The Curriculum and Assessment Review: What the 2026 Reforms Mean for GCSEs and A-Levels

The Curriculum and Assessment Review was commissioned by the Labour government in July 2024, with Professor Becky Francis CBE appointed to chair it. Its brief was to examine the national curriculum and the assessment system in England from KS1 through to 16-to-19 study, and to recommend how to make both fit for the coming decade.

The review worked in two stages. An interim report, published on 18 March 2025, set out its diagnosis but deliberately contained no formal recommendations. It flagged four areas of concern — that the EBacc constrained subject choice, questions over KS2 writing assessment, disparities in religious education, and the sheer volume of exams young people sit — and it explicitly ruled out wholesale changes to exams or to the number of subjects studied. That phrase, "evolution, not revolution", set the tone for everything that followed.

The final report, 'Building a world-class curriculum for all', arrived on 5 November 2025. It runs to roughly 196 pages, of which around 16 pages are recommendations. You may see the figure "118 recommendations" quoted; I would treat that number cautiously, because it is not independently confirmed. What is confirmed is that the report made a large number of recommendations, and the government published its official response the very same day, accepting the great majority of them.

So the review is complete. This is not a consultation still in progress or a green paper awaiting a decision — the report is out, the government has responded, and the direction of travel is set. What remains is the long, detailed work of turning accepted recommendations into a curriculum and into qualifications, and that is where the timeline becomes the whole story.

If you remember one thing from this article, make it this: the national curriculum and the GCSE qualifications are on two different timelines, and conflating them is the source of almost all the confusion I hear.

The revised national curriculum — the statutory programmes of study that schools teach — is due to be published in spring 2027, for first teaching in full from September 2028. Schools are being given roughly four terms to prepare. Interestingly, it will be published as a digital product with rolling updates, rather than the infrequent wholesale reviews of the past.

Reformed GCSE qualifications follow on a separate, later track. According to the exam board AQA, the first accredited reformed qualifications are expected to be ready in 2028, ready for first teaching from September 2029, with a second phase first taught from September 2030. That means the earliest cohort to actually sit fully reformed GCSEs is around 2031.

The practical consequence is stark and reassuring in equal measure. A student sitting GCSEs or A-Levels in summer 2026, 2027 or 2028 will experience essentially no structural change from this review. The specifications they are studying, the papers they will sit, the grading — all of it continues broadly as now. If your child is in Year 9, 10 or 11 today, this review does not change the exams in front of them.

Setting the timeline aside, what has the government actually committed to? Several content and assessment changes were accepted in principle, though in most cases the detail is still being worked out subject-by-subject with Ofqual. Here is what is genuinely confirmed, as distinct from what is merely being explored.

The most eye-catching is the target to reduce overall GCSE exam time by at least 10 per cent — roughly 2.5 to 3 hours for the average student. The Department for Education intends to deliver this working with Ofqual and the exam boards, cutting exam time while keeping qualifications valid and retaining at least two assessment components per subject. Ofqual has said this is achievable without compromising rigour. Crucially, this lands with the reformed specifications, so it is a 2029-and-beyond change, not something arriving next summer.

On subject content, the confirmed changes are a triple-science entitlement or guarantee at GCSE, a new oracy framework spanning primary and secondary, a broader, more "future-facing" computing GCSE to replace the narrow computer science qualification, and compulsory citizenship in primary schools covering financial and media literacy and democracy. Religious education is to be added to the national curriculum for the first time, through a staged, sector-led approach — though its inclusion is conditional on the sector reaching consensus via a national task-and-finish group, with a public consultation to follow, so the detailed content is still being developed.

It is worth being precise about what is not yet confirmed. A 16-to-18 data science and AI qualification is being explored, not committed to. On-screen or digital GCSE exams remain aspirational — exam boards are targeting a major subject by around 2030, but this is subject to Ofqual accreditation that has not been granted, and it is not a Francis Review outcome at all. I would not plan around either of those.

For families choosing GCSE options, this is the section that matters most in the medium term. The government has confirmed it will scrap the EBacc performance measure — the accountability metric that tracked how many pupils took English, maths, the sciences, a language and either history or geography. The review judged that it had unnecessarily constrained student choice and had failed to boost language uptake as intended.

In its place, the government will reform Progress 8 and Attainment 8 to reward greater breadth of subjects and to give arts GCSEs equal status alongside academic ones. This is an area where the government actually went further than the review recommended: the Francis panel favoured keeping the Progress 8 structure and simply renaming the "EBacc bucket" as "Academic Breadth", whereas ministers have proposed a more thoroughly reformed measure.

The proposed new design uses buckets for English and maths; for science (double or separate sciences plus computing); and four "breadth" buckets drawing from humanities, creative subjects or languages, with RE newly classified as a humanity. I would stress the word proposed — this is subject to a consultation, with the government response expected in the summer term of 2026 so that schools can factor it into subject choices for pupils starting GCSEs in September 2027. The reformed measure would first apply to GCSEs sat in 2029.

