Research On The Reform Of British General Secondary Education Certificate (GCSE) Examination

The examination system of British Secondary education, characterized by its qualification system, has a long history and plays an important role in the stage of the world’s education. Meanwhile, as an important port of British secondary education,the General Certificate of Secondary Education(GCSE) is a kind of national public examination, which students have to attend it after finishing their compulsory education. Eventually, the GCSE has formed a more perfect examination system after many reforms, whose reform experience takes a useful example for other countries. Among Chinese secondary education examination system, the entrance examination for senior high school is the counterpart of the GCSE. With making further progress in quality education and new curriculum reform, the entrance examination for senior high school has been experiencing several reforms. To study the GCSE is not only good for us to have a deep understanding on British Secondary education examination reform, but also helpful for us to draw some useful lessons from its reform.This paper consists of six chapters. In chapter one, it explains the reasons and meanings for doing this research, and introduces the research methods, the definition of related concepts as well as the literature review at home and abroad. The chapter two reviews the development of the GCSE, which can be divided into four periods,namely the beginning period, the single period, the dual period and the united period.In addition, it illustrates the implementation of current GCSE in detail.In the chapter three, it analyzes the shortcomings of the GCSE, and further explores the motivation of the GCSE reform. The chapter four presents the basic content of the GCSE reform from four aspects, which are the examination management institution, the internal evaluation, exam subjects and the grade reporting. In chapter five, it analyzes the results of the GCSE reform, and concludes the trend of several reforms. In the last chapter, considering the truth of Chinese secondary education, it proposes some advise on the reform of the entrance examination for senior high school in China.