, often referred to as the ‘lost middle years’.

But we cannot simply just update GCSEs in their current format; we need a robust transformation that goes beyond changing curriculum content. If you don’t modernise the delivery of education, you really won’t be able to achieve that much. This, of course, sounds like a tremendous challenge, but in my view, a strong alternative already exists – the International Baccalaureate’s (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP).

The MYP moves away from the rote learning so deeply engrained in GCSEs to teach children how to learn. It’s not focused purely on memorisation of content, but more on the skills students need to succeed as learners and in their wider lives. It is based on an inquiry-led approach that inspires students to be the ones asking the questions and gives them an interest in their education.

The MYP approach to learning and teaching also appreciates that subjects are not siloed. Part of what I think makes GCSEs so outdated, and uninteresting to young people, is this old-fashioned concept that subjects have to exist in isolation from each other. When we all know that science exists because maths exists, and that maths is very musical, and music is mathematical, why aren’t GCSE students being taught in an interdisciplinary fashion, like they are in the MYP?

Working across subjects is how people work best, and is much more akin to what students will be expected to do in the world of work, as well as at many universities. Not to mention that this way of learning is much more interesting anyway!

Another obvious challenge of the current GCSE system is assessment, but I don’t believe examinations themselves are the big issue. It’s the way students are assessed in GCSEs that can be stressful and is, ultimately, unproductive. In the MYP, there are still examinations, but the IB focuses on assessment for learning, rather than assessment of learning. The examinations, therefore, aim to test how students are able to apply their knowledge, not what content they can retain and regurgitate. Many MYP exams are also online and interactive, again aligning with the way the world works now, not how it did 30 years ago.

The different way of educating and assessing young people in the MYP doesn’t make the programme any less rigorous than GCSEs. In fact, I would go so far to say it is even more challenging, just in a completely different way.

Instead of shackling students to exam revision, the MYP is designed to help students extend their capabilities, and this works for children of all abilities. The grading criteria, for example, is very explicit and sets clear targets. As such, students know what it takes to improve and can move forward practically. Students are also required to complete an element of service learning, where they take action to support their community. This fosters a level of personal maturity that is simply not even considered in GCSEs. Students are more than capable of making an impact, so why hold them back?

Aside from the academics, in the MYP students are able to apply their personal passions to their school work through the Personal Project, where they form a research question of their own design and have to contextualise it.

GCSEs, in short, are no longer fit for purpose and, while many GCSE students will still go on to do great things, we must ask “are we preventing the next generation from reaching their full potential?”. And, importantly, “are we making these school years unnecessarily miserable?”. Young people are being short-changed, but there is already a great alternative out there. Schools and parents just need to be brave enough to adopt it, rather than following, like sheep, an outdated and disconnected system.

If the past two years and the global pandemic have shown anything it is that we – leaders, educators, students – are incredibly resilient to change. So instead of the change being bad, or a reaction to a virus, why not overturn the GCSE system for a positive difference?