Planned changes to secondary-school exams (EBacc etc): teachers say there should be more consultation; what do you think?

The thing with this, Chloe74: 'Whether you call it a different tier or not it would still be a different exam paper aimed at different levels of ability.' is that this works rather well.

I have, for example, a student who is on course for a solid grade C - her target grade - in Eng Lit. Looking at her Mock paper, I'm tempted to enter her for Higher Tier, which covers grades A*-D, rather than Foundation (grades C-G), because I think she's got a good chance of a B.

Gove's initial proposal of moving to O-Levels, plus something he hadn't bothered to think about for weaker students, takes that possibility away.

Within one qualification/two tiers you can have the whole cohort studying the same material & same skills, & make a judgment towards the end of Y11 re: which tier they are entered for, depending on the progress they've made since the start of Y10.

It is a continuous grading of attainment from G (limited, but certainly measurable & useful) to A* (pretty damn impressive).

The reason Gove had to quietly wipe the egg off his face & bin his Gove levels was that the Lib Dems justified their existence for once & kicked up an almighty stink at the thought of classifying students into sheep & goats at 13.

He seems to be attempting to resolve this problem by essentially pretending that the least academic 20% simply don't exist. That's an awful lot of kids being written off.

You only have to be on mumsnet for a while to see how middle class people regard BTecs!

Some vocational qualifications, as may have already been said on the thread, actually go back a long way. Scratch the surface of the BTec in Business Studies and you find the old OND lurking underneath. Many moons ago I did A level economics at an FE college alongside the OND economics students. It was no less rigourous obviously, because we were in the same class, but they had to pass the whole lot - another 4 or 5 subjects before they got a qualification. Local employers did seem to understand the qualification's worth and rate it highly.

Apprenticeships too used to last 5 years and be well thought of. Locally where I am now, in Oxfordshire, someone who had been a Harwell apprentice was thought of as being someone well qualified and treated with respect.

My impression is that over the last 20 years or so though we seem to have lost our way with vocational qualifications and apprenticeships. Who knows what might happen in the future though? With universities charging fees of £9K per annum, perhaps the demand will reawaken? Especially in practical subjects like engineering?

married

How old are your Grandparents?

I suspect that they were educated in the time of the cane, "special" schools and when being a teacher was a "profession" before the system was undermined by successive governments.

Well funnily enough noble my grandparents didn't have a qualification between them; neither did DH's. They could all write beautifully and I mean in the context of both handwriting and as wordsmiths; they all knew their times tables and were able to whizz their way through mental arithmetic. They knew about the land, the world, music, history, art, etc.. They were very well educated - they were not well qualified however. My mother and MIL both matriculated and are similar. FIL and father were scientist/engineer types so had degrees but somewhere society has lost the plot and has become intent on producing well qualified people who are incredibly badly educated. It is the greatest tragedy of our time I think.

Tricky. I don't have much experience to contribute, although I know a bit about GCSE and BTec Performing Arts, and in my opinion, the BTec is more challenging, but th GCSE is more highly regarded. I don't know how you would go about changing people's perceptions, and the problem is that while you are trying to change them, kids are having to apply for jobs and college places with the less well regarded qualifications. A very difficult one.

I believe it would be possible to make a 'vocational' qualification valuable, but I imagine you are now getting into perceptions.

The bad part was that a two tier exam system was divisive, the lower qualification seen as second best and being selected into a lower qualification at a young age (even at 13-14) tends to run along social lines, perpetuating social inequality, as possession of the lesser qualifications will close doors. Not sure how any two tier system of qualifications could leave those problems behind.

No one is suggesting bringing back an ancient curriculum. However, Gove isn't even proposing to bring back two different qualifications (which is what you seem to want), he is attempting to bring back what happened before CSEs were made available to the lower ability students. A bit of paper basically saying they went to school.

I could only speculate noble. However it must be possible to use any good parts, whilst leaving the bad behind. I don't believe for a second anyone was seriously suggesting we just use a 60 year old exam or curriculum.

How would a modern rigorous exam for the most able and a different qualification for the less able differ significantly from O-levels and CSEs, Chloe?

No, I know, LV but the changes to maths GCSE were (are) being piloted and everything. They looked like they really might happen! Due for roll out in .... 2015.

Mind you noble, Gove is not the only one to call for reports and then bin them. Tomlinson's report on 14-19 education had some good ideas which were well received, but the report was ignored by a previous Labour administration.

I fully remember the headlines but its was the media and opponents that labeled it a return to O-Level / CSE's. A modern rigorous exam / curriculum, and a different type of system for those less able does not mean a return to the 1950's. We have all moved on, but that does not mean any ideas that were used at that time are somehow banned from use or indeed useful.

