No GCSEs at Latymer Upper

Thank you for tagging me, @MeetMeOnTheCorner . This is most interesting.

LUS has an excellent reputation amongst admissions tutors. The complete absence of GCSEs is most unlikely to result in rejection at first sift. They say they’ve consulted widely with universities before doing away with GCSEs, so let’s believe them. I assume their alternative assessments are externally moderated by reputable referees, and this will be important to universities.

The literacy and numeracy requirements typically ticked off by GCSE passes are Maths and English are at the discretion of each university. There is no reason the LUS bespoke exam could not fulfil the same function.

Similarly, if LUS has in fact consulted properly with universities and convinced them that its exam is at least as rigorous as GCSEs then I don’t see why it would not be used in the same way. After all, much of the point of the change appears to be to prepare students better for A levels by giving them a deeper learning experiences earlier.

The catch, of course, is that they must do it right and be seen to do it right. I don’t see LUS weakening standards - quite the opposite - and I find Katharine Birbalsingh problematic in many ways, but she is probably correct that other schools doing this less rigorously could wreak havoc. They would be exposed eventually, but in the meantime everything would be a mess.

I am puzzled that PP disparaged the LUS Oxbridge rate. Using available data I make it that over 14.5% of last year’s graduating class received Oxbridge offers. This was over 1 in 3 of Oxbridge applicants. Surely that is excellent by anyone’s standards.

There are other private schools that don’t have a full range of GCSEs - Bedales and to some extent Teddies and have their own exams instead. LU must have presumed more London schools would follow their lead.

It can't be because of the wealthy families, as 1 in 4 students in Laytmer Upper receive bursary.

@GravyBoatWars If a university publishes entry criteria, then they should stick to it. How is it fair otherwise?

@poetryandwineAs a former admissions tutor, what do you think about English educated pupils not taking GCSEs and how would they be evaluated if an admissions policy says GCSEs are given a weighting? Eg Bristol frequently say it’s a 20% weighting.

Where's the other £2200 come from?

You mean the other £1833 increase - VAT is payable on that too bringing it to £2200. It is from NI, Business rates, minimum wage uplift, inflation (including electricity and gas), teachers pay rises….

With my measly GCSE in Maths, I can see that adding 20% VAT onto 24,000 would make the fees £28,800. Where's the other £2200 come from?

In any case, it's making it pretty clear that they believe these kids are from such wealthy/connected families that GCSEs are entirely irrelevant as they will never have a problem with trying to get internships, work experience and offers from top employers, whatever A Levels they may or may not get.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm afraid of!

The problem is for many universities the first sift is fairly automated and you can be rejected before anyone looks to see that you went to a very privileged school that decided to do its own thing.

In Scotland pupils take National 5s instead of GCSEs. The Scottish Government’s preferred set up is to take just six of these over one year, though many schools now do eight over two years and drop a year of broader education. A friend’s daughter took the maximum her school allowed - six - and got top grades in them all. She then did five Highers and got top grades in them too (Five Highers are what Scottish students mostly apply to Scottish Universities with), and applied to competitive high rank English Universities with these qualifications whilst studying for three Advanced Highers. She found herself rejected from three of the English Universities specifically because she ‘only’ had six Nat 5s.

In other words, she was rejected because universities considered her to have below the acceptable number of GCSEs equivalents.

@MonGrainDeSel I would absolutely share all of your concerns if Latymer decided to eliminate A levels.

But I think the idea that Oxbridge or any other top university would look at a Latymer applicant and think "well sure, they have top A-levels, a glowing transcript from one of the top academic private schools in London, and excellent GCSEs in maths and English... but their school dropped other GCSEs so how can we evaluate them?" is a bit silly. Top-tier universities have admissions processes designed to accommodate diversity in educational backgrounds and Latymer has the relationships (and incentive) to evaluate the effect on university admissions in advance.

Maybe add some commentary to these quotes. I am not sure what your point is. Applying to Oxbridge from a school system that does not do GCSEs is very different from applying to Oxbridge having essentially chosen not to do them (or your parents decided you wouldn't do them). Even home educated children who want university in the UK tend to do some public examinations in the subjects that might be relevant.

Not doing GCSEs will not completely rule out the more competitive universities (not just Oxbridge) but it's very possible that it might be harder for those institutions to assess these applicants given that the curriculum they are following won't necessarily be easily comparable to any other curriculum. If a competitive university is your child's likely goal, I'm not sure why you'd want to make it more complicated for them.

