'From Year 10 we put on Blinkers'
How GCSE exams are killing enrichment
12 November 2025
What follows won't come as a surprise to most teachers, but those outside the school system might be a little shocked.
In December I'm putting on a lecture show about the links between Shakespeare, Elizabethan history, science, music and maths. It's aimed at 14/15-year-olds (Year 10s) to enrich their understanding of how the different subjects they study at GCSE are connected.
I noticed that no English teachers had signed up their classes, and so, thanks to generous sponsorship, I've been offering bursaries of up to £1,000 to English departments. So far only one school has even expressed interest in taking this up. From most schools...silence.
Last week I went to an English teacher conference to find out why I've had so little response. I asked a teacher if she'd consider bringing a group to the show.
Her reply: "No. From Year 10 we put on the blinkers. For two years, we want pupils to be laser-focused on GCSE content. We don’t want them learning extraneous information, because they might remember it and quote it in the exam, and they’d get no marks for it." A teacher from another school nodded in agreement.
I asked if a £5,000 bursary would make any difference. They thought it probably wouldn't.
For them, enriching the Key Stage 4 curriculum with broader material that develops cultural capital wasn’t just a low priority, it was potentially harmful. Pupils might learn something interesting about, say, the mathematical references in Romeo and Juliet, that doesn’t translate into marks. This isn’t an isolated view, I’ve heard it from other teachers too.
It reflects a reality that many schools face. When so much emphasis is placed on exam grades - for pupils, and for the schools that are judged by them - the safest course is to teach tightly to the specification. Enrichment becomes an optional extra, squeezed out by the need to hit targets and get through a packed curriculum.
Yet we expect pupils to emerge from their GCSE years still loving their subjects, and curious enough to want to study them further.
This is the real tension in the call for more enrichment. It’s easy to recommend, but hard to embed in a system where performance metrics dominate every decision.
Teachers know that enrichment matters. They see how trips, visiting speakers, and wider experiences can bring subjects alive. But time, stretched resources and the pressure for grades conspire against them.
If enrichment is to be more than a buzzword, schools need support and permission to prioritise it. That might mean building space for enrichment into the curriculum model, recognising it in inspection frameworks, or (here's a fanciful idea) creating an exam specification that rewards curiosity and connection rather than rote memorisation.
Until then, the exam tail will continue to wag the learning dog, and pupils will miss out on the full richness of the world beyond the syllabus.
(Details of the show here https://mathsinspiration.com/much-ado-autumn-2025 )
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