It’s approaching 8.30am on a Wednesday in June and 140 grim-faced teenagers are making their way into an exam hall. Today it’s GCSE maths paper 2 (calculator). A posse of smiling staff encourage and cajole: “Good luck, hope it goes really well.” “Bags at the back please!” “Use a black pen only.” A few stragglers reluctantly make an entrance. “Find your seats quickly, please. Good luck!”

Once everyone is seated, there’s the exam prayer. (This is Urswick school, a mixed Church of England secondary in north-east London.) “Heavenly father, be with me as I take this exam, keep my mind alert and my memory sharp, calm my nerves and help me concentrate.” Some candidates bow their heads, others stare glumly into the distance. Then, a few final words of encouragement. “So, year 11, this is your time to shine. Good luck – you have an hour and a half. You may begin.” And they’re off. Welcome to the 2025 summer exam season.

GCSEs – the qualifications taken by 15- and 16-year-olds at the end of their secondary education – are well under way in assembly and sports halls across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. But so too is a growing debate about whether it might be time to reform, or even abolish, the exams that have shaped young people’s fortunes for almost four decades. The government’s national curriculum and assessment review, including potential reform to GCSEs, will be published later this year. Not a moment too soon, for many.

The GCSE – or general certificate of secondary education – was introduced in 1986, replacing the two-track “sheep and goats” system of O-levels and CSEs (certificate of secondary education). Since then they have undergone several changes, most significantly under David Cameron’s government and the then education secretary Michael Gove, who wanted a more “rigorous” set of qualifications. He increased content, and replaced modules and coursework with end-of-course exams, graded by a number (from 1 to 9, with 9 being the best) rather than a letter.

Critics have argued there are too many exams: students in England typically sit between 24 and 31 hours of exams in year 11, which is double, even triple, the totals for countries such as Ireland (16) and Canada (10). They say the curriculum content is vast and unwieldy – teachers struggle to cover it in the allotted time and pupils struggle to master it – and the high-stakes nature of the assessment creates excessive anxiety and stress for teenagers, more of whom now experience poor mental health, particularly since Covid.

They are worried about the narrow academic focus, the danger of teaching to the test and the alarmingly high failure rate. Every year, about a third of GCSE pupils across England finish year 11 without achieving a grade 4 pass in English and maths. Then there’s the fact that children in England are now required to remain in education or training until they’re 18, making GCSEs at 16 kind of redundant.

The roll call of industry leaders who would like to see them scrapped is growing. Among them are the former Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw and Kenneth Baker – the former education secretary who introduced GCSEs. They join institutions that have spoken out against the exams, such as Eton college, Bedales school, St Paul’s girls’ school and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Many teachers, parents and pupils still under the GCSE cosh would concur.

“While there is a place for these sorts of exams”, Blair wrote in the Telegraph in 2022, “we cannot rely on them alone: they only measure certain skills, they do not always do this accurately, and they invite narrow teaching styles aimed at passing tests rather than building other key aptitudes.”

Writing in the Guardian earlier this year, Simon Jenkins condemned what he described as the destructive cult of the exam, warning it was harming young people. “Just say it,” he urged. “Spit it out. Abolish GCSE. It has nothing to do with young people or their advancement. It has everything to do with quantifying, measuring, controlling and governing their preparation for life.”

Then there’s the chronic unfairness of the system. Covid fuelled the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils; now a boom in private tutoring is adding to the sense that there’s a two-tier system, with wealthier families able to pay to secure their children advantages that poorer families cannot afford. According to a 2023 Sutton Trust survey, almost half (46%) of pupils in London received private tutoring, compared with 30% for England as a whole.

“GCSEs are failing the fairness test,” says Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter. “We must face up to the stark truth that they reward children not just for what they know, but for the resources their families can draw upon – whether it is extensive help via the booming industry of private tutors or the middle-class assumptions embedded in our curriculum that alienate and disadvantage those lacking a particular cultural capital.

“We’ve created an exam system that perpetuates privilege from one generation to the next. Our meritocratic elites, obsessed solely with narrow academic memorisation tests, are losing the bigger political battles over our failure to nurture all talents in society.”

