Modular GCSEs are to be scrapped from September 2012 the Education Secretary Michael Gove has told the BBC.
Currently pupils can sit a series of bite-sized exams as they study a subject.
In future, students will have to sit final exams at the end of two years taking in all the modules of a course.
Mr Gove told BBC1’s Andrew Marr show that he wanted to end a culture of “resits” which he called “wrong”.
He also said that other countries had more rigorous examination regimes and schools here needed to catch up.
“The problem that we had is that instead of sitting every part of a GCSE at the end of a course, bits of it were taken along the way,” Mr Gove said.