Petition · past parliament

Do not raise the target average GCSE grade for Year 11 students to Level 5.

Rejected 21 signatures

What the petition asks

Level 4 is a satisfactory target as the average grade for 16 year olds. An average of Level 5 is an unnecessarily ambitious target.
Young people's mental health is getting worse*. We believe this has been impacted by ever increasing targets and more heavily laden academic curricula. This has squeezed out the arts, life skills, enrichment, sport and any sense of pleasure in learning. Our young people do not thrive simply by raising the height of the hurdles. *https://www.youngminds.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/mental-health-statistics/

Why it was rejected

It was not clear what the petition asked the UK Government or Parliament to do.

The Government has not set a target for the Year 11 students to get a Level 5 in their GCSEs. They have set an ambition for secondary schools to see the national average GCSE grade in both English language and maths increase from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030, and set out a a series of new measures to support the delivery of these ambitions: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/schools-white-paper-delivers-real-action-to-level-up-education

If you want the Government to abandon its ambition to see the national average GCSE grade in both English language and maths increase from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030, we could accept a petition requesting that.

Timeline

28 Mar 2022 Petition opened for signatures
1 Apr 2022 Rejected by the Petitions Committee

Key facts

Signatures 21
Status Rejected
Rejected 1 Apr 2022

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