Changes to the exam system for 16-year-olds in England will "give parents confidence" in the examinations their children take in the future, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said.
Mr Clegg and Education Secretary Michael Gove are due to unveil the new exam regime.
GCSEs will be ditched in 2015, and replaced with what ministers claim will be a more rigorous system.
Assessment will be based on an O-level style single end-of-year exam.
New systemLiberal Democrat aides to the deputy prime minister have described the changes as "radical reform", the result of intense negotiations over the past three months.
Mr Clegg also said the coalition changes would "raise standards for all our children" but he added that it would "not exclude any children".
The Conservatives have pushed for a return to the old O-level system, with the emphasis on a single end-of-year exam.
However, the Liberal Democrats had insisted there should not be a return to a two-tier system - similar to O-levels and CSEs - where a small group of more able children take more demanding exams.
Mr Clegg, who has been involved in negotiations over the changes, said it would have been wrong to go back the old dual exam system.
He said: "We've been working across the government and the coalition to create a new exam system - which we will explain in detail - which will do three simple things.
"Firstly give parents confidence in the exams their children are taking, secondly raise standards for all our children in schools in the country but thirdly and crucially not exclude any children from the new exam system.
"All of those elements will be in the details which we will be revealing this week."
Mr Gove will set out the changes in detail in the Commons.
When initial details of the new exam were leaked at the weekend, Labour said it supported more rigorous exams but only if they do not act as a cap on aspiration.
High-achieving nationsThe plans were welcomed by Katie Ivens from the Campaign for Real Education.
She said: "GCSE has lost its credibility very largely - very few people actually respect GCSEs. Modularity has been greatly discredited, as was coursework, and we very badly need an exam for our 16-year-olds at the end of their compulsory education."
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said GCSEs needed to be reviewed but bringing back an O-level style exam was not the answer.
"I hope that these proposals are not going to be telling us that we're going to have a system that goes back to something that we used to have in the 1950s, which was suited to a very small part of the population," he said.
"What we want is an examination system that will enable all people to do well. And they'll have to meet high standards in order to achieve in those exams. That's absolutely fine."
The new single exam qualification will be introduced in 2015 with the first students sitting the tests in 2017.
Pass ratesThe move would be the biggest change in the exam system in a generation.
GCSEs were introduced in the late 1980s, to replace the system of O-levels and CSEs, with the first GCSE exams taken in 1988.
Pass rates have gone up every year except for this one, drawing claims that they were getting progressively easier.
The move comes amid controversy over this year's GCSE exams in English and whether they were too harshly graded.
This weekend examiners in Wales are regrading English papers taken under the WJEC examining board, after Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews ordered a review of results.
Mr Gove attacked that decision, saying it would "undermine confidence" in the value of the qualifications obtained by the students involved.
The Welsh government has said it will not rush into a decision about the future of GCSEs in Wales.
In Scotland, pupils take Standard Grades, Highers and Advanced Highers rather than GCSEs and A-levels.
There are no planned changes to GCSEs taken by students in Northern Ireland.
17 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19620075#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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