Since 2013, GCSE English Language and Literature courses in England have experienced changes to assessment and curriculum that have ushered them in a supposedly new direction, both under the umbrella of wider GCSE reforms. This divergence has included the abolition of controlled assessment and the concurrent resurgence of academic courses being assessed only by examination. Alongside these changes have been wider reforms to the GCSE system in its totality, with a switch from the typical A* to G grading system to a new 9 to 1 structure. This article is a consideration of these changes and some other caveats of the reform documents released between 2013 and 2015. I am posing this inquiry from my perspective as an English teacher and a poststructuralist, using deconstruction to scrutinise the language in some of the reform documents. Governmental agenda of the reform is explored, demonstrating an archaism to the ‘new’ direction of the GCSE and the hierarchizing of the academic elite in the oppositions presented.