GCSE exams

"often extremely important" ? Please elaborate.
I can see how GCSE results affect A-level choices.
Very few university courses care beyond a minimum of passes (5).

Leaving aside how employers use GCSEs, GCSEs are often extremely important for university entrance decisions.

It's surely very good to test stamina and the ability to juggle a reasonable to significant workload over a number of areas? And it's not a case of only those who have 'little need' to revise doing well, it's a case of managing workload.

Most DC could afford to take at least half of half term off I'd have thought, and it did afford 10 days with no exams, which is a break in itself.

My DS only had 4 exams after the half term and had the whole week off after sitting 17 exams before. I can honestly say he was not stressed the whole time only bored of revising towards the end.

Employers just use GCSE's as a screen for competitive jobs

It does question why we have them at all? If all students are staying onto 18 will GCSE's become redundant? Other European countries don't have equivalent exams at age 16 and just rely on the exams taken at 18.

Just asking - don't actually think any government would dare get rid of them altogether.

My DS, summer born and a year ahead, is taking 12 GCSEs this summer and isn't finding it a problem at all. He's bored tbh, now that the first front loaded couple of weeks are out of the way. His elder siblings took all their GCSEs as linear and I don't remember any particular stress. The fact that he's not fazed doesn't mean that he's done well of course :) He's certainly stopped revising because he's only got a couple of maths papers left and he says you can't revise for maths, so he's not. Also, half-term comes in the middle, so they have a whole week without exams, which is quite civilized really.

In general terms, I find boys much less stressy with exams than girls.

Not all kids are in a position where they can obtain high level qualifications so for them the GCSE's are very important to put them on the road for jobs and apprenticeships.

Employers just use GCSE's as a screen for competitive jobs

I don't think many care about GCSEs at all. Most of the jobs with GCSE entry are fairly low skilled so they only want Maths/English.

Jobs that have higher skills employers want A levels/degree etc and often ignore GCSEs.

I was recently told by our careers service that one or two of the graduate training scheme's don't even have a space to list them in the application process anymore.

Yeah I probably agree - Employers just use GCSE's as a screen for competitive jobs i.e. CV in the bin or not!

Do they give you real tangible work place skills? Perhaps going through exam revision itself, but the knowledge is fungible - that's what the internet is for!!!

Social skills and resourcefulness are much more important!

Extra time does indeed wreak havoc. DD often fetches up finishing mocks in lunch hour and her longest afternoon exam made her miss the school bus.

I wonder if that statement reflects an old-fashioned model of education stopping at 16 & launch into the workplace with no further training, which hasn't existed for a long time. Job applicants don't only have GCSEs vs. O-levels to compare but also yrs of other experiences & further ed or training or even cover letter quality. Not to mention references. The qualifications could only ever be roughly comparable, not perfect. Esp. when you consider different schools ppl come from.

Will need to have some kind of way for employers to compare GCSEs to whatever succeeds them, but again that's going to only be tricky for a few yrs & then everything will be relative, again.

lljkk I think employers care otherwise how do they judge applicants. It would be nice to think say a C grade is fairly consistent over the years, although it clearly hasn't been and recently not even consistent in subsequent years. I look at my sprinkling of 8 A's and B's from O level days which was considered pretty good at the time, but compared to today, its pretty average.
I know there are a number of variables including kids working harder but how do you judge if there is no consistency.

I don't agree. The depth is so thin. Look at Maths. GCsE's are pretty lightweight in comparison to A-level. My teachers used to make us do O-Level papers to practise A-Level - and that was in 2001...

I can't figure out why anyone cares so much whether O-levels or GCSEs were/are tougher. Or how compares to whatever new exam they are going to invent.

Also, no easter revision courses but I do remember a few revision guides. We just learnt our notes that we had made in class.

Strangely, I'm glad I did O levels and would have hated the modular system, but I'm a tad lazy and I'm really good at cramming information so i think the old suited me.

The modular/ coursework type GCSE's seems to have favoured girls so now this is all changing do you think the boy's results will improve again. If so, what does it say about the validity of GCSE's exams?

