TV advert to explain new 9-1 GCSE doesn't mention new pass grade.

Also the parent of a frustrated year 11ds. He is top set, until earlier this year keen to do maths A level. Got a 4 in their first set of mocks in November, and still got a 4 in the second set they did in February. His marks improved on paper 1, but were the same for papers 2 and 3. This left him a few marks off the grade 5 boundary (obviously with the caveat of how accurate the grade boundaries the school are using are). He also seems to think "the other top set" did better overall, which isn't helping his mood. Have contacted school to get clarification on this. Feeling so angry that the changes have been rushed in, same as previous posters I am hoping he at least manages a 5 in the real exams as he can't go through life explaining a grade 4!

Progress from what is the issue. At the moment they use the APS from the KS1 TA. But that was a much finer grading under the previous levels.

Now there's just expected and greater depth + whatever is below those.

And there's no way a child just scraping expected and a child who's not been given greater depth because they are missing one criteria are at the same level. Yet they are both 'expected'. If hey use that as the progress measure there's no way to differentiate between those children.

Can see them using it as a way to introduce testing as the ks1 assessment tbh.

And the amazingly catastrophic maths mocks the year 11s did recently did little to calm people down..........

Michael Gove sends his own children to state schools, albeit 'back-door' selective schools.

Hadn't noticed that. Since the test score isn't used for much might not matter. Unless they retrospectively decide to use the test score to calculate progress.

The KS2 fiasco could fill a whole thread by itself.

Presumably your DS will be in the cohort they haven't quite figured out how they're going to work out a progress score for. Which I assume is the next cock up looming on the primary horizon.

and for you all.

Well if they actually asked the people who do the job how to implement stuff it might help. Rather than politicians who have never done a real days work and certainly next stood in front of 32 teenagers trying to understand the concept of periodicity. Gove is a total twat who deserves to be offered up to year 11 to rip apart. Sorry, it's been a pants day.

Ballsing stuff up really has been a trademark of the DfE under the Tory government.

I'm struggling to think of one policy they've tried to put into place that hasn't ended in total chaos with U-turns and cock ups everywhere. It's literally everything from early years upwards and is stuff that should have been obvious to everybody.

Fuck politicians indeed.

I've got a Year 11 here who is demoralised and cynical.

I work in Primary. My heart goes out to all you Secondary Teachers. It really does

Tiggy that is so true. As teachers we used to know what we taught and the expected level that could bring. Coursework has long gone in my subjects (CAUs still exist but they are not coursework !). Linear exams have been around for a while and that's all fine - I knew what I needed to teach from year 7-11 to get the results. But for the current 10s & 11s I was suddenly expected to shoehorn in a load more content with no extra time to teach it. So I'm doing the old GCSE syllabus plus several bits of the old AS in 2 years. It's stupid, I'll thought out and totally unfair to the kids. I also own a year 10 so it makes me angry as a parent too. Oh and they've cut our funding during all this too. How to destroy the morale of the teachers still prepared to do the job. Grrrrr

Excellent post Tiggy - you hit the nail on the head with your 'changing goalposts' comment.

And I do indeed have a large 🍷.

Oh noble I know that feeling !! Trying to explain this has caused me grey hairs - last year for the equivalent set I didn't have to touch trig. Now sin & cos graphs are causing much pain - I've gone for cos has an 0 so starts at 0 and sin has an I so starts at 1. And lots of colour coding.

It's hard to compare legacy GCSEs with new ones as we haven't seen a proper paper yet. We've had some from the exam boards that vary from v easy to OMG what the hell were you thinking. Science is a huge mess and maths is awful. I'm v glad some of you find it all so easy - maybe you could all become Maths teachers as we are crying out for them (I'm science but teach maths too as we can't get any). Iteration and inverse functions used to be C3 (still are this year) and I teach Year 11 set 3 in a comp - this set would have been targeted A/Bs. They are struggling to understand concepts that are abstract at best. Tonight's homework was find fgfgh(x) for f(x) =2x+1, g(x) -1 = 4x+h & h(x)=4f-h. I am so looking forward to marking it as last time one of the kids just drew a sad face and another said I was bonkers . These kids are 15, don't really like maths and will give it up as soon as they can. We teach as much of the complete syllabus as we can to give students the best chance to answer all questions - they are getting good at pulling the maths out of the very wordy, v long questions, but this is like making me do something creative (I'm useless). I have sweets ready for tomorrow's lesson

It is true the new 9-1s are harder than legacy GCSEs. However, when I compare them to IGCSEs or O Levels (they still exist), 9-1s are still easier. Though I think EngLang 9-1 is very challenging.

Thanks for the explanations. It's still very worrying and confusing though.