Changes to GCSE and A-level 2021

I can’t see them dropping it otherwise there will be no compulsory poetry section in an English Lit exam which seems kind of wrong but that’s just my opinion. I guess it’ll all become clear.

I’ve always thought of Eng Lit having 5 components

Shakespeare
Victorian Novel
More modern play
Poetry anthology
Unseen poem

interesting Kitty, do you think they will still set the unseen poetry? But if you chose not to study the poetry, that would be a really difficult element. I think they'll have to drop that element as most people will avoid the poems, unless they have already done them...

clary I don't have any idea what they will do as I haven't quite worked out how 'much' poetry they have done, so don't know whether they will go for dropping that or AIC which they haven't started. It will be interesting to see what they decide. I don't really have an opinion on which I'd prefer for DD so I'll happily go with the flow.

Year 11 not 13!

Haha well my children’s school always do Shakespeare in year 13 (they’re a high performing Grammar school and get fab eng results).

I can’t imagine the unseen poetry will go so it will be 2 out of (in our case) poetry anthology, AIC and J&H - my dc would through choice ditch J&H which is universally hated.

lol speaking exam not soaking exam!

Also MFL no need for soaking exam at all, which is a shame as it's the key skill.

Eng lit is a good decision tho (watches as every school drops the poetry!). tbh if you left the Shakespeare till last that's not a good plan anyway. Any Eng teacher I know always starts with the Shakey, so they can go back to it. It certainly needs the most time.

I assume there will be a Shakespeare paper, then a paper with three options, pick two of them. And no unseen poetry at all.

Teen interesting! I can't imagine any school dropping AIC! What will they do do you think?

@KittyMcKitty You're right, A Levels seem to barely be changed, certainly not for the subjects my kids are sitting (mix of sciences and languages) :( It's going to be extra hard for this year group of A Level students I think.

That's true Kitty .

DD has the Shakespeare && AIC && half the poems to do. Anyone who only has the Shakespeare left is way ahead. Plus of course it saves on revision time regardless.

The trouble with these sort of changes though are they are great if you’ve already done the Shakespeare but rubbish if you’ve done the other 3 but not the Shakespeare yet!

I'm really pleased about the GCSE English Lit. Knocking out one unit will save teaching time which can be used on Engl Lang or the rest of English Lit. I don't quite get how they will do it though? Will the Shakespeare paper be half the usual length and then all the others in the other paper?

I have children doing GCSEs and A levels next year.

GCSEs seem broadly fair (my dc is taking history, eng lit, French, music and drama of the ones changed). No change to triple science content - that’s A LOT of content!

A levels - well they’ve just put their head in the sand! There’s a massive amount of content and for my dc no changes. There’s some waffle about the geography NEA some have already completed this - those who hadn’t before lockdown will be massively disadvantaged.

So in summary GCSEs seem ok A levels not! Next school year is going to be horrendous for these poor young people and their teachers 😒

It was published yesterday. I saw the consultation document and in my subject the proposals seemed reasonable. They have kept those unchanged.

I don't know what else they could have done. It's not as though every school teaches the same units or topics at the same time so they could have got rid of particular units, knowing that they have not been taught. In my subject, Music, the NEA requirements are halved: one performance and one composition. This means that we can spend the curriculum time that we would normally spend on "coursework" on the Listening paper instead. It also helps to address the situation of equality of provision during the lockdown. We have set online lessons and provided detailed feedback but it is not the same across the country and lots of posters have mentioned the state vs private provision gap. Hopefully, these changes will help to level things for all.