The Natural History GCSE – Have Your Say

In June 2026, the Department for Education published the proposed subject content for the Natural History GCSE and opened a public consultation for stakeholders to share their views. Since Cambridge OCR, the awarding body for the GCSE, launched the initial consultation in June 2020, the Linnean Society has contributed to the qualification as part of the Strategic Advisory Board. As a key stakeholder, we reviewed the proposed content and submitted a response to the consultation.

The proposed subject content starts by listing the subject aims, which generally are to provide students the opportunity understand and interact in real life with the natural world around them. Then the subject content is divided into three areas: Habitats and wildlife in the UK, Human influences on the natural world, and Fieldwork.

There is a real focus on students getting to know nature where they live, hence the focus on the UK, and in getting students outside the classroom to achieve this. The subject content also outlines the mathematics and statistics students must be familiar with, which overlap nicely with current science GCSEs.

Finally, the subject content gives a careful and detailed breakdown of the habitats and examples of wildlife typically found for each habitat that teachers will be expected to cover.

Read the GCSE natural history proposed subject content - Department for Education - Citizen Space in full.

Overall, we agreed with the proposed content and believe it will create an invaluable opportunity to support our vision of a world where nature is understood, valued and protected. There's an emphasis on identifying and classifying plants and animals, which obviously we are also in favour of!

We had some smaller tweaks to suggest, but broadly our comments fell into three main areas.

In our response, we expressed our support for the proposed fieldwork requirements, which we see as excellent and accessible for all students. We are particularly pleased that the proposal prioritises flexibility in where and when the minimum 20 hours of fieldwork can be delivered, and that schools are encouraged to use their school grounds for fieldwork.

We also strongly support the requirement that students have opportunities to ‘observe, engage and relate with the natural world’ and, in turn, to ‘reflect on their connection with nature’.

We have shown the success of this approach through our Nature Networks project. Nature Networks, supported by the John Lyon’s Charity, offers state secondary schools in North and West London a free nature club. The programme involves the Linnean Society visiting each school once a week for six weeks, taking students outside the classroom to observe, engage with and relate to the natural world through art and scientific fieldwork.

Even in schools with little or no green space in or around the school, we have brought diverse groups of students, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, outside.

This has been met with 100% positive responses from students and teachers alike, with students agreeing that they feel more connected to nature as a result. For instance, we found that the proportion of students who disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement ‘I don’t feel connected to nature’ increased from 45% to 72% after taking part in Nature Networks.

Considering what has been achieved through extra-curricular opportunities that are squeezed into the timetable, we are confident that, under the current proposal, schools will be able to successfully deliver the fieldwork requirements within timetabled lessons across two years.

One aspect we felt was missing from the subject content was an opportunity for students to learn about the history of natural history. We raised this in the consultation, calling for guidance for teachers on how to use the rich stories in the history of natural history to support the proposed subject content and represent diverse figures within the field.

The other key comment we made in the consultation related to the proposed content on human influences on nature. We argued that the proposed content for ‘Human Influences on the Natural World’ does not do enough to explicitly link those human influences, both positive and negative, to their impact on UK habitats.

We suggested that, in the same way students will be expected to identify specific wildlife typical of each habitat within the subject content, they should also be expected to identify specific human influences affecting each habitat.