Triple science GCSE – Making it available to all who want it
Letting all students take triple science may prove challenging, concedes Kit Betts-Masters – but can we at least agree that the objective is a good one?
- by Kit Betts-Masters
- Science educator, physics specialist and content creator Visit website
In November 2025, the final report of the Curriculum and Assessment Review recommended that all schools in England should work towards offering triple science at GCSE as a standard option.
The core aim is hard to argue with: that early curricular decisions shouldn’t quietly limit young people’s futures.
Any student with the interest and ability to study science should be able to take biology, chemistry and physics as separate GCSEs.
Tension in practice
Fewer than a quarter of students currently take triple science. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are around half as likely to study separate sciences as their more affluent peers. Some schools don’t offer triple science at all.
Consequently, decisions made early on in secondary school can determine not just GCSE outcomes, but whether students can access science at A Level and higher education, or pursue science-related careers.
Science teachers and leaders agree that young people shouldn’t have doors closed on them before they fully understand what lies behind them.
However, let’s reflect for a moment on how difficult it will be to implement such a change. When I speak to other science teachers about it, their concerns aren’t ideological, but practical.
They worry that SLT will task them with teaching more content, to more students, in the same amount of time, and under the same set of staffing pressures and accountability measures.
Specialist teacher shortages continue to present issues. The government missed its recruitment target for physics teachers by 69%, and for chemistry teachers by 38%.
In many schools, it’s largely non-specialists teaching GCSE physics. Schools are right to worry about being asked to stretch their already thin provision yet further. They don’t want ‘triple science GCSE for all’ to be a good idea lacking resources.
What ‘ability’ means
Exactly what the report’s authors mean by ‘ability’ merits closer examination. The Review makes clear that any student with the interest and ability to study triple science should be able to do so.
The risk, however, is that schools interprete this in ways that limit triple science to only the highest-attaining students.
Alternatively, we may see schools placing students on a ‘triple’ pathway up until Y11, whereupon they make pupils ‘drop down’ to combined science. This is to secure those grade 4s and 5s.
If a student can succeed in a separate science GCSE, even at Level 1, then they have the ability to take the course.
‘Ability’ doesn’t mean a guaranteed high grade. It means the capacity to engage meaningfully with the curriculum and complete it.
The textbook student
There’s a former student I still think about often. We were at a school where anyone who opted for triple science GCSE could take it.
This student would bring an A Level physics textbook into all of his GCSE physics lessons. Not because anyone asked him to. I even told him it wasn’t useful for this syllabus. It was simply his physics book and he was interested.
He wasn’t a top set student. Most schools would have denied him the option to pursue triple science. However, he worked hard and enjoyed what I showed and taught him. He came away with a grade 3 in the subject – the best result across all of the GCSEs he’d taken.
Now consider how many schools tell students nationwide, implicitly or explicitly, that physics ‘isn’t for them’. That they aren’t ‘the right kind of student’ for science.
These young people are being turned away from subjects they care about. They’re conceivably being denied meaningful careers in science at a range of levels.
That student’s grade 3 wasn’t a failure; it was evidence that he belonged in the room.
- • Audit your schemes of work across biology, chemistry and physics, treating each subject with equal care.
- • Identify where teaching materials are light on modelling, hooks and solid practice; identify any outdated or overly exam-driven resources.
- • Review your practical equipment and expertise; what’s well supported, and where will you struggle if numbers increase?
- • Identify any staffing gaps and plan targeted CPD; make specialists out of your non-specialists – like me!
- • Consider your succession plans and what will happen if a key specialist leaves.
- • Review your technician time and lab capacity.
- • Check your option pathways for any unintended barriers or opt-out loopholes.
- • Revisit how triple science is presented to students and families. It should be an exciting option (and a potential pathway to lucrative future careers).
- • Keep discussions with departments and management focused on entitlement. Students wanting to study science should have genuine access, not just a theoretical offer.
Equity and access
There’s some genuine optimism among science teachers that a triple science guarantee could help close some long-standing equity gaps. Access to separate sciences currently varies by postcode, staffing history or whether a school feels it can ‘afford’ the risk.
It’s important to widen access, but whether such efforts are successful depends on the details. I worry that in many schools, triple science GCSE will become the default, but that some students may be encouraged to opt out and instead favour arts, technology or vocational subjects.
Schools will be able to say that they ‘offer the entitlement’. However, the compromises will sit with students and their families.
This approach might meet the letter of the policy, but not its spirit. Entitlement without meaningful choice is no entitlement at all, but that’s the dilemma all curriculum design must tread.
And I’m certainly not the kind of science teacher who’d ever argue that ‘science is more valuable than the arts’.
Curriculum time
Triple science GCSE, done properly, should mean more time for students to explore ideas, carry out practical work and learn how science actually works.
It should serve to deepen understanding and drive engagement. If, however, schools end up squeezing triple science into roughly the same amount of curriculum time as combined science, the opposite will happen.
Practical work will be reduced, lessons will become more rushed and students will spend less time planning investigations and making sense of results.
It’s always struck me that under the current GCSE arrangements, students who don’t study triple science are missing out on some of the best of what the subject has to offer.
Without triple science, many may never learn about the origins of the universe, how elements are formed or how our solar system and planet came to be.
They’ll learn how to calculate and describe processes, but won’t encounter some of the best scientific explanations for existence itself.
Such knowledge is part of our shared scientific inheritance, with the potential to shape how young people understand the world, and even the wider universe, and their place within it.
And yet, around three quarters of students will never have the opportunity to learn this amazing and fascinating triple science GCSE content.
Qualifications or curriculum?
The counter-argument might be that what matters most is we retain a stimulating, coherent curriculum that enables progression.
That ‘space science’ stuff could be brought into combined science – though then something else would have to make way for it.
I’ve previously taught many students who successfully moved into A Level physics from combined science.
My school takes on many students who enter applied science routes from combined science (foundation and higher alike), as well as from triple science groups.
The question then becomes whether students are getting enough time, depth and practical experience to genuinely prepare them for further study, or are instead following curriculums that have been prematurely narrowed in the name of ‘efficiency’.
Triple science GCSE isn’t the only route forward, but it’s a powerful one, and should be available to all students who want it.
This isn’t about chasing grades, but about ensuring access. About satisfying students’ curiosity. Above all, it’s about making sure that students who want to do science aren’t quietly told they ‘don’t belong’.
Triple science becoming a standard offer would have to amount to more than just a technical entitlement. It would entail committing to a rich, well-resourced science education for every student who wants it
Kit Betts-Masters is a lead practitioner for science and produces physics, education and technology videos for YouTube under the username @KitBetts-Masters; for more information, visit evaluateeverything.co.uk
