Old letter and new number GCSEs

Oh, OK.

I don't know, Bobo. The new GCSE is harder, but it doesn't replace additional maths- there's no calculus for example.

And the A-level will be getting harder too so there may still be a gap that will need bridging.

noblegiraffe - won't the 1-9 scale do away entirely with the need for a separate Additional Maths exam?

As an even more dramatic example of your "what about subjects with very low rates of high grades", 0.6% of those taking Single Award Science got A*, and 5.6% got an A. If you can get a 9 for being in the top 3%, that would cover down to probably a third of the people that got A. The same's true, pretty much, for Leisure and Tourism, Manufacturing, Hospitality, Engineering, Health and Social care and the rest of the GCSEs taken by a much weaker cohort where, for perfectly good reasons, the rate of top grades is very low.

At the other extreme, Latin and Greek together have other 60% of the cohort getting A or above, with 37% getting A*.

Yes, grading on the curve, in the manner of 1970s A Levels, will prove to be rather tricky if you want to maintain even the semblance of grades having equivalent demand over subjects.

Currently 3.1% of students get an A in English Language. If the 9 is awarded to the top 3%, then pretty much everyone who would have got an A will get a 9.

But in Additional Maths, currently 24.8% of entries get an A, so only an eighth of people who would have got an A will get a 9. This isn't because Additional Maths is easy, but because it is hard. Only a small pool of the brightest candidates will even sit the exam.

How can a 9 therefore mean anything when its value is dependent on the ability of the cohort who sit the exam?

Fair enough, but that's an entirely different point to the one I was making ;)

People aren't getting all worked up about this.

There is no access issue whatsoever around IELTS: Les Ebdon is not tasking universities with ensuring widening opportunities amongst overseas students. It's completely different when government funding (because without the underlying crown guarantee the SLC would collapse immediately) is being used to provide educational opportunities. Were places in RG universities become skewed towards small subsets (demographically) of UK taxpayers' children then overall legitimacy of government funding of higher education would be called into serious question. Any university which runs a significant number of courses which are not accessible by students in the mainstream state system risks serious questions being asked, questions which impact on their ability to charge fees.

Currently, IELTS uses the 1-9 scale.

Cambridge University asks for at least 7.5 in IELTS. RG universities mostly ask for 7.0. It's really quite difficult to get higher than 7.5. People aren't getting all worked up about this. I think that in the UK we have got to a situation where far, far too many students get "top" grades and we need a culture shift to a situation where top grades are only ever awarded to the truly exceptional student.

I can see the potential to disadvantage a lot of students.

Indeed. It'll be like BTEC: students in smoother schools study the qualifications selective universities want, while students elsewhere are excluded from even applying by factors they can't control.

Fair dos .

I've git to be honest, I've got a sinking feeling about the changes to GCSE coupled with the decoupling of AS.

I can see the potential to disadvantage a lot of students. Not taught to 8/9 grade and no AS to offer...None of it remotely related to their ability.

for the reasons you do.

for the reasons you say.

Sorry Moves I didn't mean to imply you did: you were pointing out how you solve the problem, and I was agreeing with you.

But admission to selective universities was trailed by Gove as being a key driver for this, but as you say, you (and we in the RG) manage just fine with the current system.

And any university which asks for 8/9 will be having a conversation with Sir Les, anyway, for the reasons you do.

ricardian I didn't say that Oxbridge admissions should drive anything .

In fact I was saying the opposite. That Oxbridge manages okay at present.

New, more well defined grading might help further. But as I say, I have concerns that some students will be disadvanatged by schools not covering the grade 8/9 material (which will be an internal decision).

It seems mad that we're ever pushing. Surely the fact they've received a general education (aka australia/america) be enough. Why keep on pushing like this?!

Especially when half the students aren't managing a grade c - why the obsession wtih the top few percent in an exam.

However, I don't think we currently struggle to find high achievers as we also routinely receive raw scores in AS and set pre tests and ask for essays and interview...