What does this mean for a family choosing options now? Very little changes immediately. If your child is picking GCSEs for a 2026 or 2027 start, the practical advice in my guide to how to choose GCSE options still holds: keep strong core subjects, keep a broad and credible mix, and do not chase a performance measure at the expense of subjects your child will thrive in. The removal of the EBacc simply makes it easier to justify an arts or creative subject without feeling you are closing academic doors — but a well-chosen, broad set of GCSEs was always the sensible approach.

A-Levels feature far less in this story than GCSEs, and that is itself the headline. The Francis Review was not primarily an A-Level review, and there is no wholesale overhaul of A-Levels coming out of it. If you are choosing or sitting A-Levels now, the landscape is broadly stable.

The most important A-Level context predates the review entirely. The Advanced British Standard — the previous Conservative government's proposal to merge A-Levels and T-Levels into a single qualification, alongside a "maths to 18" ambition — was scrapped by the incoming Labour government in July 2024, when the Chancellor confirmed there was no funding for the roughly 200-million-pound-a-year overhaul. A-Levels and T-Levels therefore continue as they are.

There is one area under active reform that touches post-16 students: the rules on English and maths resits and the condition of funding, which the review found not fit for purpose, with new Level 1 "stepped" qualifications proposed. I would treat this as directionally correct but not fully settled — the proposals are still being finalised. It matters most to students who did not achieve a grade 4 in English or maths at GCSE and are continuing to study them post-16.

So my advice to sixth-formers and their families is unchanged. Choose subjects on strength, interest and the doors they open, exactly as I set out in my guide to which A-Levels to choose. If you are aiming at competitive maths, physics or engineering courses, the admissions tests — the MAT, TMUA, ESAT and PAT — remain far more consequential to your application than anything in the Francis Review, and my guide to those admissions tests is the better place to focus your energy.

A balanced account has to include the recommendations the government declined, because they tell you as much about the direction of policy as the ones it accepted.

The government did not accept making Year 8 diagnostic tests in English and maths mandatory. The review had proposed commissioning the design and trialling of such a test with a view to making it compulsory; ministers declined, and instead schools are expected to assess pupils' progress in writing and maths in Year 8 using products of their own choice. It also declined to put a new KS2 test into headline accountability. So the fears of a wave of new statutory primary and lower-secondary tests did not materialise.

Two genuinely near-term changes are worth separating out here, because they are often lumped in with the Francis Review but are actually distinct. First, Ofsted launched a new inspection framework from 10 November 2025 — report cards with a five-point scale replacing single-word headline grades — and a legal challenge brought by school leaders was dismissed at the High Court. That affects how your child's school is inspected right now, unlike the curriculum changes.

Second, a statutory mobile-phone duty for schools in England is being introduced under the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act, with DfE guidance updated in January 2026 stating that all schools should be mobile-phone-free environments by default. In practice this formalises what most schools already do — the Children's Commissioner found in April 2025 that 99.8 per cent of primary and around 90 per cent of secondary schools already restrict phones. The precise commencement details are still being pinned down, so I would not over-interpret the exact dates, but the direction is clear.

On assessment integrity, Ofqual and JCQ rules for 2026 prohibit AI as the sole marker of student work and treat passing off AI-generated work as malpractice. Ofqual published principles in January 2026 for AI use in high-stakes marking, and is exploring assisted marking with human oversight. This signals gradual, tightly regulated change — not an imminent overhaul of how exams are marked.

The reader for this piece is really every anxious parent, and what they want is analysis, not just a summary. So here are my reasoned predictions — each one a claim plus the evidence behind it, and each with an honest note on how confident I actually am. Predictions are not facts, and I will flag where I am guessing.

After all of that, the practical takeaway is calmer than the headlines suggest. If your child is sitting GCSEs or A-Levels in 2026, 2027 or 2028, this review changes nothing about their exams — focus on the specification in front of them, not on reform years away. Results days this year remain 13 August for A-Levels and 20 August for GCSEs, exactly as scheduled.

If you are choosing GCSE options for a 2026 or 2027 start, watch for the Progress 8 consultation response in the summer term of 2026, but do not let it drive the decision. A broad, strong set of subjects chosen around your child's genuine strengths has always been the right approach, and the removal of the EBacc only makes that easier to justify. My guide to choosing GCSE options walks through it in detail.

If your child is in primary school now — the cohort who will actually meet the reformed curriculum from 2028 and reformed GCSEs from 2029 onward — the sensible response is not to pre-empt reforms whose detail does not yet exist. It is to build the durable foundations that every version of the curriculum rewards: fluent number and literacy, the confidence to speak and reason aloud that the new oracy framework will formalise, and a genuine curiosity across science and the humanities.

That is exactly the work I do with families across Oxford, Kidlington, Bicester, Didcot, Witney and Abingdon — one-to-one primary tuition to build early confidence, GCSE and A-Level tuition to hit a target grade, and support with university admissions — tutoring built around the individual child, whatever the policy weather.

I will keep this guide updated as the consultations report and the detail firms up. For now, the most valuable thing I can tell most families is the least dramatic: breathe out. The exams in front of your child this year and next are the same exams, and steady, well-directed work on them is time far better spent than worrying about a curriculum that will not reach the exam hall until the 2030s.