Having said that, I hope it's all OK for future Latymerians. It's in many ways a nice school and I hope this doesn't backfire for them. I just think it is a huge gamble and I'm not really convinced that they have the resources or capacity to rewrite the curriculum in a way that actually adds value.

Can I apply for an undergraduate course if I haven’t taken GCSEs or IGCSEs?
Published 16/07/2019 03.44 PM | Updated 17/05/2021 02.47 PM
You do not need GCSEs or IGCSEs in order to apply to Oxford: we recognise that many students will not have taken them, particularly if they have not been to school in the UK. If you have taken equivalent exams at this stage, please include details of these in your application form. If your country does not have equivalent exams, your application will be considered based on the selection criteria for your course. It is useful to have some indication of your academic progress at school, so your teacher may instead comment on the results of any internal school exams that you have taken. Teachers can find advice about writing the reference on the teachers’ pages of our website.
The admissions requirements for Oxford are based on A-levels or equivalent qualifications. These are a stage higher than GCSEs. All applicants for Oxford must be taking either A-levels or an accepted equivalent qualification: please see our international qualifications page for details.

'Are my GCSE results good enough for Oxford?
Published 21/08/2013 11.15 AM | Updated 14/03/2023 04.47 PM
Higher grades at GCSE can help to make your application more competitive, but they are just one aspect that we look at. GCSE results will be considered alongside your personal statement, academic reference, predicted grades and performance in any written work or admissions test required for your chosen course. Where possible they will be considered in context.

If you feel that you did less well in your GCSEs due to extenuating circumstances, you may still be able to make a competitive application. '

Oxbridge takes into account grades in all subjects - 9 for schools that take 9, more for schools that take more, fewer for schools that don't do as many as 9. And they compare the grades to what other people in the school tend to achieve. They are looking for students who are performing better than their peers (and by that they mean peers who have had the same kind of teaching and opportunities). Obviously one or two lower grades in subjects that aren't related to what the young person wants to study won't necessarily count against them, and they do their own assessments too or ask for examples of written work. But Oxbridge absolutely expects to see high achievement across the board.

If you look at a few years of Oxbridge results for Latymer, you'll see that they tend to send between 20 to 30 a year, usually more like 20. They take extra students at sixth form so I think their sixth form size must be about 200ish per year group (correct me if I am wrong and there's anyone here who knows better). That makes their Oxbridge hit rate about 10-15% for the full year group. I don't know about the cohort size or general success at the grammar you mention. Look at different schools and compare the actual success rates for the size of the year group, not just raw numbers or success rates compared to applicants.

It's interesting to see the data for how many apply too, and you can find it if you look. Some schools seem to let everyone who wants to apply for Oxbridge, others seem to be more selective - you can't tell if that's because students don't want to apply or because they are discouraged from doing so and it would be interesting to find out. It's more complicated than 30 people got in. I personally prefer the 'let everyone have a go if they want to' approach - I mean, why not?

There have been some problems in independent schools that I have heard of in the recent past with externally assessed school-run courses not being counted as GCSE results. I cannot imagine that internally assessed courses are going to be treated more kindly as it's obviously less impartial than something externally moderated.

As for overseas universities, there are quite a lot of children in London independent schools aiming for these. Latymer seems to have had about the same number going abroad as going to Oxbridge in the recent published destinations. So not a majority of the year group by any means.

@Wipeywipey Competitive universities do look at GCSEs. Oxford certainly do and report what grades and numbers successful candidates have. Bristol often weights them at around 20% depending on course. I’m sure they consider other qualifications from international students but uk students have GCSEs and they are an important measure of broader ability.

Do uni only look at math and English grades, or do they consider GCSE grades in 9 subjects? Of course, LU is aiming for and sending a lot of students to Oxford and Cambridge schools.

For example,
LU: 2025
Oxford: 21 students
Cambridge: 13 students

The Latymer Grammar School in Edmonton 2025:
Oxford: 8
Cambridge: 22.

If a well-established school like LU thought there would be problems with university admissions, would they make this change????

What would the point of internally generated assessments externally validated against GCSEs?

