Scrapping GCSEs

O Levels DID NOT WORK, so why are they changing back to them/a similar system???

Currently 40% of children's grades are lower than a GCSE grade C now - so why make it even more difficult?

In my view the Education Minister needs to ask himself who will benefit from this - perhaps he already knows; himself, because the arogant man will be in the spotlight.

Lastly, why mend something that isn't broken?

I hope you are right TalkinPeace2 because it is our kids future they are fucking with.

Hoodoo
which variant of teh "propsed new system" - the one Announced in May 2010 / October 2010 / Feb 2011 / June 2011 / October 2011 / January 2012 / June 2012
and on it will go
with restrospective judgements (like the Ebacc) abounding.
My kids are year 9 and year 7.
I see no point worrying about which syllabus they will be doing as its all up in the air
(and the Academies programme may yet implode and scupper the whole thing anyway)
Its ALL just hot air.

My DD will be part of the first year of the proposed new system, used as a guinea pig by an incompetent government who will probably be long gone by then.
Thanks Tories

Do you mean S-papers as in Supplementary Levels... now that's when you were frustratingly intelligent for everyone else a really good candidate. Some find their S-level pass to be a bigger achievement than getting into uni as masses of people get uni places but you had to be highly academic to be offered this paper.

The only other thing I can think of is STEP papers but these have never been stopped for university entry in maths.

MigratingCoconuts - I was not being disparaging about GCSEs. Times have moved on, and in this increasingly small global world, returning to 60's style O Levels and A Levels is tobe commended,

My childtren will be prepared, as they already use a lot of books (English) and Mathematics from the 50s and 60s). Fortuantely, I am learning too. I also benefit from a full set of model answers - and so it is easy to validate thier work. My children do not undertaken school homework; I have withdrawn them from it. We tend to use challenging resources from yesteryear.

Roll on O Levels, A Levels and S Papers too.

Actually MC I know quite a number of teachers of sciences and they tend to agree with me. Particularly in chemistry and physics, but my own understanding of Bio papers since the 90s is that they are being dumbed down too.

So yes, I will absolutely not agree with you on this.

It seems, as ever, that the Government employs 'experts' and then refuses to listen to them. The whole education system needs to be looked at from early years through to university and beyond - but look at it from a university/employers perspective - what skills do they need to enter professions/take apprenticeships etc - society needs a very wide range of skills and talents. But it needs to be looked at from the top down. Gove has looked at Scandanavia, and seems to have ignored the reasons for its success, the multi layered approach they have to education, and the lack of pressure on 3 year olds..... My daughter has just completed 12 GCSES, and had, in total over 40 controlled assessments, ISAs, pieces of course work etc etc in this time - it has been an endless conveyor belt. Surely we should be listening to the professionals about how to establish an assessment system which is rigorous, looking at the strengths of the current system ( how about an exam at the end aof year 10, bring back KS3 etc), plus somedemanding controlled type assessments across all subjects, so that it is just not down to examinations - practical work etc. I have seen that to tackle GCSES requires stamina, commitment, resourcefulness, the ability to think out of the box - surely these are qualities which, although difficult to quantify, mean that the child is being looked at as a complete entity, rather than just an exams passer. Isn't the main problem that we have a competitive system, pitting private schools against state, able children against those who need support. We need to look at what our society really needs, values and is willing to finance. Yes, I imagine that won't be a popular comment.

Actually, I disagree with you about the content of the syllabus. Dunno which board you are looking at but, as a previous poster said, some topics are gone, others, such as modern cloning techniques and genetic engineering are given higher status.

I am sure you know what you are talking about but I am also sure of my personal experience as a teacher of the past 20 years.

We'll have to part disagreeing about this, I think.

Actually I have heard that about Jan 2012. I have read the current specifications though for at least biology & chemistry. They are still dumbed down in many ways. Many of the more involved topics from the past 10-20 years have been removed and replaced with filler on the simpler stuff.

University-minded teenagers should be bright enough to understand scientific skills, facts vs. understanding is a false dichotomy as you can clearly have both.

People accuse you of bashing the students if you suggest exams are getting easier, but I am not. It's not their fault the syllabus is not as demanding as it once was and I know some put in a massive effort to get the grades they do. It's not absolutely easy, but can still be relatively easier.

but...that's what the Universities and scientific societies asked QCA to put more emphasis at the last review, in the last 5 years! . They did not want students who could spout facts with no understanding and who were unable to demonstrate any actual skills in scientific processing.

However, I don't think you could have seen the most recent A level and GCSE exams because the general feeling is that they have toughened up since january.

I have seen the A levels and GCSEs in sciences, and the level of them is ridiculously simplistic. A bit of "use and apply" stuff (How Science Works) is less important than actually gaining a broad, schematic introduction to the actual content that will leave the student well grounded for moving to an undergraduate course and HE personnel confident that this is the case. I'm not saying HSW should go altogether, but there is a problem with too much emphasis on teaching skills and not enough on knowledge. The former is of little practical use without the latter.

There are still plenty of A-levels and some GCSEs, where parts of the syllabus are sufficient to answer all exam questions.

As a secondary science teacher, I absolutely agree with everything ThefallenModonna has said!

Also, tectime...good for you! But I do hope that your primary children turn out to be academic enough to get those new O level that you are assuming they'll be taking.... because I'm not sure what the alternative will be like and what value it will have. Are you?

