Sarah Hannafin, head of policy for school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “NAHT believes that keeping these additional support materials for GCSE maths and science is the right thing to do. For students to identify the right formula to use, apply it to the information given and work out an answer is a valid assessment of their knowledge and understanding; there is no need for an additional test of memory.

“We welcome this decision by government and the short consultation, but it is disappointing that this decision has been made so late on, almost a full term into teaching, and when many year 11 students will have their mock exams in December and schools need to know whether to allow the use of formulae and equation sheets in the mocks or not.”