Ben Davis, headteacher at St Ambrose Barlow Roman Catholic high school in Swinton, Salford, is among those who want change. “GCSEs have run their course and are not fit for purpose. I’d go so far as to say they are making young people ill and they impoverish teaching.”

They are not inclusive, failure is “baked in” and “there is a disconnect between GCSEs and what employers need and expect,” says Davis. They should be replaced, he suggests, with a single diploma-based system for all young people, so that vocational, life skills, apprenticeships and academic qualifications sit alongside one another and pupils can combine these in the way that suits them best.

Sammy Wright, head of school at Southmoor Academy in Sunderland and author of Exam Nation: Why Our Obsession With Grades Fails Everyone – and a Better Way to Think About School, agrees the system is ripe for change. “The short answer is that GCSEs are designed to fit an academic trajectory. The model of learning they follow dovetails neatly with A-levels and then university, but that isn’t what many kids do.

“Essentially, GCSEs ask children to try an academic pathway, and then only when they fail do they offer a different version of what education might be. My favoured alternative,” he says, “is a passport qualification, where instead of discrete grades, they get an overall mark, within which there are many different elements. But this is long-term, it must be thought through and not rushed. It’s a decade’s work, really.”

It is a huge challenge, says Dr Mary Richardson, professor of educational assessment at UCL’s Institute of Education, “because GCSEs are (a) not ‘bad’ assessments at all; it is the culture they support and breed that is our major societal challenge, and one which I feel adds little value to both education and to the lives of teenagers. And (b) they are part of a massive, corporate assessment industry.

“I’ve been castigated in the past for suggesting that we should review national testing of this kind at 16, mainly because there are thousands of jobs that rely on this aspect of our education system. However, if we could invest more money in teacher education, and supporting teachers to assess in schools, then that is a way to reorientate all that expertise in assessment. And by that I mean a really rich type of assessment that adds value to learners and learning, not simply a one-off test situation with limited context.” Maybe, but concerns would doubtless persist about the reliability of and potential for bias in any teacher assessment-based system.

No prizes for guessing what Britain’s strictest headteacher thinks. Katharine Birbalsingh, who founded the high-achieving Michaela Community School in the London borough of Brent, is a firm supporter of GCSEs. She approved of Gove’s changes and thinks it’s important for children to face challenges such as exams, to help build the resilience that will get them through the vicissitudes of life.

“Look, GCSEs are not perfect. I would be the first one to say that. All exams have problems. But exams hold institutions to account. It’s not just about holding the children to account. Most of it is about holding the entire system to account.

“There needs to be something to set the standard. It’s also the case when it comes to employers that they have some sense of how the child has done. Otherwise it’s just a free-for-all where everybody’s just making up whatever they’re doing.”

Richard Brown, headteacher at Urswick, may not see eye to eye with Birbalsingh on everything, but he does agree that GCSEs should be retained, with some changes. “At the end of the day, this is an outcomes-driven business,” he says ruefully. This is his last summer of exams before retirement. “Personally I would not get rid of GCSEs. They are such a powerful brand and children do thrive on the challenge of them.

“I can just about remember when I took exams and I’m sure I was nervous, but I went in and did it. That’s grit and resilience, isn’t it? That’s what schools have to look at and make sure their youngsters can deal with setbacks.”

We are chatting in his office, reflecting on his 40 years as a teacher. Over in the exam hall, maths paper 2 draws to an end. It seems to have gone reasonably well, though the question on angles caused some problems. “It was OK,” says Scarlett cautiously. “A lot of predicted topics came up.” “Challenging questions but nothing I couldn’t overcome,” Kelvin adds confidently. “Topics that I didn’t revise came up but I used my foundation mathematical knowledge to work it out,” says Fatou. “Perfecto!” breezes Joshua.

And so the annual ritual continues. The see-through pencil cases, the clocks, the rows of desks, the last-minute revision and prompt cards, and the final reassuring words from ever-attentive teachers who are desperate for their students to do their very best. Maths paper 2 is over but there’s maths paper 3 still to go, plus religious studies, history, French, English language, geography …

Elsewhere in Urswick’s bright, modern classrooms, year 10s are well on their way through their GCSE courses, preparing for next summer’s exam season. The debate will go on, but in all likelihood, so too will the exams. In some shape or form. For the time being.