Education Minister scraps AS-levels in shake‑up of ‘ineffective’ exam system

By Claudia Savage (Press Association)

Stormont’s Education Minister has announced widespread reforms to GCSEs and A-levels which he said would put an end to an “inhumane, ineffective qualification system”.

Paul Givan told MLAs his reforms would curtail “high level of testing, high level of anxiety for our young people (and) high level of workload for teachers”.

AS-levels will be scrapped and replaced with a new modular A-level with three units of assessment taken over two years, with the aim of cutting the total number of exams.

Controlled assessment and coursework will be reduced in most subjects, except where it is “essential to assess practical skills”.

Mr Givan said the education system had become dominated by “teaching to the test, leading to stress, anxiety, and lost opportunities for genuine depth in learning”.

“These reforms reduce unnecessary exams, give back precious teaching time, and focus on what truly matters for future success,” he said.

“Northern Ireland pupils currently take far more exams than their peers in England to achieve the same qualifications due to the AS structure.”

He added: “Reducing controlled assessment and coursework will also help address workload burdens, equity issues, and the impact of AI on take-home tasks.”

In the Stormont assembly on Tuesday UUP leader Jon Burrows expressed concern that removing coursework would “increase the stress in young people and the stakes”.

Mr Givan said of those who responded to the public consultation, teachers “were very much in favour of reducing the controlled assessment aspect and coursework, parents less so than pupils”.

He added: “I think we need to ask ourselves, for those who struggle educationally, for those who come from a more socially disadvantaged background, the time they have in front of the teacher is the most critical time that they can spend.

“They’re not going to get additional tuition outside, they’re not going to be able to have that from a socially disadvantaged background, not going to get maybe that additional support to complete coursework that is available from some families and they can be provided by other people who may support that child.

“And so in terms of equity and fairness, what I’m proposing will create greater levels of equity.

“It will have much higher levels of integrity when it comes to making sure that the work that is completed is authentic in terms of it properly measures the pupil’s performance and so this is a balanced approach that I have taken.”

The minister further stated: “If we continue to take the current approach, that means high level of testing, high level of anxiety for our young people, high level of workload for teachers because of the excessive amount of content and the excessive amount of controlled assessment.

“That would be just repeating the doom that we currently have and that the profession are rightly complaining about, and that pupils are feeling does not best serve their interests.”

Sinn Fein MLA Cathy Mason said Mr Givan “isn’t listening to young people at all” and asked if he had consulted with universities in the Republic of Ireland on his decision to scrap AS-levels.

Mr Givan replied: “I am listening to young people, and if members in this House have not listened to the extreme levels of anxiety that they have, based upon the current system, the status quo, what people are saying is, ‘if you don’t want this change, then you want to retain the status quo’.

“The status quo is a testing factory of our young people of repeated examinations, for four years we put young people through repeated examinations.

“And when I give the evidence, and the evidence is that for AS-levels, when it comes to resits, only 7% of those who resit actually improve the A-level grade at the end of the process again, do the math, that’s 93% of people who resit AS-levels make no benefit to the A-level outcome.

“Why would we put our young people through that kind of process?”

The Education Minister further called for Irish universities to “remove their partitionist agenda”.

He said: “Why is it that universities and the Republic of Ireland are incapable of accepting what Oxbridge universities, what the Russell Group universities, universities across the entire United Kingdom and here in Northern Ireland accept for their top graduates?

“So when it comes to this particular issue, we shouldn’t comply with the discriminatory policy towards Northern Ireland students, which is institutionalised by the Republic of Ireland.

“We should take on the discrimination in the south, we should abolish the partitionist agenda and I will work with Sinn Fein to get rid of the discriminatory practices, which I do agree is prejudicial to our young people in Northern Ireland, but that is not a justification for retaining an inhumane, ineffective qualification system in Northern Ireland.”

Work will now begin on development of new specifications over the next number of years with earliest changes to teaching expected from September 2029 and support, training, and guidance has been pledged to schools.