Internally assessed systems do count, especially at GCSE levels and below. They're used by students from all over, and the private school system is perfectly aware of that, especially around London. Along with the internally assessed portions of the transcript LU is still having students sit Maths and English GCSEs, they plan to benchmark using GCSE papers in other subjects, and they're intending to work with external orgs to validate curriculum and internally-created year-end exams. That's as much or more external assessment than many international applicants would be able to present at 15.

I understand that this feels absolutely radical to people who have only known the UK approach to secondary education - the focus on GCSEs is deeply ingrained here. But in terms of worldwide education what LU is transitioning to just isn't that extreme. And it's a reasonable move for that school in particular; their academic reputation is well-established, they have ample resources to create a robust system, most of their students stay on through A-levels, and they serve a population that tends to value preparation for non-UK universities.

That depends on them introducing a different externally standardised system in place of GCSEs. An internally assessed system doesn’t count.

Exactly. Independent schools, universities and employers are accustomed to using a variety of educational records, not just GCSE results. LU has schools all over the world that they can look to when creating a way to evaluate students and record their academic achievements. They're not just eliminating GCSEs and shrugging, they're implementing a new system for their students that draws on educational systems beyond the UK.

International students have to provide evidence in line with their educational systems. They don’t apply without any evidence.

Some of the reaction to this is interesting.

Parents should obviously consider how the lack of GCSEs could be a positive or negative for their student. Some students will really benefit from a greater emphasis on course work and ongoing assessments while some will find that to be more of a struggle. I would also want to know the plan for ensuring students will be gaining appropriate experience and skills for preparing and sitting courselong standardized exams so that A levels/IB are not negatively impacted. Students who may return to the state system for 16+ may also have extra hurdles to getting places on the courses they want. And of course being the first cohort of a new curriculum is also always a bit of a risk.

But within the independent system, university admissions, and the job market this isn't inherently a problem. Not having GCSEs because your school didn't offer them is completely different than not having GCSEs because you didn't pass them or were placed on an alternative path. Every private school, university and employer has an alternative way to evaluate applicants because they deal with the millions of immigrants who never sat GCSEs. I'm one of them... I attended one of the universities LU parents covet spots at straight out of an American high school and have spent my entire adult life working for UK employers with zero need for GCSEs. Independent colleges/6th forms are full of international students, and the international and American schools around London regularly send students on to UK-system schools at 16+, so this absolutely isn't uncharted territory in the independent school world.

That is what I thought too! And if they have externally moderated assessments, then I'm not completely sure what the value is in not just using GCSEs. I mean, they can absolutely be a bit unchallenging and sometimes boring for extremely bright children. But that's an opportunity to whizz through all the easy bits and spend time broadening and deepening knowledge (which will presumably make the easy bits even easier).

Also, as a parent, although I did not find the GCSE process particularly fun at times, it was quite useful to have some kind of benchmark that shows you where your child might be performing compared to peers. It was very useful when picking universities that might be appropriate/reasonable as choices. Otherwise I don't really know if I would have known what was a good idea or not. I suppose her teachers would have given opinions perhaps. I'm not sure I'd want to totally rely on teachers for that kind of thing.

I'm presuming that nobody at Latymer will actually know where they sit even within their own school year. So they really will be operating in a vacuum when it comes to assessing what comes next. Or if they do know where they sit, I don't think I like the idea of that much either - it would foster what I would consider too much competition.

Internal assessment transcript reminds me of an argument I had with a friend about test results. I was pointing out a test score is pretty meaningless; 100% could mean he was doing exceedingly well or that the teacher presented too easy a test. Ditto a low score could indicate either poor performance or an overly hard test.

For Oxbridge they absolutely do look at GCSEs, both grades and the context within which those grades were achieved. Latymer has said that they will provide a transcript for any future destination I think, presumably grades obtained in their own assessments and it's anyone's guess what that might look like. I imagine this applies both to moving at sixth form or to universities. If moving to another independent school at sixth form, the school would probably carry out its own assessments in any case. If moving to a grammar, there would be grade requirements and a minimum GCSE score so I don't know how that might work.

But maybe Oxbridge doesn't matter to Latymer too much in the grand scheme of things. They are not one of the schools that sends huge numbers of pupils to Oxbridge. Yes, they send more than most schools but it's not a high percentage compared to some of the other nearby schools.

Their USP for people who live near Hammersmith and want an independent school is probably the coed thing, and now no GCSEs.