An exam board has hit back at suggestions that GCSEs should be scrapped by 2025 as part of an overhaul of secondary education.

Cambridge Assessment argues that the exams for 16-year-olds give teachers “a focus” and provide a clarity in expectations.

The intervention from Cambridge, which runs the OCR GCSE exam board, follows a report from the think tank EDSK this morning calling for the end of the qualifications.

News: Call to replace GCSEs with ‘Covid-proof’ online tests

Related: State and private schools in ‘movement’ to scrap GCSEs

The case for GCSEs: Abolishing exams at 16 would damage higher education

EDSK recommends that the Department for Education replace GCSEs with national computer-based assessments in almost all national curriculum subjects, which it suggests would help to “Covid-proof” the exams system.

The case for keeping GCSEs

But Tim Oates, Cambridge Assessment director of assessment, research and development, told Tes: “GCSEs do a lot more than just provide internationally trusted grades, they provide comprehensive programmes of learning, clarity in expectations and a focus for teachers and young people.”

Mr Oates also questioned the idea put forward in the EDSK report that summative assessments at 16 mean the UK is out of step with the rest of the world.

“As external, independent assessments, they are entirely in line with the high-stakes assessment present across other leading education systems around the world,” he said.

“If we were to move away from external assessment at age 16, we would be moving in the reverse direction to international trends, not in step with them.”

Mr Oates has previously argued in Tes that “countries as diverse as Singapore and Turkey have formal exams that support student decisions about the next stage of education”.

He has said that the broad and balanced curriculum prior to GCSEs in the UK before specialising at A level meant England’s students completed high-quality short-duration degree courses, “not the four years often found in countries that have more general and less intensive 16-18 education”, and has cautioned that scrapping GCSEs would have a knock-on effect of harming higher education.

Mr Oates has also warned that without external assessments at 16, education systems can be at risk of bias.

“In those with no exams and high-stakes school-based assessment, there are frequent and heartfelt concerns about bias and a lack of fairness,” he has said.