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Students tackling the new GCSE examination curriculum face the challenge of needing to know and memorise more information for their examinations, as most subjects no longer have coursework and students are assessed in examinations at the end of the course. This shift towards increased subject knowledge and one-off, high stakes examinations not only means students now have to memorize much more than students taking the previous GCSE examinations, but also that they also face increased pressure to perform to their best in a stressful high-stakes examination. There is some evidence to suggest that teaching students how to use metacognitive processes can improve their academic attainment. This study will investigate if the explicit teaching of metacognition leads to better outcomes in GCSE English Literature examinations, in both grades and memory for quotations, than an implicit approach. It will also examine if the explicit teaching of metacognition can lead to an increase in self-reported self-efficacy and a reduction in self-reported academic anxiety.