Petition · past parliament

Allow open book exams for English literature GCSE students.

Rejected 13 signatures

What the petition asks

Allow students to take the required poems/ extracts that they need for their English literature GCSE.
A lot of students are incapable of memorising even 1 text and it gives them an unfair advantage to past students who have been allowed their passages into their exams with them. As well as this, teenagers already get anxiety and stress over exams and having them learn multiple different texts with complex language will not help nor improve their performance. In fact, it will only make their actions worse because their minds will be filled with all these texts and they can’t think straight.

Why it was rejected

There was already a petition about this issue. Duplicates are rejected so signatures collect in one place.

You may wish to sign some of these petitions:

Open book exams for GCSE and A-level students sitting exams in 2021: Open book exams for GCSE and A-level students sitting exams in 2021

Make the English GCSE exam open book: Make the English GCSE exam open book.

Timeline

17 Sep 2020 Petition opened for signatures
24 Sep 2020 Rejected by the Petitions Committee

Key facts

Signatures 13
Status Rejected
Rejected 24 Sep 2020

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Source: the official petition page. Last checked 15 Jul 2026.