The impact of reducing the number of exams on results in GCSEs.

Abstract

Currently, GCSE students are required to take a large number of exams at the end of their courses. This has led to calls recently for a reduction in the amount of assessment for these students. The main aim of this research was to investigate the impact on overall performance in GCSE subjects of reducing the number of components. In particular, we were interested in how the grade achieved by candidates on a reduced number of components compares to their grade on the full qualification. To investigate this, we used data from the OCR awarding body from summer 2024. In Maths, we found that around 85% of candidates would have received the same grade if the number of components was reduced from three to two (and over 99.9% would be within one grade). The percentages achieving the same grade were lower for other subjects. This may reflect the different structure of Maths, where all topics are examined in all three components. The subjects with some non-examined assessment (Drama, Music, and PE) had lower percentages achieving the same grade. This is likely to be because candidates tended to get substantially higher grades in NEA than in examined components.