Everybody in my comprehensive did 9/10 O levels or gcse's as standard and I remember sciences being much more in depth than they are now.
French written work was done without any of this pre written nonsense and definitely no 30 words.Fact there has been studies on this and it has been proven that O levels were much more rigorous and the fact we had to go down to the local library to try and retrieve any information on top of study rather than easily looking it up on the internet contributed to the stress that was put on to kids of this time.

I think the amount of content in the exams is roughly the same as when I did O levels. At least for the sciences, I wouldn't know about the other subjects.

There has obviously been new content added particularly in Biology but content I remember learning for Chem O level is now A level content.

I'm looking forward to them sorting out the linear exams properly as the situation at the moment is insane. Why couldn't he have just made the change all in one go.

Not sure if it is a factor for GCSE, but at my university we rarely set 3 hour papers anymore because of students with disabilities.

We have had students that were entitled to 1.5 times extra time plus rest breaks. So a three hour exam could end up being 5 long.

When I did my O levels, far fewer disabled people took exams, and I don't think any allowance for reasonable adjustment was made.

Cross-posted Raidne! So some of them were 3 hours long. Can't believe you still have your exam timetable!

Were O Level exams really 3 hours long? I sat a variety of boards in 1982 (God) and my memory is that they were 90 minutes in the main. It was A Levels that were 3 hours long wasn't it?

There certainly wasn't the amount of papers the DC sit now though (although I'm sure there were 3 papers in Maths-Paper 3 which included calculus and the longer questions was my idea of hell)

I (bizarrely) still have my original O-level exam timetable!

I did 9 O-levels. Orals (and aural tests) for languages stretched from 1 May to 22 May on 4 different days (2 days for each language). May was also when practical exams were done.

For my exam board, actual exams started on 1 June and ended on 25 June.

Eng. Lang. was 2 papers (1½ hrs and 1 hr 45 mins)
Eng Lit. was 1 paper (3 hrs)
Maths was 2 papers (2½ hrs and 2½ hrs)
Sciences were 2 papers (1½ hrs and 2 hrs)
Languages were 1 paper (3 hrs)
Geography was 2 papers (2½ hrs and 2½ hrs)
History was 1 paper (2½ hrs)
R.E. was 2 papers (1 hr 40 mins and 2 hrs)

I can't believe I sat through a 3 hour French paper or did 5 flippin' hours of Geography!!!

9 O levels = 9 exams

DD1's 9 GCSEs = sitting in an exam hall 19x times. There isn't even an exam for art FFS

(Plus CAs, music, art and Drama practicals.)

I absolutely agree with you OP. Another ex O level student here who sat long papers and they were over with in a couple of weeks. We also only did 8 subjects.

My elder child sat all hers in year 11. Three of the science papers were sat in the January which helped (no longer allowed) and there were controlled assessments in English and History and ISAs in Science.

My younger child sat two in year 9, and three in year 10. When she goes into year 11 in September she will do another 7. I think she would have benefitted from the additional maturity of sitting them all in year 11, plus doing a two year GCSE rather than a one year course in all her options. I think Gove is trying to abolish early entry. Which system is the more stressful I don't know.

I also agree with some posters up thread that GCSEs are a lot more difficult than the old O levels but a lot better taught.

Non of the exams are too long, in fact I think the one hour additional science ones are too short, DD1 was loosing the will to live revising the same short section over and over again.

The problem is they are such a muddle. 1hr for this, 2hrs for that. 1.5 hrs and 1.75 hours for others. 2 papers for this, four papers for that. And the exam season spreading over six weeks for some poor DCs.

I much preferred one three hour paper per exam. Even when we got two a day, because you knew exactly where you stood. You knew you had to have done your revision before the exam season started.

We didn't have three days off in the middle or have RE at the beginning and the end.

A one hour exam, and all the associated traveling time and mental stress is just as tiring as a three hour one, but there's more day left in which you feel you ought to revise.