Education Secretary Michael Gove is to announce a major u-turn Thursday on plans to axe GCSEs and replace them with an English Baccalaureate, two newspapers reported.
The Independent and Daily Telegraph said the Conservative minister had faced heavy pressure from his party’s coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, to rethink the controversial proposals.
The turnaround would come less than five months after Gove unveiled plans to axe the 25-year-old GCSE system and replace it with a baccalaureate focused on core subjects such as English, maths, science, history, languages and geography.
The Lib Dems are believed to have rejected the new system after critics said it would marginalise other subjects such as art, drama and sport, the Telegraph reported.
Parliament’s education committee had published a damning report on the plans last month, warning that the government “has not proved its case that GCSEs in the key academic subjects should be abolished”.
Nearly a hundred arts organisations including the National Theatre and National Portrait Gallery also wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron last month urging him to drop the reforms, saying they would undermine Britain’s “economic and cultural health”.
The u-turn would represent a major defeat for Gove, seen as one of Cameron’s most reforming ministers and considered by some as his potential heir to the Conservative leadership.
It would also be the second time the Lib Dems have forced Gove to change course, after the party blocked plans last year to replace GCSEs with a two-tier exam system for teenagers of different ability levels.
The Telegraph said the government would reveal a series of major changes to the existing GCSE system on Thursday that would come into force from 2017.
Exams will be taken at the end of two years instead of as modules spread over both years and the brightest students will be able to take extension papers offering tougher questions in maths and science, the broadsheet said.
There will be more emphasis on mental arithmetic, spelling and grammar, it added.
Gove abandons plan to scrap GCSES: reports
