England's Curriculum Is Changing: What the New National Curriculum Deal Means for Your Child's School From 2027

The story so far

On 5 November 2025, the Department for Education published its response to Professor Becky Francis's Curriculum and Assessment Review — the biggest overhaul of what English schools teach in more than a decade. The government confirmed a revised national curriculum will be published in 2027, for first teaching in 2028. Reformed GCSEs will follow, with first teaching from September 2029 onwards.

For parents, the practical questions are the ones that matter: what is actually changing, when does it hit your child's classroom, and will they sit their exams on the old syllabus or the new one? Here is what we know so far.

Who is affected and when

The rollout is staggered. New programmes of study will be available in 2027, with the revised national curriculum being taught from September 2028 and updated GCSEs for first teaching from September 2029 onwards. This gives leaders and teachers time to understand what's new, review existing schemes of work, and make appropriate adaptations.

That means the timeline for your child depends heavily on the year group they are in now.

• Primary pupils (Reception through Year 6): most will be taught elements of the new curriculum from September 2028. Younger children will experience the full reformed curriculum through their primary years.
• Current Year 7s and 8s: they will move onto the new curriculum in Key Stage 3, but will sit their GCSEs on specifications close to the current ones — reformed GCSEs are for first teaching from 2029, meaning first exams in 2031 at the earliest for most subjects.
• The transition cohort: pupils starting Year 9 in September 2026 will be in Year 11 when the new curriculum becomes mandatory in September 2028, but will sit GCSEs on the current specifications. They are unlikely to be examined on reformed content.
• Sixth formers: A-level reforms come later still, and today's Year 12s and 13s will not be affected.

If your child is currently in Year 5, 6 or 7, they are the group whose secondary education will most straddle the change.

What the reformed curriculum actually covers

The Francis Review took a "proportionate" approach — it did not tear up the current curriculum but proposed targeted changes. The government has accepted most, though not all, of its recommendations.

Primary school changes

The government will introduce a new national curriculum from 2028, scrap the EBacc league table measure, make citizenship compulsory in primary schools and force all secondaries to offer triple science GCSE.

Citizenship in primary is new. It will cover media literacy and financial literacy, law and rights, democracy and government, and climate education early on. The idea is that children encounter these ideas before secondary school, not for the first time in Key Stage 4.

Writing assessment at the end of Year 6 will be strengthened, and there will be revisions to how maths is sequenced across primary years.

Secondary school changes

The English Baccalaureate — the accountability measure that pushed schools to enter pupils for a specific combination of GCSEs — is being scrapped. The government is proposing sweeping reforms to Progress 8, the main league table measure for secondary schools, in a bid to boost arts take-up. In plain terms: schools will be judged less on whether pupils take history or geography and languages, and more on a broader mix that includes creative subjects.

Other confirmed changes include:

• Triple science (separate GCSEs in biology, chemistry and physics) offered as standard in every secondary school.
• Computing GCSE replacing the current, narrower computer science GCSE, with a new post-16 qualification in data science and AI being explored.
• New Year 8 tests in English and maths, sitting between Key Stage 2 SATs and GCSEs.
• GCSE exam time reduced by around 10 per cent overall, to ease pressure on Year 11.
• Oracy — spoken communication — embedded alongside reading and writing across the curriculum.
• Religious Education brought into the national curriculum after a consensus reached with faith groups.
• A core enrichment entitlement covering civic engagement, arts and culture, outdoor activities, sport and life skills.

For the first time, the new national curriculum will be digital and machine-readable, to support teachers to more easily sequence their school curricula.

The INSET days question

Schools are worried about how they will absorb all of this. In response, the Teaching Commission has also called for three extra INSET days in 2027 and 2028 to help prepare school staff.

INSET days (In-Service Training days) are the non-teaching days schools already use for staff training — five a year in most maintained schools. Adding three more across the transition period would mean three additional days when your child is not in school, but when their teachers are being trained on the new content and assessment methods.

Nothing has been decided formally yet. If your school confirms extra INSET days for 2027 or 2028, that is the reason.

What this means for your child's exams

The most common worry parents raise is the fear of their child being caught mid-reform — sitting exams on a syllabus their teachers have not been fully trained in.

The government has been explicit that the transition will be sequenced to avoid this. Because reformed GCSEs are for first teaching from September 2029, no pupil will sit their GCSEs on reformed specifications until summer 2031. Anyone taking GCSEs before that date — including current Year 7s, 8s and 9s in the vast majority of subjects — will be examined on the current content, even if some elements of the new Key Stage 3 curriculum have been introduced in the meantime.

In short: your child will not be examined on material they were not taught. The DfE has designed the timeline specifically to prevent that.

What to do now

There is very little a parent needs to do at this stage. The revised programmes of study will not be published until spring 2027, and schools themselves are only beginning to plan.

A few sensible steps:

• Read updates from your child's school in the summer and autumn terms of 2026 onwards. Most schools will start communicating changes about a year before first teaching.
• Keep an eye on Year 6 writing and Year 8 assessments if your child is approaching those years — the assessment models are being revised.
• Don't rush to change your child's subject choices for GCSE. If your child is choosing options in 2026 or 2027, they will sit current-style GCSEs. The scrapping of the EBacc does not remove any subject; it changes how schools are measured, not what pupils can study.
• Watch for the consultation on Progress 8 reform. If you have strong views on how schools should be held to account, this is when to make them known.

Where private tutoring can genuinely help during a transition like this is on the fundamentals: strong reading, writing and maths at primary, and secure Key Stage 3 knowledge that will underpin any GCSE specification, old or new. Reformed curricula rarely change what a well-taught pupil needs; they change the balance and the emphasis. A child who reads widely, writes clearly and reasons mathematically will thrive under any version of the national curriculum.

The short version

• The new national curriculum will be published in spring 2027 and first taught from September 2028.
• Reformed GCSEs will be first taught from September 2029, first examined from 2031.
• The EBacc is being scrapped; citizenship, oracy, media and financial literacy are being added.
• Current Year 10 and 11 pupils are unaffected. Current Year 7 to 9 pupils will feel the changes in Key Stage 3 but sit current-style GCSEs. Primary pupils will experience the biggest shift.
• Extra INSET days in 2027 and 2028 are likely, to give teachers time to prepare.

The details will firm up over 2026. For now, the honest answer to most parents' questions is: your child's education is not being upended, but it is being updated — and the government has left a genuine runway for schools to get ready.