What are peoples thoughts on the English Baccalaureate ??

Children might have had to do calculus in maths at O-level, but so what? I could easily train a bright Y7 to differentiate or integrate a polynomial. It probably wasn't moved to A-level because it was too difficult, but because at that basic level, there wasn't much point. I just looked at an old O-level paper from the 60s and it didn't have any statistics on at all. Now statistics is much more useful and relevant to young people than being able to find the gradient of a curve at the point (2,3).

And, for the record, Gove is an odious buffoon.

Even the current system doesn't fare well for those DC's on the C/D borderline.

Drop two marks, you get a 'D', employers rubbish the qualification you worked your socks off for.

Yet the school won't allow you to do vocational qualifications because they assume that your hard work will get you that 'C' without them putting anything extra in.

Then grade boundaries are changed and there's no chance of you getting that 'C' that you were predicted when the school told you to take 'traditional GCSE's'.

And they didn't have a suitable vocational program anyway...

And in some subjects, with the best will in the world, some DC's just WON'T get a grade higher than a 'G'.

My DD is working her socks off, doing practice every night, and she's just managing to get a mid-G prediction at this point in Y10 in Maths.

She has finally retained the majority of her times tables, except 6,7 and 8, despite daily practice from the age of 6yo. Eight years daily practice and she STILL can't get the last 3 to 'stick'.

What's your suggestion for her? She can use scales, a jug, a sugar thermometer and a calculator. What more does she need to work in a patisserie or a bakery?

TalkinPeace2.

Perhaps we should bring back the study of punched cards and the merging of tape stream files to the 'computer science' curriculum.....

radical
You and I must be the same age. Wegener was heresy during my O level. Becoming proven during my A level and the paradigm by my degree (John Small, Study of Landforms was one of my lecturers!)

And yes, what DD in year 10 and DS in Year 8 are doing is radically different than what went on three years ago.
Friends who teach at PSC sixth form college are already being geared up for the new approach of their incoming students

If I was presented with a 2012 GCSE Core Science paper when I was 16 I would have failed it.

I knew nothing about Wegener's theory, why it was not taken seriously nor the evidence that now supports it. I also knew nothing about the formation of the earth's atmosphere (nor the age of the earth).

At A level I did not study the greenhouse effect of gases caused by absorption of IR radiation. Nor did I study NMR, IR, GC or the effect of CFCs on ozone.

The current curriculum is relevant.

Following changes to the GCSE science curriculum in 2011, it is also a lot more rigorously tested (a fact that is overlooked by all politicians).

Reallytired. You must be.

This isn't an argument but a fact published by the organisation that sets IQ tests - the IQ point average has risen by 15 points. That is a simple fact - not a question of belief. Why this has happened, we don't know.

Now where is your published evidence that pupils would struggle with a paper from the 1970s? Your points about content are irrelevant - of course anyone would struggle to pass a test containing information they had never been taught. And don't forget that only 15% of the population in 1950 actually sat an O level and many of them didn't pass.

IQ tests are an appalling measure anyway, because every single one of them has significant racial bias - Europeans score low in Indian tests and vice versa.

It is not really relevant to compare past and present exams.

Lamarckism has been discredited
but epigenetics has appeared from nowhere

climate change / the ozone hole - CFCs are history now

the speed of technological change is increasing exponentially - our children will most likely have jobs that did not exist when we were children

and the problem with the Idiot Gove is that he fervently believes (and its a religious rather than a reasoned viewpoint) that every child should sit exams like the ones he sat that let him get where he is today.
He has no concept that their time has passed and they were never suitable for all people.

The Ebacc was a political move
the EBC needs to be scrapped ASAP - as the changes already in train on GCSEs (the results of which will appear in August 2015 and not before)
will have much of the desired effect without the insanity of binning so much good practice.

squeezedatbothends, I don't believe that average intelligence has increased dramatically. What has got better is children's exam technique and short term recall.

However most children would struggle with an O-level or a CSE paper from the 1970s. In the 1950s the expectations for O-level were far tougher. Children had to do calculus in maths and Newton's laws of motion were in a 1950s physics O-level. In the past an exam paper was literally a piece of paper rather than a 23 page book. Children were forced to write in sentences and make their mathematical workings clear enough to be followed an examiner.

I wouldn't mind betting that a 2012 a-level biology student would fail an o-level paper. They would struggle to explain the structure of a kidney with a diagram because they cannot recall facts.

In agreement with lurcherlover. I'm also an examiner.

chloe74's statements like: 'Some schools obviously still use these authors but over the whole county many schools don't ?study? the pre-20th century classics, hence the need to reintroduce them' are simply untrue, as a very cursory look at the specifications would show.

I fell over our Gove bible the other day - HT has deployed it as a wedge for his office door.

Chloe 74.

I spent the day with Dylan Wiliam, the man Michael Gove hired to advise on the overhaul of the curriculum. I'm not sure if you know who he is, but he considered to be the leading expert in the world on pupil assessment. This is what he had to say.