I think using admission to Cambridge as a driver for the requirements in the GCSE system is the very small tail wagging the very large dog. The GCSE system does not exist for the benefit of two universities who have special provision in UCAS timelines in order to do their own completely different admission process.

I work for a university which places importance on GCSE results.

However, I don't think we currently struggle to find high achievers as we also routinely receive raw scores in AS and set pre tests and ask for essays and interview...

I suppose when AS are properly decoupled, GCSE may take on more importance in many more universities? Otherwise they will be making offers based purely on predictions (a problem may arise where some students still take the de coupled AS so have something concrete to offer at application stage. Not fair really, as this is a school not an applicatnt choice).

The trouble seems to be, that in order to get an 8/9 a student will need to have covered certain material. Material that some schools will see no advantage in covering (as most students will not benefit from covering it).
And of course many private schools will stick with IGCSE ad to hell with it.

The idea is it will help universities identify the really high flyers.

Which is a solution in search of a problem. Detailed GCSE results are only used for admission in a tiny minority of cases, and on a list of "admission things which are most likely to cause you long-term problems over access" demanding perfectly groomed lows of top grades is pretty much the number one item. Gove and Cummings, neither of whom have either worked in a university or have any science and maths background, thought they were experts on how universities do admission to STEM courses.

There's some evidence that getting broadly decent GCSE results is an indicator of doing broadly well in higher education, although evidence that not having a GCSEs of that standard is a predictor of doing badly is notable by its absence. There's no evidence at all that a row of As and a row of A*s lead to different outcomes, and plenty of anecdote at least that says the opposite.

Here's a thought experiment. Two universities with similar admission resources are heavily over-subscribed for a course that has 50 places. One decides to take a point-scoring approach to GCSE and takes only the top 300 forward into the rest of the admissions process. The other takes a relatively low floor standard (say, 8 at B or better) and then randomly chooses 300 to take forward into the rest of the admissions process. Who ends up with the better students? The answer is "no-one knows".

Iguana - that's how it worked for O and A levels back in the day. None of this coursework nonsense, apart from subjects like art!

I think basing the entire assessment of 2 years on a single exam in an afternoon in June is madness. I think I would like half to be done in an exam at the end of y10 as well.

We've been told that a chunk of material from the current AS syllabus will drop into the new top level GCSE paper, so that the bright students will be really stretched. Only the top 2-3% can expect to get a grade 9 and a lot of pupils sitting the paper will struggle to answer every question.

I was in the last year of O levels and you had to be exceptionally bright to get a majority of A grades. You could tell the age of parents at our recent curriculum evening, because the O'level generation smiled & nodded when we were told that coursework was largely being abandoned whilst the gcse generation looked as though exam based assessment was a form of child abuse!

Grade 5 will be seen as a good pass and will be roughly equivalent to the top half of grade C's under the current system (so children who got a low C in the current system might not be deemed to get a good pass under the new system).

Grade 5 is supposed to be set at a standard similar to that of 16 year olds performing highly internationally. God knows what that means in reality. What will probably happen is that because grade 4 boundaries will be set by the percentage of students who previously got C and above, and grade 7 boundaries will be set by the percentage of students who got A and above, grade boundaries for 5 and 6 will just be shoved at roughly equal intervals between 4 and 7.

Lifesalong, I thought it was 10% across 8 and 9, (old A*) but that might be A2.

Senua grades were norm referenced too when they came in. Norm referencing was only abandoned in about 1986.

Sparkling - there are still - just! - people in employment who had O levels that were scored rather than graded.

If only! Due to changes in the retirement age, me and my Grade 2 Maths have still got about 10 years of employment to go.
Don't forget that we were norm-referenced.

That's interesting about private schools and IGCSEs, the private schools in my area use AQA/Edexcel the same as most of the state schools.

Which ones use IGSCEs?

Is it only the 9 grade that will have a fixed percentage, that doesn't seem like the best way to do it. Will it still work with a UMS type system?