GCSEs are a waste of time and put unnecessary pressure on teens. They do more harm than good to the quality of our education and should be scrapped altogether. In this post I will explain why, I am open to debate however so feel free to reply.

1) They once served a purpose that is now obsolete - back when O levels were first invented, many young people finished school altogether at 16 so therefore they were necessary so that they had at least some qualification to show that they attended school and had a decent level of knowledge. However, nowadays pupils are required to stay in education until they are 18 so gcses are of no relevance. Yes they can be used to decide which a levels you do but really there is no need to use official qualifications for this, school test grades would suffice.

2) They take the soul out of learning - For the whole of year 10 and 11, my lessons were essentially a load of bullet points from the specification. Teachers will not bother adding any information other than what you "need" to know. Nowadays there's no such thing as learning things just because they're interesting. Pupils are taught to pass exams rather than to love of be inspired by a subject. For me, exams take all the fun out of learning subjects.

3) They prevent bright pupils from being pushed - There are plenty of students who are capable of learning A level content as early as year 10 but instead are forced to continue with basic gcse content rather than being pushed and challenged by harder content. Teachers see it as there being no point in teaching them a level stuff if it's not going to be on their exams.

4) They cause lower ability pupils to fall behind - Gcses add time constraints to education, lower ability pupils who need more time learning the basics are forced to learn harder content very quickly before their exams. This means that they never grasp the basics so end up worse off.

5) They allow top universities to unfairly discriminate - it is well known that Oxbridge as well as some other unis/courses use gcses when comparing applicants. However you could argue that discriminating by ones performance at age 16 is unfair and irrelevant, surely it should only matter what you are like now.

6) They put students at poor performing secondary schools at A disadvantage - There are many more sub standard secondary schools than there are colleges. Therefore pupils at poor secondary schools are at a large disadvantage whereas at A level, pupils are on a much more even playing field.

7) They put unnecessary pressure on teens - for the reasons explained above, gcses are unnecessary but cause huge amounts of stress and anxiety for teens. Essentially, they cause people to suffer needlessly. The whole ordeal almost seems like its designed specifically to be stressful and honestly it is not needed. Teens already have a lot off pressures that cause anxiety and many are not mature enough to cope with it, exams just add to this and create a generally unpleasant experience