Early entry for GCSE = worse results, statistics show.

I am a tutor and I am convinced that taking GCSE's early is a really bad idea for everyone except very bright students who can learn syllabus material very very quickly.

I tutor maths and sciences to secondary students. Many of my students can be perfectly competent at these subjects but just need a bit more consolidation than average to grasp concepts (which is why the parents are paying for tutoring - obviously). These students are being entered early for exams and it drives me bananas.

A student who would most likely be able to do a higher maths paper in year 11 and possibly gain a solid B grade, is entered at Foundation level for year 10. This gives him a whole year less to consolidate maths concepts and on top of that, the maximum he can now achieve is a grade C! A student who takes a lot of time to take on board concepts is entered for some science exams in mid year 9, requiring the school to try and cram two thirds of a 2 year syllabus into a term and a half. No wonder he is just confused! Then he thinks he "can't do" science and failure leads to further failure.

It all leads to schools rushing through syllabuses or missing great chunks out and actively prevents the "slightly slower to consolidate learning" student from learning anything much as it is all moving too fast. This then sets them up for failure. It is much harder to pick up a mess of half-grasped concepts and sort it out in a year, than it would be to have taught it more slowly, steadily and thoroughly and taken an extra year or two in the first place!

I'm convinced it is all just because of league tables of GCSE passes, where the school are trying to maximise their statistics. It may lead to more grade C's overall, but I'm sure it must cause fewer higher grades and has been really bad for the students I have taught!

Bonsoir I'm certainly not labouring under the illusion that KS3 is the GCSE syllabus. KS3 is supposed to be y7-9. The GCSE syllabus starts after that. For schools like DD1's school, they find that the amount of material which is required to be covered by the NC between y7-9 (inclusive) can easily be covered (and exceeded) in Y7-8 which means the students are ready to start on their GCSE courses at the beginning of Y9. They then take the 'standard' two years to follow those courses.

I think there is a qualitative difference between this approach and the approach in some schools where a two year GCSE syllabus is crammed into one year, and then examined at the end of that year. I suspect that the results for schools which have taken the accelerate KS3 approach will be better than those that try and fast track individual subjects (except possibly for maths and native speakers of MFLs).

The other thing I will say is there is a great deal of pressure on children who are borderline B/C grade maths to take foundation level in maths as it is much easier and less risky to bank a C grade at foundation, than to aim for a B at higher level and only get a C anyway. That's fine if they don't need a B, to coninue in their higher/further ed choice, but many will find that when it comes to university some insist on a minimum of B in maths, even if it is not a maths related degree. They do not want people who may have been foundation level students, but who have an overall level of capability. Thinking that you don't 'need' maths so it won't matter is not necessaily true, but you won't find this out until it is too late.

And this was in an independent school.

Completely agree with what noblegiraffe said. Spot on. It happened with my son with Eng Lit. He got a B - should have been capable of at least an A, and with another year of teaching I think he would have got at least an A. We were told that he would be given the opportunity to resit it if we were not happy with the result, but it turned out there were only two of them who wanted to resit, and they were told they would have to do it in their own time after school as they could not timetable a proper lesson for just two of them. I was not happy AT ALL.

Hence the widespread belief that independent schools are less culpable than state of "teaching to the test".

Yes that's what I mean. Independent schools seem to cover a wider syllabus than the NC requires, I think.

The GCSE examination syllabus is not the KS3 curriculum, however. I think that schools/teachers/pupils/parents labour under the misunderstanding that the two are the same.

I don't know anything about independent schools. DD1s school is a state grammar school. They have to follow the National Curriculum. But obviously they are not compelled to drag KS3 out for 3 years

Tsmum - is it a state school bound by some NC restrictions? I get the impression that selective independents stick more content into yrs 7-9 than they have to, but maybe I'm wrong?

I meant to add that DD1 is doing an English controlled assessment today. She didn't seem concerned bout it this morning. I'm certainly less concerned about that than I am about her piano exam in a week's time (which is higher stakes).

Bonsoir what is appalling is that there is so little content in KS3 that it's perfectly possible for kids to complete it in 2/3 of the time officially allocated, while having very little homework and doing huge amounts of extra curricular stuff.

It's not that GCSEs are easy. It's that KS3 is easy. It's padded out with non academic subjects like DT and IT but in the academic subjects (eg maths, French, History) they are required to cover far less ground in 3 years than we had to cover when I was at school. That's where the problem lies.

At DD1s school all GCSE courses take 2 years (and certainly some of the musicians have already done Grade 5 theory before they start Y9). I would not be wild about even the brightest of kids doing a GCSE in one year (although that is sort of what happens at DS's school, with French, and I'm hugely not impressed with that). Doing KS3 at a sensible instead of funereal pace is a completely different issue.

At my daughter's school the only GCSE's that are taken early are ICT and D&T. They are taken at the end of year 10. The school does this so it frees up timetable time for other subjects in year 11 and because the school found that these subjects tended to be the ones that the children put on the back burner whilst concentrating on the more challenging subjects.
(My daughter got B's in both subjects)

noblegiraffe they don't all get A* in all subjects if that's what you mean. They now do four A2's as standard and the EPQ, having done GS and Critical Thinking AS's in Y11.

I think it's appalling practice to get children to take high stakes examinations "out of year". It skews comparisons between candidates and creates situations where pupils don't study key subjects like Maths, English or French, for a whole year, and therefore forget skills.

thetasigmamum do they do more A levels as standard then? It seems a bit odd that bright kids would take a year longer over A levels than everyone else to me, unless they all do 5 or 6.

noblegiraffe It is. Most of them do. There seems to be so little work involved in Y7-8 even accelerating them a year in that period. Acanthus Yes, they have a 3 year sixth form.

Universities only take the final GCSE grades into consideration, resits are irrelevant at this level, though as most people have said here it is surely more productive to do an exam well once than re-revise and resit it a number of times! Resits become problematic at A Level, as (save for those students taking gap years) it is the AS Level results that conditional offers are based on. Getting an A/A* overall makes no difference if an initial E/D/C/B dissuades a university from even considering a student. Do it well the first time, even if that means preparing for longer.

What do they do in year 11? Start the A level courses?

At DD1's school the whole cohort do all their GCSEs in Y10.

My DCs school have a no early entry for GCSEs policy unless there are exceptional circumstances eg language gcses for bilingual children. Taking a GCSE early and then having to resit just wastes so much time that could be spent actually being taught or working on understanding the material at a higher level.

DS is in year 10 and will take some GCSE papers in the summer such as science and an RE paper but he'll also have school exams in everything else. He is a high achiever and will get the best chance of good results by leaving as much as possible till the summer of year 11.

The teaching staff should know if your child is able to sit GCSE's early. My DS's school work with everyone to make sure that this is the case and as far as SATS go, they totally ignore them and do their own tests the second week that year 7 start, which include logical thinking, spacial awareness, all round leaning ability and knowledge - they are not limited to science, maths and English. The children do not get to know their scores in any of the tests but a parent can ask to be told. My DS was in the top 3% of his year group at the start of year 7 and he therefore is in the highest stream possible now he is in year 11 and is set to achieve A* to B grades in the higher papers. Works well at our school.

My DS got a grade B in maths at the end of year 10 but they have all been told that they have to resit next March or so to achieve better grades, they had the chance to sit it because it was available to them, they could bank the grade they got if it was good enough, the teachers have assessed the grades and told those students who can get a better grade to resit and try again, they said well done to them but that they could do better with more tuition. It gave them a chance to sit an exam and see what it was like. My DS was 1 mark of an A grade so he said himself that he was going to have another go and he was pleased that he could resit it.