General Certificate of Secondary Education

The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academically rigorous, internationally recognised qualification awarded in a specified subject, generally taken in a number of subjects by pupils in secondary education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland over two years (three years in certain schools). One of the main changes to previous educational qualifications in the United Kingdom was to allow pupils to complete coursework during their two years of study, which was marked by their teachers and contributed to their final examination grade. There has been a move recently from doing coursework and modular examinations for part of the course when pupils would take exams throughout the course to an end of year exam after the two years of study (a 'linear' series). The exams are being revised to make them more difficult such as testing skills from a whole text in English instead of part of a text. Coursework has now been replaced by Controlled Assessments in certain subjects, in which the student completes a number of assessed pieces of work which will ultimately count towards their final examination grade in the specified subject. The Controlled Assessment component of the qualification is usually done under exam style conditions. GCSEs being phased in from 2015 generally have little to no coursework/controlled assessment influence on the final grade.