I was listening to this on the news earlier, and they made it sound like the changes were revolutionary and would completely shake up the education system. Personally, I can't really see a clear difference between most of the new topics and what we already do. Making it compulsory to learn about the slave trade? Welcome to year nine History at my school; that is literally ALL we did for a year. Climate change? Edexcel paper 4H (the case studies one) for GCSE Geography- one of the components includes managing the environment, and that is focused primarily around the effects that climate change have had on the environment. The paper 3H focuses a great deal on it too, and it also is covered in GCSE Science- not just in Biology, but even in Physics and Chemistry (the composition of the atmosphere; acid rain; the greenhouse effect and so on).
The problems of climate change and so on may have only been emphasised by the media in recent years, but they've been on the syllabus for years now. Sure, they might have been covered in a slightly more general sense, as opposed to in the "this is going to happen to us for sure" manner; but nevertheless- they're taught.
I think the government needs to really focus on the subjects which they least expect there to be problems with. I think English should definitely contain a compulsory grammar component- at the moment most GCSE students (at A level it does at least improve slightly) don't even know what an adverb, verb and so on are- let alone know how to identify a direct object or a split infinitive.
I.T. at GCSE is pretty much useless- I'm currently [supposed to be] finishing my third piece of coursework for it, and I would estimate that maybe 3% of it is actual practical usage of computers and software, and the other 97% is analysis.. evaluating your analysis.. evaluating your evaluation of your analysis.. and so on. Employers don't care if you can justify your size 22 pink Curlz MT font (although I'd certainly hire someone who could justify that); they just want people to be able to use basic applications like Access, Excel, Word, Powerpoint and so on. The same applies for Maths- who really cares if you can draw the graph of Sin? As long as your arithmetic skills are alright/ you can calculate VAT/you can use basic logic, then that's what they want.