Overview
- Ministers confirmed a new national curriculum for first teaching in September 2028, with the final version due by spring 2027 to give schools four terms to prepare.
- League-table measures will drop the EBacc as arts GCSEs gain equal status to humanities and languages, and Ofsted will check schools against new enrichment benchmarks.
- Citizenship becomes compulsory in primary schools, covering media literacy to spot misinformation, basic financial education and climate learning.
- Assessment changes include working with Ofqual and exam boards to cut average GCSE exam time by about 2.5 to 3 hours, as the DfE also signals Progress 8 reform contrary to the review’s limited-change advice.
- All secondaries will be expected to offer triple science, the computer science GCSE will be replaced with a broader computing course, the government will explore new AI/data-science and language qualifications, and a statutory year 8 reading test sits separately from the review’s proposed diagnostic assessments with no school-level publication.