Coursework completed by pupils at home will be scrapped in English literature, foreign languages, history, geography, classical subjects, religious studies, social sciences, business studies and economics for courses starting in 2009.

Instead, the examinations watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), said that there would be more external exams and controlled assessments carried out in the classroom under strict supervision and marked by teachers.

Coursework will continue in art, music, design and technology, PE and home economics. No final decision about English language and information technology has yet been made.

The details followed an announcement last week by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, that coursework would be cut from GCSE maths from next September.

The announcement was accompanied by new research findings showing that the majority of teachers were not overwhelmingly worried about the use of the internet for coursework.

Four in five (82 per cent) of the 100 subject heads surveyed for the QCA disagreed that their students made too much use of the internet for their GCSE coursework.

English and music teachers were most likely to view coursework positively; religiousstudies teachers were the most sceptical about its value.

A far bigger problem with coursework, as far as the teachers were concerned, centred on the burden or marking coursework and the extra work it generated for students who have to meet project deadlines for a large number of different subjects all at the same time.

While most teachers agreed they would like to retain an element of coursework, there was disagreement over how much and how it should be assessed.

In response, the QCA recommended that new ways be found to make written examinations more “challenging and fresh” and to improve the assessment of coursework. The recommendations follow a review of coursework ordered by Ruth Kelly, the former Education Secretary — instigated because a two-year review by the examinations watchdog had found evidence of widespread cheating.

Revelations about pupils copying or buying coursework from the internet or getting someone else to do the work for them cast doubt on continually rising grades and raised questions about the credibility of vocational qualifications.

Mr Johnson accepted yesterday that more needed to be done to assure parents that coursework assessed pupils’ work in a fair and robust way. “The changes will toughen up the way in which coursework is assessed so that the hard work of the vast majority of students is not undermined by questions of validity,” he said.

However, he added that coursework still had a place in the modern classroom. Done properly it helped young people to develop research and presentation skills and demonstrate a practical knowledge of a subject.

“It is important that coursework retains its place within teaching and learning but we must ensure it remains a reliable and effectiveform of assessment,” he said.

Ken Boston, the chief executive of the QCA, insisted that the current system of GCSE exams and coursework was robust. “QCA has provided both teachers and parents with further information on the help that they can provide and how best to authenticate a candidate’s coursework.”

GCSEs replaced GCE O level and CSE exams in 1988. The element of coursework was introduced with GCSEs to test “skills not easily tested in timed, written examinations” and because the three-hour times written examination was seen as narrow and off-putting to many candidates.

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