GCSEs to be scrapped in drive to raise standards The move is being billed as the most radical overhaul of secondary education in 30 years. But it is bound to provoke fierce hostility from teaching unions amid claims that it risks creating a two-tier system and consigning below-average pupils to a second-class education. GCSEs were introduced by the Conservatives in the late Eighties and are now sat by more than 600,000 schoolchildren a year in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. But the exams have been dogged by claims of "grade inflation" and fears that pupils have been pushed into studying "soft subjects" at the expense of traditional academic disciplines. Last summer, almost a quarter of GCSE papers were graded A* or A - around three times as many as when the exams were first introduced. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, is to announce plans in the next fortnight to dismantle the system completely as part of a wide-ranging plan to raise standards. A public consultation - which is expected to run for 12 weeks - will suggest that pupils starting GCSEs next year will be the last to sit the exams. They will take the tests in 2015. Up to three quarters of pupils will be expected to study for the new "O-levels" in English, maths and the sciences from September 2014. Teenagers will be expected to study separate physics, chemistry and biology courses instead of a combined sciences qualification, which has been heavily criticised by academics. Pupils will be forced to master subjects such as calculus to achieve an A grade in O-level maths, while English literature pupils will be banned from taking set texts into exams and will be expected to write longer essay-style answers, it emerged. Examiners will also be told to devise new O-levels in history, geography and modern languages, although these may not be ready by 2014. The minister will also scrap the requirement that pupils should obtain five A* to C grades from 2016 amid fears that the current system forces schools to "teach to the test" to boost their position in league tables at the expense of a rounded education. From 2014, the bottom 25 per cent of pupils will also take a series of more practical exams in subjects such as English, maths and science to achieve a worthwhile qualification. This is likely to provoke the biggest outcry from teachers" leaders, who are expected to claim that it risks consigning large numbers of pupils to a second-class education. In an attempt to give head teachers greater freedom, Mr Gove will also abolish the secondary national curriculum and "not replace it," according to a leaked document from the Department for Education. Independent academy schools can already steer clear of the curriculum but by scrapping it completely Mr Gove will make it harder for a future Labour government to impose centrally set lessons again, it is claimed. Under the plans, pupils will sit the same paper nationwide, which will be set by a single exam board. Last night a spokesman for Mr Gove declined to comment.