Top institutions defended over snub to ‘toughest ever’ GCSES

♦ Leading private schools have shunned the new GCSES, labelled the toughest ever, amid fears that their pupils would become guinea pigs.

The head of Britain’s largest independent schools body has defended the institutions after reports that they refused to allow their pupils to sit the exams, even though more than 500,000 state school pupils did.

The harder GCSES have been introduced to toughen up syllabuses and cut down on the number of students getting A*s. But the majority of the top 30 independent schools, such as Eton College and Wellington College, opted to take the international GCSE, seen as an easier test.

Shaun Fenton, chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, defended schools that had not switched to the new qualification.

Mr Fenton, headmaster of Reigate Grammar School, said: “Seeping into the national conversation … is the idea that the new GCSES are harder than existing international GCSES. This is not only wrong but making such pronouncements when candidates were still sitting exams was unfair and undermining to children.”

The controversy came after a warning from education leaders that grades risk becoming a “lottery”, as teachers have struggled to accurately predict grades under the new system.