Do you not remember the headlines when this was first leaked? Gove to bring back O-levels? Gove-levels?
You do know when you bang on about Labour and Lib Dems blocking a move to a two tier system this was exactly what they were talking about?
So if you don't want a return to the old system of different qualifications, then presumably you agree with the Lib Dems and Labour?

No one is suggesting a return to the O-Level system.

Chloe, what Gove is proposing is radically different to what was contained in the report (which, by the way, was called 'A World Class Mathematics Education For All Our Young People' not 'Screw the Bottom 20% Out of Any Maths Qualifications')

Different tiers of entry are also a completely different kettle of fish to a two tier education system. It really isn't simply semantics. A C grade GCSE gained on the Foundation paper counts exactly the same on your CV as one gained on the Higher paper. No one can tell the difference. However much people tried to claim that a top grade CSE was equivalent to an O-level, no one actually bought it. You had CSEs, people knew that you weren't considered O-level material and could discriminate.

Incidentally, do you know why Gove wants to scrap Foundation and Higher papers and have everyone in the 80% sit the same exam? Because he thinks it's a cap on aspirations. If you are entered for Foundation, you can't get a B, and this is limiting. What the bloody hell he thinks an exam that one in five won't even be able to sit so they won't sit anything does for people's aspirations is beyond me.

noble - its like dancing on the head of a pin. Whether you call it a different tier or not it would still be a different exam paper aimed at different levels of ability. And how do you know Carol's review has been binned, the information in it will be informing the new reforms, and the details of them are still to be disclosed. I do know you can't always implement every single word of every expert that utters it, their are always competing priorities that have to be balanced.

Chloe, you appear to be getting confused with tiers of entry to a single qualification (which is fine but Gove doesn't want) and a return to two tier education like O-levels and CSEs which would be pretty broadly condemned.

LV when people bang on about how teachers don't want this because it's Gove, because it's the Tories, because they're resistant to change its really annoying. The recent review of maths education was commissioned by the Tories, led by Carol Vorderman (you can imagine that was popular) and signed off by Gove. Yet it was welcomed by the maths community as a pretty solid report with some good recommendations about what should be done to improve maths education. And it appears to have all just been binned.

iGCSEs aren't very different to GCSE in many cases. Arguably some are easier, but they have been hyped quite well.

I have no issue with Gove. I think he is committed to driving up standards. I was appalled but not surprised to read in the papers last week that one in four primary children does not make the expected progress predicted at age 7.

The GCSE appears to me to be a very weak qualification and the NVQs and BTECs appea to have reintroduction a two tier system via the back door. DS took largely IGCE's and they were far more rigorous than what his contemporaries appeared to be doing. He is also in his second year of IB and we are pleased with that choice.

As an employer I despair that young people with C grades for English and maths GCSEs, having subsequently obtained a masters degree or three, are generally incapable of constructing grammatically correct sentences or producing accurate simple arithmetic calculations. To get an acceptable standard of competency I have to look at those with 9 A/B at GCSE, A/B at A'Level and degrees from traditional universities. The kids from the comp who have pushed themselves into a former poly are not coming out of the other end of the system with skills fit for the workplace and have an unrealistic view of what they are likely to achieve.

What we need is more choice, an acceptance that one size doesn't fit all, that not everyone is university material and much more emphasis on foundation skills required for life. How we get that I don't really mind but I think the NUT and co would command a little more respect if they were to express a little more concern about the entitlement of every child to a good basic functional education and focus in what our children need rather than continuing to use their education as a socialist stick with which to beat those who want the best for them.

I just wish Gove would leave it alone for a couple of years, rather than change the exam system at least by tweaks every year.

I say this as someone who knows the exam system better than most and has children going through it.

Also the one thing politicians haven't done for some time is look at: what is the purpose of education? How is it changing with the modern world? (Especially the on-line courses nowadays.) And what does research tell us about how the brain works and people learn.

Yes there has been some good work. The initial NC wasn't too bad. The EYFS curriculum is quite good. But going back to the 1950s is not what anyone really wants.

I think it is unfair to blame Gove. He seemed to be inclined to have that split between different exams for different levels of ability. But the left wing politicians spun it as a return to O-Levels and CSE style exams and put a stop to that happening.

Perhaps if the NUT came out in support of different exams then it would help Gove.

@noble - that's the thing which is worrying. It sounds as though you had got to a workable system which would be good for pupils, teachers and employers and whoosh - Gove doesn't like it, so out the window it goes.

Actually, I think that's what annoys me most. People have spent ages reviewing GCSE maths, consulting with experts and putting together proposals on how to make it a decent maths qualification for all students and Gove (who signed off the review) just completely ignores the lot to say 'I want a single tier exam that will exclude one in five students and badly serve the 80% who actually sit it'.

Even if he now turns around and says 'I've listened to the consultation and decided that maths should have tiers of entry (which he surely must) and we need to carefully consider the content split between qualifications and decide how we will best serve the less able', what a complete and utter waste of everybody's time.