1 That all the evidence from over 3000 international studies suggests that Michael Gove's tinkering with the curriculum will make no difference to standards whatsoever.

1. That having spent a fortune on a consultation process with an expert panel, charged with looking at the international evidence over a two year period, when they finally published their advice, he ignored every single bit of it.

These two points suggest that Michael Gove is a buffoon.

Most really good physicists know that classical Newtonian physics has real limitations.

It's like anything really - if you start trying to sound like an expert about things you know nothing about then you make yourself look like an iodiot.

prettybird that is SO true.
Its one of the reasons DH decided not to stay in teaching - he does not have to deal with parents in his current work, just kids and their teachers :-)

I remember my mum (who was a well-respected English teacher) once saying to me that the problem with teaching is that everyone is an expert as everyone has been to school.

(A former pupil, who had just found me via fb after googling her and finding out she'd died recently said, "A teacher affects eternity, for they can never tell where their influence ends! And this was true of her." )

Gove's suggestion that taxpayers should buy a new yacht for the Queen?

The stupid King James Bible project, foreward written by M Gove?

His behaviour re Leveson?

Or idiotic assertion that all schools can be above average merely by trying a bit harder?

chloe, I'm not just a teacher. I'm a senior examiner and moderator for the biggest exam board in the country. Therefore my "expertise" isn't confined to schools I have worked in. I see thousands of exam papers and controlled assessments every year from students all over the country. All of them, without exception, have studied academic texts, like those in my post above. I suggest you familiarise yourself with the content of the GCSE specifications in particular. You can find them online, together with exemplar exam material. I tell you unequivocally that what my students have to do now to get an A* (and therefore what all students have to do as these are national exams) is harder than the exams of 20 years ago. I have compared them, and believe me it is so.

What about his disastrous Free Schools policy that has seen thousands spent on schools that have never opened, or have opened only to be mostly empty seeing as they've opened in areas that didn't need them?

Oh, and the "expertise" you deride is, I imagine, a whole lot more experience than YOU have. Unless you've examined the set texts in all English schools, in which case, I apologise

Chloe, your faith in politicians is sweet. Misguided, but really quite charming. Here's something Gove has done to mess up- overspent on the academies programme to the tune of £££££££ meaning that education budgets will have to be slashed AGAIN. And that's just this week.

I was watching an episode of Yes Prime Minister last night. They were talking about how young people couldn't 'read, write or add up'. Yes Prime Minister was shot in 1986, the first sitting of GCSEs wasn't till 1988. Apparently the old system that everyone harks back to wasn't considered that great either.

This is where teachers ?expertise? falls down and they prove their ignorance. Your experience is only based on the children in your classes. What is needed is an understanding of the needs of millions of children. The two are very different. Just like there is a difference in comparing a page in a book and studying the whole book. Some schools obviously still use these authors but over the whole county many schools don't ?study? the pre-20th century classics, hence the need to reintroduce them.

I cant find any examples of Michael Gove being buffoon like. Plenty for real idiots like Prescott, Brown and Balls but certainly not for Gove. So I can only assume you are just expressing an ignorant political prejudice that has been indoctrinated into you from birth.

ET ? Which came first the chicken or the egg? If all the specs had been created before consultation then teachers would be up in arms for not being consulted first. The fact that he is consulting first so he can use the information in creating the system is to his credit. You cant have it both ways!

Until Gove messes up I will continue to believe that he is an honest man making the system better.

Here's an interesting fact, and I say fact, not opinion! Every 10 years, the criteria for IQ tests have to be shifted upwards because children are getting smarter. To be average now, a child has to have 15 more points than a child in 1950 did. A child who passed the 11+ in 1960 would now be deemed to be below average and would not get a place. This has been part of a longitudinal study and is accepted by OECD and the IoE. This myth that education is getting worse, is just that, a myth. What has shifted is the nature of the work that the majority do - when 85% of people left school at 14 or 16 with no O levels, they were likely to walk into manual labour jobs. Being able to read, write or add up was good but wasn't really necessary so employers didn't need to intervene. This fiction that suddenly no-one can communicate is just that - fiction. More children are literate now that at any other time in our history.

80% of people nationally think that our schools are bad but only 15% of parents think their child's school is not good. There is a huge difference between our perception and our experience. But one thing is sure, the more we attack our teachers and undermine the achievements of our young, the more resentment we will breed. Fewer high quality graduates will be attracted to the profession and those who can will leave. We need to think very carefully about what kind of education system we create when we turn on each other and on the people we charge to care for and educate our children.

I teach Newton's Laws of Motion at maths A-level. I can't say that my students are suddenly transformed into model citizens once they have mastered them.

chloe74
you do not seem to understand how politics works.
Cameroon could have a reshuffle next week and all of a sudden Gove could be the worlds expert on Foreign affairs
and Ian Duncan Smith could be in charge of education.

Polticians generally know bugger all about anything except looking after themselves.
Civil servants and advisers do all the real work.

Typo: I am also pretty sure that classical physics has relevance to every person and profession in the country.