To want to shout 'it's not the marking, it's the boundaries'...

[GetDownNesbitt]

At the TV/ radio/ newspapers/Internet every five minutes?

There is no evidence that GCSE English marking has been inaccurate. Markers don't give grades. Exam boards take the marks, set boundaries and allocate grades using those boundaries.

I need to take a deep breath, don't I?

Football was last night.

I know our French department set their own CA with their own bullet pointed prompts, so unless the second French teacher had a good grasp of where the marks were being awarded it wouldn't necessarily be a good way of cheating.

I don't get this at all. If a French teacher cannot see where there are marks to be had, how are the pupils supposed to be able to see which bit of the paper is most important / allocate most time to?

If it's that obscure / arbitrary, how do the kids achieve good marks?

So they don't need to know any Maths? Or English? They are still learning, just not to a level that you personally consider 'good enough'.

Surely even learning enough that they will move from a G to, say, an E, or even a U to a G will benefit them later on. Especially as employers at that level of grades MAY WELL use that to differentiate between candidates.

Greythorne, I assume they mean that the teacher from one school won't know what another school requires from the question that they set. I assume that all the criteria would be given to the actual students.

Novack E, F and G are not fails. THey are just not higher grade passes. Originally when GCSE was introduced A-C (no A* then) were O level equivalents, the rest of the grades were CSE equivalents. I don't think that comparison is all that helpful now since specifications and assessment methods have changed so much, but the broad idea stands. Getting a lower grade in a GCSE shows you have some knowledge in the subject. DO you believe it is a worse thing to teach some e.g. History to someone than none? THey ^have6 learned something if they get a grade. THeri general ability is also probably such that they wouldn't learn any more about any subject, so shall we just give up on them and send them up chimneys?

Thx but still don't get it.

If it is CA that the y can prep in advance, surely the kids (and their neighbours who are teachers in different schools and willing to help them cheat) also have the full brief?

Hear hear cardi

Well if your historic knowledge leads you to believe children still get sent up chimneys then no wonder state eduction is failing so many. If someone if only capable of a failing grade then it would be far better to find out the area they are able to do well at and encourage study development in that area, whether it be car maintenance, hairdressing, circus skills or tiddlywinks champion of the world. Keeping children in classes with teachers who think an f is well done is not he best use of time at school.

You want to tell kids at 14 what their job will be? Really?

Where does it say that anywhere???

My historic knowledge tells me we stopped doing that a long time ago, Novack, because, amongst other reasons, we decided educating them was a better idea. You don't seem to agree, unless they fall into the group who are capable of C and above. I thought perhaps you wanted to go back to the 'good old days'.

If that's your ability to read with understanding, I'm not sure how well you would do in English GCSE, tbh.

Oh, and I think F is well done for those pupils who are capable of no more, who perhaps came in with a target of G. For those capable of more, of course it isn't well done. You are aware children are not factory made components, aren't you?

They choose GCSE options at 14. If you want to stop them doing History and tell them what vocational subject to pursue instead, that's when you'd have to do it.

(Apologies, my keyboard has no functioning 'n' key so am cut and pasting them and can't capitalise them)
Greythorne, I teach maths and one of my happiest days in teaching was when they scrapped the coursework element of it, so I'm not really sure how the CAs work TBH!

novak, an F IS well done for many of the students I teach. It shows a HUGE leap in their understanding from year 9. For others it would be a pants result.
I do not expect the students who get an F to go on to do engineering, but they may well be able to now understand a bit how to budget, or what interest actually means etc. Something that, had they stopped learning maths 2 years earlier they would not have done. Or realise that they have the incorrect change in a shop.

As others have mentioned, they're supposed to cover old CSE kids as well as the O Level ones. I think even in those days they had to sit English and Maths?

What's your view on me having to teach them to 18 soon...?

It would explain how things have been moving up for ages even though every business person on the radio says the quality of candidates is woeful these days.

It's what happens with professional exams and (in my experience) performance reviews, but it should not really enter the arena of school exams. Performance here should be governed by a line in the sand and marks allocated in a clear manner in order to get an accurate view of standard over a number of years.

As usual the personal attacks from teachers if you dare to question their abilitiy and yet it is clear to all that the huge areas of the education system are failing far too many students.

Nowhere have I said not to educate them. Indeed far from it I have said that the school should educate the children in areas they can actually achieve in, instead of flogging a dead horse for a failing e f or g when the students could be pursing learning in many other areas that are far more practical and may lead to a career or may not. But keeping them in a history class for the best chance of an f is not preparing anyone for anything and is wasting taxpayers money.

Sorry Greythorne, what I meant was that just because someone is a teacher at one school they won't necessarily know the criteria to hit to get an A* at another. There are 3 exam boards to choose from in England, with different specifications within that, so whilst I would share markschemes with my pupils, another teacher might not necessarily know the key words/phrases that trigger marks are in my particular spec.

Markschemes can say things like 'offers a variety of reasons' - you need to know what the Prinicipal Examiner means by this. 'Variety' means different things to different people. For the spec I teach/examine it means more than 3. So someone offering 3 reasons would not get in that level, but someone offering 4 would. This is why examining has been the best thing for my GCSE/A Level teaching - I know exactly what markschemes mean now!

I don't know what the answers are but remember that teachers don't actually have any power within the education system (despite being blamed for everything). We do the best we can with the ridiculousness we are given and we see first hand the effect that the Government playing fast and loose has on the students.

So yeah, we're defensive.

Unfortunately, the down grading of vocational qualifications by Gove means that more and more students will be pushed into doing academic subjects that do not offer them the best chance of success. In the new academic year I will have 6 GCSE classes for my subject, up from 5 last year - because these students can only do a maximum of 2 BTECs now otherwise we fall in the league tables.

I don;t see any personal attacks, Novack. Fairly robust (possibly even sarcastic) comments on your ideas, but not about you as a person. And as someone has already said, that would mean deciding their job at 14. In most schools the sort of candidate who would get Fs and Gs would be doing vocational courses as well as some more traditional ones. Everyone has to do the core subjects, of course.

cardibach, the knowledge needed to gain a G is so little it's not really worth anything but a fail.

Well I'm gad my children will never have such a quick to be sarcastic person as they're teacher.

I taught Classics GCSE a few years ago, to a mixed ability group targetting everything from A* to F.

One of my most hardworking students eventually got an E. She has learning difficulties - in particular her literacy is so weak that her controlled assessment was barely intelligible. I don't imagine her exam scripts were any better.

Her subject knowledge was actually pretty good, though; she enjoyed the course immensely & it was one of her better grades, which stood her in good stead when applying for college courses (doing very well on a childcare diploma of some kind now I believe).

What Novack fails to grasp is that generally students who have targets of E & below are academically weak across the board - you can't just say 'look, give the History GCSE miss & do instead'.

As an employer in the licensed trade prior to teaching, I'd have seen a spread of E grades, in a teenager with F targets, as evidence of application & perseverance, which are perfectly desirable attributes in a glass collector, for instance...

And novack, I don't think I've made any personal attacks.

I think what many are getting upset about is the idea that you can 'write them off' if they won't achieve a 'C' or above (which, by the way, isn't always clear in year 9 - many mature and suddenly start 'getting it' and actually DO pass with C or above). I don't feel that my F grade students have 'failed' if they genuinely worked for that and gained further understanding in maths - it all helps them later in life, especially at that grade level.

I do agree, by the way, that we could invest more time in areas that they can really excel in but that leads to funding issues - lack of courses/teachers/apprenticeships. Talk to Gove - see if he can help!

I don't agree that they should 'drop' maths and english though.

Sorry.