Will new GCSE's bring a halt to Social Mobility?

I think that's why it's good, in any system, to have combinations of assessment over the years - multiple small filters rather than a few really high-stakes ones.

Is there, anywhere, a marking or evaluation method that is completely impervious to discrimination of any description? Have never heard of one, and have always placed it next to sightings of unicorns in central London.

No, I know it doesn't, but French schools are great upholders of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and Laïcité - those fundamental Republican values are everywhere.

The unfairness in the French system is much more bound up with the fact that parental background/education is such a strong determinant of school success. The school system is a culture of its own making, difficult to grasp for the uninitiated.

There is lots of unfairness in the French school system but I'm not sure that discrimination on grounds of sex, race and class is rife.

It doesn't have to be conscious.

"There's endless research work that shows that sex, race and class all have an effect on teachers' perception of the same standard of work."

Teachers - indeed schools - are bound by strict codes of conduct enshrined in la charte de la laïcité à l'école. There is lots of unfairness in the French school system but I'm not sure that discrimination on grounds of sex, race and class is rife.

Prépa = classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles = two years of intensive cramming before taking the competitive examinations for grandes écoles (the most prestigious sort of French HE)

There is something intrinsically more fair about basing judgement on two years' worth of school reports

Assuming that the teachers are models of probity, of course. There's endless research work that shows that sex, race and class all have an effect on teachers' perception of the same standard of work, and the jumping off point for the GCSE reforms we're discussing here was that teachers were, shall we say, influenced when marking continuous assessment work. One-off exams are a problem, but the alternatives assume that continuous assessment and subjective reports are done fairly.

Prepas? New word for me? a translation svp!

School marks/reports are very important in France. Not only are they used by lycées as part of their selection procedure, they are used by prépas as a major element of their selection procedure. Bac marks are unimportant (you just need to pass).

There is something intrinsically more fair about basing judgement on two years' worth of school reports than the one-day snapshot that examination grades provide.

The brevet is 50% based on average marks during the school year (hence a fair degree of variability from school to school) and 50% on four obligatory externally assessed exams in Maths, French, History-Geography and one MFL (usually English) and two optional externally assessed exams. But it's all about to change - lots of reforms underway!

Thank you bobo, the brevet had completely escaped my notice, although a vague memory swims back courtesy of DS's French GCSE coursework material. How is the brevet graded?

Some DC who are admitted to a lycéegénéral in Seconde (year 11, which is a general, not a specialized, year) are not allowed to continue into Première/Terminale (i.e. an academic bac, which is a two year course). So you need to bear in mind that admission to a lycée général is not necessarily as selective as all that as you do have to prove yourself once you are there in order to remain there.

How lycées select depends on the area you live in. Some towns have a catchment lycée and whether you end up in a lycée général (academic) or a lycée professionnel or lycée technique depends on which bac you and your collège have decided is the right path for you, but you won't get to choose a particular establishment. Other towns (like Paris) have complicated admissions systems that take school grades, widening participation criteria, sibling policies etc into account and you may or may not get allocated your first, second, third, fourth etc choice.

There is currently a big push to make state lycées in Paris very mixed, academically, so hardship/widening participation criteria have an important weighting.

Of course, there are many private lycées and some of those are highly academically selective.

I didn't know that, bobo. How do lycées select? That seems very pertinent to this discussion.

"I think I'm right in saying that all French secondaries go through to Bac"

Absolutely not: most French secondary education is separated into collège (middle school or junior high), which runs from 11-15, and lycée, from 15-18. State collège is not selective (private collège selects, but not necessarily on academic criteria). All lycées are selective but they are not allowed to select on the basis of the brevet des collèges.

Cross-post, but I don't think anyone is suggesting students should do any A level without the coursework leading up to it, whatever the subject. It does happen, if rarely. Someone at my school did A level Greek in two years ab initio with the intention of reading Classics at Oxbridge. She studied one-on-one with a very supportive teacher, who was also a classicist, but it wasn't on the curriculum, and many schools would not have a teacher able and willing to do it.

It's in getting the last few marks on a paper where coaching is most useful, MyLife.

I don't know anything about sixth form colleges' entry requirements and hadn't given it much thought . I take the point about accountability.

It is my understanding that Ricardian is correct that all French secondaries go to the Bac, but that not all students take it. I vaguely remember that US high schools offer a High School Equivalency certificate for those that go on to community colleges rather than universities, but what is tested and how it's reported, I don't know.

A five subject standard EBacc sounds fine, but what about an alternative for those studying more (erm) vocational subjects? A school leavers' certificate demonstrating minimum proficiencies in literacy and numeracy (and pitched at a fairly basic level), perhaps?

I think the new grades will actually challenge the private schools as they can hyper coach some kids to just squeak A and A* whereas my understanding now is that grade 9 will be reserved for the really really bright who would often end up bored at school (State or private).

Just as you don't need an A Level in Engineering to study engineering. It is assumed that if you show a great deal of talent for maths and physics at A Level standard, you will do just fine at engineering.

That's somewhat disingenuous, because degrees in engineering need maths and physics, whereas A Level Engineering is usually regarded as not a good preparation for an engineering degree. Ditto Law: the rows about A Level Law are well-rehearsed and we don't need to redo them.

But at the moment, doing A Level maths without GCSE maths is hard, ditto physics, ditto chemistry, ditto biology, ditto French, ditto German, ditto music, ditto. Yes, very strong candidates can catch up, but the courses in each of those subjects are assumed not to start ab initio. That's not about talent and application, that's about subject knowledge.

A five subject standardised exam (a sort of EBacc) would be plenty at 16 from a pupil's perspective.

How would sixth form colleges do admission?

I'm not sure why DC need to take exams in so many subjects at the age of 16.

"5 A*-C" is school certificate, last seen in the wild in about 1952 before it was replaced by O Level. The original O Level "pass" standard was school certificate, and five subjects (which isn't a new thing: you needed 5 O Levels to "matriculate" to get "Form R" in order to get your grant in the 1980s) is school certificate as well.

For whatever reason, we're still using a 1919 qualification as the reference point for school testing.

The other problem with removing GCSEs is that 11-16 schools then have no strong accountability measure, and 17-19 colleges don't have anything to do admissions on. I think I'm right in saying that all French secondaries go through to Bac, while we have the problem of there being a lot of 11-16 schools as a legacy of secondary moderns.

A five subject standardised exam (a sort of EBacc) would be plenty at 16 from a pupil's perspective. The stakes attached to GCSEs have become ludicrous.

I therefore take with a pinch of salt that A or 9 at GCSE or A level English Lit = all best candidates as Ricardian seems to think*

Sorry, I didn't intend to say that at all. But university applications are necessarily not 100% accurate, because it involves foretelling the future, which is "how well will this 18 year old do with three years of teaching?" That has error bars a mile wide, too. The current system assumes that doing reasonably well at exams at stage n is a good sign for doing well at stage n+1. Is there any reason to believe the new system will be worse at that than the current one? If you're currently using A* at GCSE as a threshold, will using 8 in the new GCSE be any different? I can't see why it would be.

I am begging the question (and it's lovely to be able to use the phrase correctly) of whether using A* currently is any better than disembowelling chickens and looking at their entrails, of course.