If there is a delinquent youth, they will probably not be sitting exams at 16 anyway, certainly not the new style O'levels. There will still be qualifications post 16, which may be more relevant anyway.
Actually as old as I am, no one in my year was allowed to leave until the end of the summer term (which my school managed to define as the same date as the beginning of study leave by starting sixth form in July). However lots of people left with no qualifications, most with a handful of CSEs, and a few with some O'levels.
I'm not saying GCSEs necessarily should be abolished, but I think that is more where the effort should be focused not on a return to O'levels.

BTW O'levels allowed a lot of rote learning, whereas students are now supposed to be able to use and really understand knowledge. Also on most papers you didn't have to answer every question, and whole sections of the syllabus could be omitted, something that modern GCSEs and A'levels rarely allow (I got an A'level in Philosophy on half the syllabus, and I and a friends son both left out part of the Further Maths syllabus we just couldn't get).

Like others I wish Gove would just SHUT UP FOR FIVE MINUTES. I work in Early Years and we have a new Framework starting in September and there are no guidelines for assessment published - no training, no assessment tool - no-one knows when it will be available. I'm sure it's the same with linear GCSEs. My DD has just finished her GCSEs and took 31 exams in all over the 2 year course. I'll bet nobody has worked out how pupils in 2 years time are going to take that many exams and how they are all going to get marked in time for results day. Gove needs to reverse his talking/listening ratio.

mummytime not everyone will be in school till 18. That's not the law anyway: it only requires participation in education which can be 1 day a week in a job or some form of part-time, vocational or technical ed. Full-time (pre 16) education will continue to be required by law only until the final Friday in June at the end of the eleventh year. I know this will mean school/college for the majority of YPs as said but as over 70% go on to academic FE now the numbers will not be that high.

What about the delinquent youth who refuse to participate after 16? It's wishful thinking to assume that 17 year olds will get out of bed early until the day of their birthday because Mr Gove tells them to. There is no custodial sentence or anything that drastic. They'll just face fines which will probably end up coming out their parents' pockets like the young ones. Heck, even in US states where classroom-based ed is mandatory for all under 18's the dropout rate is high. Do you not think there should be something at 16 so those who fall into the new NEET-teen criminal offence trap or get a perfectly legal job/apprenticeship have a recognised basic academic qualification, likely a CSE or whatever it's called now?

Do people remember when there used to be 3 different leaving dates for Y11/ S5/ Fifth Formers depending on their birthdays? so those who turned 16 early in the year could walk out at Christmas, some at Easter and pupils born in high summer had to finish the year but actually left school at 15 (as they still do now but can't get a full-time job until their 16th birthday.)

Gove was supposed to attend a Skype interview with 6 students from different schools in my area yesterday. They were interviewing him for a special edition of our local paper which came out today and was almost entirely written and edited by the students. He didn't show. His office called 15 mins before the set time to say he was unavailable, meaning that the 6 teenagers who had been brought in from their separate schools, missing lessons, were there for no reason. The man is a prize buffoon.

mumzy where on earth do you get the idea that only A and A* grades at GCSE matter? COllege courses specify 'higher grade' which meand C or above. Universities generally don't care except for the most competitive courses - C and above is fine.
As others have said, the old O level was only taken by about 20% of the population. Around 50% now get A*-C in GCSE. I think it is on the whole because of better teaching and more focussed support (teaching to the test, if you liek - but that isn't necessarily bad. If you had an exam to do would you study things that wouldn't come up?). Are you all ready for the majority of your DCs to fail these exams? It's reahter like calls for grammar schools: everyone assumes their DCs would get in. THey can't all be right...

Well, it looks like the Lib Dems are going to torpedo this - the second good thing they've done since they torpedoed Adrian Beecroft's 'Fire at Will' plan for workers.

When will governments realise that the reason that the education system is in trouble is that they keep messing with it every five bloody minutes?

Squirrel- I think you may be right. GCSE stats is not enriching for able mathematicians, it is more maths when they need harder maths. I taught it alongside GCSE do they did both exams at end of Y eleven which is better die keeping knowledge fresh etc. We did it for 1 years before moving to fsmq as it wasn't meeting the needs of the most able.

gelatinous yes to that. I have a very able DS who did his maths a year early and got A*. I feel he has wasted a year doing statistics.Luckily he is so interested in the subject that he has done maths outside of school but with the best will in the world he will be rusty when he starts A level in September.
I tried to persuade the school to do FSMQs or something similar but to no avail. Their priority as always is those borderline D/Cs for their rankings.

I agree with mummytime I despair of the amount of change in secondary education. The fact that teachers manage to actually teach anything amid the chaos is a minor miracle.

I hear your point, noble giraffe, but I do think it's wrong that the maths paper orders the questions in difficulty.

Back in the old days (snore, perhaps we should have an acronym for that on the education threads BITOD) questions on calculus, sine and cosine etc etc were randomly dotted around. The last question might be easier than the first.

I agree that exams should be a test of what you know rather than trying to catch you out (which was frequently the case I remember) BUT too much hand-holding defeats the object of any test.

I am just fed up with change GCSE exams have been changing every year from at least "starting to study" in 2009. They have: Introduced ISAs 2009, changed syllabus (2010, 2011, 2012), introduced controlled assessments, got rid of multiple choice (2011), gone to terminal (2012).
And now Gove wants to go back to O'levels in 2013! At Robert Gordons he didn't even sit O'levels the first time round himself!

I had hoped my DD would at least have one year for her teachers to get used to a new exam and method of assessment, but of course the fairest system is just to change the goal posts every year, so everyone gets the same chaos.

The stupidest thing is that if everyone has to stay at school until 18, An exam at 16 is becoming increasingly irrelevant.