The Secretary of State for Education has withdrawn plans for his troubled EBacc examination system.
Among the reasons for this change was the warning that some examination boards could go bankrupt as a result of his plans to introduce a single examination board, and of the possibility of them suing the Department for Education for breach of EU procurement rules.
Even though the English Baccalaureate Certificate is now history, Michael Gove is still planning changes to the existing GCSE exam curriculum, as of September 2015.
Exams in core subjects, he says, will be taken at the end of two years, as opposed to being taken in stages, with "fewer bite-sized and overly structured questions and a reduced role for coursework".
English and history GCSEs will test what he calls "extended writing", while "Internal assessment and the use of exam aids should be kept to a minimum and used only where there is a compelling case to do so."
Other planned changes include: specific teaching to meet the needs of left-handed pupils; science lessons to introduce pupils to evolution at the age of nine and teach them how to build electric circuits before the end of primary school; math lessons to introduce pupils to fractions at the age of five, and to algebra at eleven.
A new citizenship curriculum will cover personal finance.
League tables in their present form will be abolished, a new grading system is to be introduced and to check standards are being maintained, a national "sampling" test will be established.
There will be no more GCSE "tiers", meaning the easy "foundation paper" will be scrapped.
Mr Gove is waiting for a response from Ofqual to his question regarding the achievability of his planned changes, with the first exams to be sat in 2017.
Comments about the change in plans range from this, from Stephen Twigg, the Shadow Education Secretary: "The trouble with this secretary of state is that he thinks he knows the answer to everything, so he digs out the fag packet and comes up with his latest wheeze." ...
... to this, from Christine Blower, of the National Union of Teachers: "This is a victory for all those who have campaigned against this ill-thought out reform to GCSEs. The education secretary must now learn a lesson from this fiasco and consult with those who know far more than he appears to do about education."
