GCSEs not tough enough say schoolchildren But the letter - signed by 15-year-old Harry Tanner on behalf of 26 of his classmates - claimed that GCSE were failing to encourage pupils to "think for ourselves." It said that pupils were expected to handle issues such as climate change in school science lessons without being given the chance to conduct their own experiments into the issue. The letter also told how pupils were given "all the questions" in advance as part of modern language GCSEs - and then given textbooks to develop their answers. Bradfield - a day and boarding school - currently takes more than 700 pupils aged 13 to 18 and charges up to £30,000-a-year. "The GCSE does not give a chance for today's pupils to emerge as Britain's Bill Gates," the letter said. At the moment, we are being taught to be text book dependent. How can this be good for the future? Simon Henderson, Bradfield's headmaster, said the school wanted to "encourage our pupils to think about education as something that's done with them not to them and to have Year 10 pupils with such strong views about their own education is excellent." He added: "The GCSE covers a wide range of pupils and I'm aware that it serves most of them very well. But I think there is an issue that it doesn't really discriminate at the top end; it doesn't always encourage them to think for themselves. There is much more to education than preparing pupils to pass exams.