The results of GCSEs revealed that thousands more young people are taking exams at least one year early. This caused accusations that GCSEs have become easier to be sat for many entries. According to official figures from the Joint Council for Qualifications, 11% of maths GCSE candidates were taken 12 months or more early while almost 83,179 teenagers took the exam before year 11. The number of students who sat the exam early last year was 60,712. The same situation is with English GCSE with 66,909 entries sitting the exam early, compared with 42,150 last year.
The number of students with A or A* grades taking the exam early has risen by 0.4 percentage points for English and 0.8 for math. Clara Kenyon, acting chief executive of the OCR exam board, considers that the reason for teenagers were taking GCSEs early was the discard of compulsory exams for young people at the age of 14 by ministers.
However, Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, wrote in his custom essay that the increased number of students who are sitting GCSEs early appeared for the reason of too easy exams—I do not get it, seems Guardian meant something different, do not complicate it, make it as G says.
Alan Smithers said: "There is now a case for recalibrating the exams and putting in harder questions to distinguish between candidates". Then he added: "Schools may believe that the more practice a pupil who is borderline has, the better".