GCSE stands for something like General Certificate for Secondary Education. When you do them you get certain amount of points and depending on how many you get, you can enter sixth form (year 12 and 13) where you do A-Levels. I think you do about 10 GCSEs in English, Maths, Core science and then you can choose what you do for the rest, so I'm choosing Spanish, Triple science (Biology, Chemestry and Physics) English literature, art, geography and latin (I may have missed a few)