The question is: are you teaching a pupil to know something for a week, to know it for a year, or are you teaching it them for life? Across a lot of our subjects, we want to be teaching pupils for life.”

Headteacher Peter Woodman says he is committed to his pupils developing a mastery of their subject. And it takes time. This, he tells Tes, is the main reason why the Weald School in West Sussex runs its GCSE programme over three years instead of two.

It is far from alone. The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) estimates that about half of its members lead schools that run a three-year key stage 4. And a Department for Education survey suggests the figures might be even higher, at up to 72 per cent.

Spreading out KS4 into Year 9 and even 8 - time traditionally meant for KS3 - has become an established practice among secondary schools. But it is also becoming a contentious issue.

As it stands, Ofsted’s new inspection handbook will instruct inspectors to examine whether schools that shorten KS3 are doing so at the expense of a broad and balanced curriculum.

Although Ofsted has said it will not prescribe a particular approach, its thinking on the subject has been quite clear. As chief inspector Amanda Spielman put it: “The GCSE tests are designed to cover two years’ worth of content. It is hard to see how taking longer than two years could expose pupils to more knowledge and not more test preparation.”

Alarm bells are now ringing among school leaders about how such thinking will translate into the inspection of the many schools that are running three-year GCSEs when Ofsted’s new framework comes into force later this year. ASCL has told Ofsted that it must not make a de facto assumption that schools should operate a three-year KS3. And the inspectorate says “school leaders and teachers should not make decisions about the curriculum based on a sense of what Ofsted wants to see”. But it does seem to be heightening concern among schools by saying that they must justify any extension of KS4.

So what is driving schools to start GCSE study early, and will they change their approach as a result of Ofsted’s view?

Natural reaction

Many heads reject the idea that an extended KS4 is only about increased preparation time for exams. Woodman argues that it allows pupils to study subjects in greater detail and gives teachers time to return to topics.

He says: “As a science teacher, in a two-year KS4 I would get just eight lessons on one topic and that would probably give you time for one practical. Doing a three-year course gives you more time. You can do two or three practical lessons on one topic and really allow pupils to explore the subject.”

Woodman believes this approach gives his teachers more time for “interleaving”, whereby pupils learn about several topics at the same time. “It gives them a more holistic knowledge of a subject and greater experiences,” he says.

Woodman’s school has been running a three-year GCSE for the past six years, but he says the recent reforms have reinforced his view that you need three years to teach the qualification well.

Although GCSEs are still designed to be taught over two years, the reforms - which have made the qualification more challenging, and mark a move away from pupils sitting coursework - have led some schools to take longer and space out exams at the end of GCSEs over two years.

Caroline Barlow, headteacher of Heathfield Community College in East Sussex and a member of Headteachers’ Roundtable, has said that under the current specifications, a Year 11 student sitting all their exams in their four options and core subjects in the same year would experience up to 30 exams in one summer.

She told Tes last year that by structuring KS4 over three years, her school had alleviated exam pressure and allowed students to “stay calm, healthy and balanced”. And Barlow was clear that this was not done at the expense of the KS3 curriculum.

“Students complete their full national curriculum entitlement at KS3 in all subjects taught discretely,” she said. “Students are challenged and engaged from day one. There is no behaviour dip or drop of standards.”

Jules White, the leader of the WorthLess? school-funding campaign group, believes a three-year GCSE is a natural reaction from schools being asked to cover more material. The headteacher of Tanbridge House School in Horsham says the pressure of league tables “has been exacerbated by new GCSEs, which require much greater curricular time in order to cover the content in the depth and structure that are needed”.

He warns that schools were now being pulled in two directions by the demands of the accountability system. “On the one hand, Ofsted and the DfE promote the notion of inclusion and curriculum breadth, while at the same time league tables, a four-point grading system and a bizarre obsession with EBacc subjects persists.”

The debate about when a school should start KS4 centres on two longstanding concerns. The first is that KS3 has become overlooked. Since the abolition of Year 9 Sats, concerns have been raised that education has become skewed towards results. In the 2015 report Key Stage 3: the wasted years?, Ofsted found that KS3 was not a high priority for many school leaders in timetabling, assessment and monitoring of pupils’ progress.

Ofsted continues to have concerns. Research it carried out in planning its new inspection framework found that a shortened KS3 had led to a considerable number of pupils dropping subjects such as history, geography or language after just two years.

Gaming the system

Mark Lehain, Parents and Teachers for Excellence campaign director, argues that GCSEs should start in Year 10. He says the courses are designed for students of a certain maturity and warns that extended GCSEs mean pupils have less time studying subjects that become optional in KS4.

“They may not have had a chance to really get into them,” he says. “This denies them a lot of cultural literacy, and also uptake at GCSE suffers.”

The second major issue is that schools are looking to game the system. In the past, there has been concern about schools entering pupils into GCSEs early to bank a C grade, or on multiple occasions to ensure the best possible league-table score. Now, the worry is that schools are extending GCSE study because they are focused on test results at the expense of a broader education.

This is at the heart of Ofsted’s plan for a new inspection system, which will prioritise curriculum as part of a new overall quality-of-education grade. However, many schools that run a three-year GCSE say they are doing exactly that: thinking about their curriculum and how to sequence what they teach.

Carl Smith, principal of Casterton College in Rutland, says the school’s approach is about giving pupils “ownership of their learning” and that extending KS4 is not done at the expense of KS3, where there is a “strong focus on knowledge and vocabulary”.

He adds that the school extends its KS3 years by operating a 29-hour week. By the end of Year 8, children have covered 320 hours more than they would have in a 25-hour week.

“By the end of Year 8, the vast majority are not only ready, but very keen to place some emphasis on the parts of the optional curriculum that they enjoy most,” says Smith. He describes Year 9 as a bridging year that is not the start of formal GCSE study.

“In Year 9, pupils can establish a bit more depth in those areas they have a particular interest in, so they truly master those subjects when they do start GCSE,” he says. “Having this firm foundation in a subject means pupils find it easier to absorb knowledge quickly.”

Chris Ingate, principal of Birchwood High School in Bishop’s Stortford, is another school leader who believes a longer GCSE gives schools the chance to develop greater subject knowledge.

“As a geography specialist, I know there will be a question in the exam about how they collect data in the field. Now, we could teach the pupils this through a local field trip for a day, but with a three-year curriculum, it allows us to take pupils on a residential trip away to really get into it.

“The benefits of this are that you are teaching a much more enriched curriculum, and pupils are also leaving their local town and developing the social skills that are implicit in a broad education. It is much deeper and more fulfilling.”

But, Ingate acknowledges, there is a trade-off in that pupils are being asked to remember things and recall them on exam day over three years rather than two: “It is not all plain sailing, running a three-year GCSE; we have to teach and reteach in order to prepare pupils for the exam.”

The decision about which year to start GCSE courses comes down to the balance between the depth and breadth of a school curriculum, says Smith. And there is a tension between the two. Although Ofsted insists it doesn’t “intend to dictate the length of key stages in schools”, there are concerns that the inspectorate’s focus on this issue will drive school decision-making anyway.

What heads think is most important is that schools should be left to answer questions about how to structure the curriculum and qualifications themselves. But as Smith warns: “The problem is that there is a lack of trust in the system. I think some schools that are concerned about their inspection outcome will decide that if they continue with a three-year GCSE, they will just risk leaving themselves open and they will change because of what they think Ofsted wants to see.”

John Roberts is a reporter at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 24 May 2019 issue under the headline “Who holds the keys to GCSEs?”