The New GCSE Curriculum Consultation Opens This Month — What It Means for Year 9 and Year 10 Now

The short answer

If your child is in Year 9 or Year 10 now, they will sit the current GCSE specifications. The reforms being consulted on this autumn will not reach classrooms until September 2029, and the first cohort to sit reformed GCSEs will be pupils who are in Year 7 or younger today.

The Department for Education announced on 4 June 2026 that it will run public consultations in September 2026 on draft Programmes of Study for the National Curriculum at key stages 1, 2 and 3, and on Subject Knowledge Requirements for reformed GCSEs. This is a significant moment for English education, but for parents of current Year 9 and Year 10 students the practical message is simple: nothing changes for your child's exams.

What is actually being consulted on

The consultation is the next formal step in the government's response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, chaired by Professor Becky Francis CBE. The review's final report was published in November 2025, and the government accepted the bulk of its recommendations.

The government confirmed it will publish a revised curriculum in 2027 for first teaching in 2028, update GCSEs for first teaching from 2029, and deliver new V-level qualifications from 2027.

So the September 2026 consultation covers two separate but linked pieces of work:

• The national curriculum itself — the programmes of study that shape what is taught from Reception through to the end of Year 9.
• GCSE subject content — the "Subject Knowledge Requirements" that exam boards use to build the specifications your child eventually sits.

The consultation is a draft-content stage. Nothing is being decided about exam papers, grade boundaries or the 9–1 grading scale in this round.

Which year groups are affected, and when

Working backwards from a September 2029 first-teaching date makes the picture clearer.

• Year 11 (2025/26) — sitting GCSEs summer 2026. No change.
• Year 10 (2025/26) — sitting GCSEs summer 2027. No change.
• Year 9 (2025/26) — sitting GCSEs summer 2028. No change.
• Year 8 (2025/26) — sitting GCSEs summer 2029. No change to their GCSEs, but they will have been taught under the revised national curriculum in Year 9 and early Year 10.
• Year 7 (2025/26) — likely to be the first cohort to sit reformed GCSEs, from summer 2031, if the first-teaching-2029 timeline holds and their subject falls in the first phase.

The DfE proposes reforming GCSEs and A-levels in two phases: first teaching of the first phase of GCSEs in 2029, and the second phase in 2030. That two-phase rollout is worth flagging — even within a single school year group, some subjects will change before others.

Which subjects change first

The DfE has not yet published the full list of phase-one subjects, and that is one of the things the consultation is expected to clarify. What is already public is that geography is in scope for the first wave: the DfE said the national curriculum and GCSEs are being updated for the first time in over a decade, with consultations covering Programmes of Study for key stages 1 to 3 and Subject Knowledge Requirements for GCSE geography.

Several other subjects are expected to feature in phase one, given the review's specific recommendations, including:

• English language and English literature
• Maths
• The sciences — with the government aiming to make triple science GCSE standard, and to scrap the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) headline measure
• History and geography
• Modern foreign languages

Design and technology, computing, the arts and vocational-style GCSEs are more likely to fall into the second phase in 2030, though the sequencing will be confirmed through the consultation.

What is not changing

It is worth being direct about this, because the headlines can make it sound as though the whole system is being torn up. It is not.

• Grading stays 9–1. The review did not recommend changing the grading scale.
• The main assessment points stay in place. The review recommends retaining the mainstay of the present curriculum and assessment architecture, including key stages and public examination points.
• Exam boards (AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas) continue to run GCSEs. They will write new specifications against the reformed subject content once it is agreed.
• Current specifications remain live for every child sitting exams up to and including summer 2028, and in most subjects to summer 2030 or 2031.

For a Year 10 pupil starting GCSE courses this term, the content list, the paper structure and the mark schemes are exactly what their teachers planned for last spring.

Separate changes that do apply now

Two smaller changes are worth knowing about because they affect current cohorts and can be confused with the wider reform.

Formula and equation sheets in maths and science. Following an Ofqual consultation earlier this year, the DfE has told Ofqual that students will not be expected to memorise all the usual formulae and equations in GCSE mathematics, physics and combined science for the lifetime of the current GCSE specifications. In plain terms: your Year 10 will still be given a formula sheet in the exam, as they have been in recent years. That is a continuation, not a new reform.

Modern foreign languages GCSEs were already reformed for first teaching in September 2024, with first exams in summer 2026. Pupils in Year 10 studying French, German or Spanish are on the reformed specification. The review recommends not making immediate further changes to the new content of the GCSEs in French, German and Spanish, but reviewing the impact after the first exams in 2026, which the DfE has accepted.

What parents should watch for over the next 12 months

The window between September 2026 and autumn 2027 is when most of the substantive detail will emerge. A short list of what to look out for:

• September 2026: consultations open on the draft national curriculum (key stages 1–3) and on GCSE Subject Knowledge Requirements. These are public consultations — parents can respond directly through the DfE's Citizen Space platform.
• Late 2026 / early 2027: the DfE publishes analysis of responses and its decisions.
• Spring 2027: the revised national curriculum is expected to be published in final form.
• September 2028: first teaching of the revised national curriculum begins in primary and lower secondary.
• 2027–2028: exam boards draft reformed GCSE specifications and submit them to Ofqual for accreditation.
• September 2029: first teaching of phase-one reformed GCSEs; first exams summer 2031.

If you want to keep tabs without wading through consultation documents, the most reliable sources are gov.uk (search "qualification reform hub"), Ofqual's news feed, and the education desks at the BBC, TES and Schools Week.

What to do now if your child is in Year 9 or Year 10

Very little that you would not otherwise do.

1. Ignore any tutor, revision provider or app that claims to be teaching to the "new GCSE". For Year 9 and Year 10 pupils sitting exams in 2027 or 2028, no such thing exists yet.
2. Check which MFL specification your child is on if they are in Year 10 taking a language — schools moved to the reformed specification for September 2024 first teaching, so most Year 10s are on the new one.
3. Focus on the specification that will actually be examined. For maths and science, that means working from the current AQA, Edexcel, OCR or WJEC/Eduqas specification and the formula/equation sheet as it stands.
4. If your child is in Year 8 and you are choosing options this year, the choice is being made under the current system. Options and subjects available at your school are not being restricted by the reform in the near term.

The reform matters, and the September consultation will shape English education for a decade. But for a child sitting GCSEs in 2027 or 2028, the honest answer is that the ground under their feet is not moving.