To think that fear of failure is holding back the UK (ie. schools)

[ReallyTired]

Ie. teachers who choose to enter children for easy BTECs instead of GCSE, because they worry about league tables and think that its easier to get a middle to low ablity to child to pass the BTEC than get 5 GCSEs.

Many children who want to do 3 seperate sciences at GCSE are not being given the chance. Although a child can do A-level from the basis of double science, its more work. Surely a child who can achieve a level 6 in science by the end of year 9 should be given the option whether they do triple science or not.

Many primary schools do not bother preparing children for level 6 SAT papers. Or they ruin the entire year 6 making children do practice papers for their SATs. Ironically the children get less of an education as teachers refuse to take the risk of doing excess revising.

I think that schoools need to be encouraged to allow children to take risks and not see failure as the end of the world. Children need to realise that its better to try at something and fail than not to try. I feel that children should be taught how to cope with failure than be shielded from it.

I am not suggesting that children should be pushed to attempt things where there is no hope. However I think that many schools do not take risks because they are obcessed with their position in the league tables.

You are out of date with regards BTEC and league tables. Schools are busy upping GCSEs for anybody within shouting distance of a C.

I think most teachers recognise that progress is not linear (whatever Ofsted/the government think) and I would certainly expect more than two sublevels of progress in year 8 for example.

With regards triple Science - I only let my top sets do it at the moment. And the number of students has to be a multiple of a class size. However, we have moved to a 3 year KS4, and AQA have introduced Further Additioonal Science, so we are preparing to be more flexible in the future, with two possible routes to triple Science.

DS did level 6 maths last year, entirely in school. Don't know how they did it. Not overly bothered. Doesn't mean much now he's at secondary to be honest!

As long as children need examination qualifications, teachers will enter them for the exams they are most likely to pass. To do anything other would be most unfair to the child.

Where are the schools where pupils are denied opportunities such as single sciences? Where are the teachers who think white boys, black pupils, ethnic gypsies (or other travellers), or pupils with SEN cannot achieve? Some SEN pupils actually do need specialised provision, including alternatives to GCSEs. I can?t imagine a secondary school where whole groups of pupils are ?written off?.

?Resilience? ? the ability to cope with ?failure? ? is one of many life-skills taught in schools, though you might not find your child going to a ?resilience? lesson as such. Most will learn resilience through applying speculative teaching and learning methods, where pupils enquire, research, attempt and evaluate.

League tables and Ofsted inspections will influence teaching for as long as they are used to judge schools. Do you really want your child to come out of school ?happy? but without qualifications? No? Then helping them (sometimes dragging them kicking and screaming) to achieve qualifications will be part of the schools? role. State schools are not free to choose another path - if they don't comply, they will eventually be closed down.

?Levels of progress? is a bit vague ? what levels are people talking about? Because in my subject ? not core, considered ?not important? by many people - there is more in a single level than a child might reasonably achieve in a year. Two sub-levels would be good progress. And we are very ambitious for our pupils.

Lovebunny
I've got the full DFES data set from the 2011 GCSE (and equivalent) exams downloaded and sorted on a file on my PC.
It debunks all of the crap bits of the OPs post in a couple of clicks...
and when posters make wild claims about state schools in their area, that area is either swiftly identified or they as swiftly start to backtrack

To get level 5 in year 6 is considered really good...the expectation (government) and average for most children is level 4...so you would have to be really good to be getting level 6.
There is plenty of time to progress when you get to secondary school, with specialist maths teachers. Why do people feel the need to get ahead all the time?
It baffles me. Of course you should expect your child to do their best, but not to feel pressurised to be "The Best".

From what I can work out DD is probably working at a low Level 5 in maths right now, start of y6.

I would rather she didn't start on L6 work in hope of getting that in her grasp by May, I would rather she consolidated her learning to get a solid or high level 5. I don't want her pressured to perform at something that she's got such iffy potential of reaching. It makes sense to me.

DD's English is probably better than her Maths: I don't want her doing L6 on that because so much of the assessment is tickboxy & kills creativity.

lljkk
have you got a kid at secondary yet?
if not, you are in for a shock - as they treat KS2 levels as loo roll

DS in y8, but he was in private for y6-7 so no Levels, no targets(?), limbo land. I have almost NO IDEA how his state secondary figured out what set to put him in, they definitely didn't give him CATs either.

I guess I'd be disappointed if DD got

My lament is wasting time doing excessive revising rather than learning new stuff. Whether the new stuff is deemed level six standard is irrelevent. The children could do all kinds of far more interesting stuff than endless bloodly SAT papers.

If my son did more NEW level 5 topics it would be a drastic improvement. However the school just teaches maths to the test. I feel they could take a risk leave revision and practicing SAT papers until March.

So,you're talking about your son's school then. Rather than the UK...?

I haven't been thru it yet, but I am worried about excessive revision too, sounds very common & most likely. I am not sure what else the schools can do, though, when they are judged by published league tables.

Not sure what you would class as 'excessive' revision, but with the switch to linear there'll be far fewer exams so less revision going on throughout Y10 and 11. The end of Y11 will be an utter bastard, however.

"The end of Y11 will be an utter bastard, however."

We all survived and had a massive set of exams in Y11. It is academically more challenging to sit 10 GCSEs at once though and I don't see this as a bad thing.

Is it really academically more challenging to sit a couple of exams at the end of a course than to make sustained effort for two whole years, with regular assessments? The jury is out, I think.

The kids I teach who fail to get a C in their first two modules in maths are then switched to linear, where some pull out the stops at the last minute and get a C. That shouldn't be possible if linear really is academically more challenging but it happens every year.

DS art teacher says the Girls always get the top marks, the course structure suits them much better. I presume Art could never be all that linear. What bothers me is if there's little flexibility in how kids get the qualification, I feel that coursework- & exam-based should both be options, ideally.

"Excessive" revision= dull & puts them off learning, I suppose.

On the one hand, we ought to let children take exams above what appear to be their capabilities, and not let them fear failing.... on the other hand we shouldn't push them when we've decided there's 'no hope'? That doesn't seem to me to make sense.

"The kids I teach who fail to get a C in their first two modules in maths are then switched to linear, where some pull out the stops at the last minute and get a C. That shouldn't be possible if linear really is academically more challenging but it happens every year. "

That is essentially a resit.

I imagine the shock of failure has focussed the child. Its not a really fair comparision. I imagine that if the child same child had done linear from the start then they would not have the experience of the first attempt to make them grow up. Allowing child to swap from modular to linear is allowing them to have their cake and eat it.

"Is it really academically more challenging to sit a couple of exams at the end of a course than to make sustained effort for two whole years, with regular assessments? The jury is out, I think."

When modular exams were introduced the pass rates soared year after year. The present governant has been moving away from modular exams and last summer the GCSE pass rate fell for the first time in history.

TheOriginalSteamingNit There is a difference between a child having no hope and the teacher having no hope. If a child stil wants to try then they are not being pushed into something too hard. The child is choosing to take the risk of failure.

I agree with you that a child should not be pushed into taking exams that they have no hope of passing. However there is a huge difference between not being pushy and not allowing a child to make an attempt.

It will not be possible to assess the same amount of content in Science. There wouldn't be enough hours in the exam series. So there will be less coverage, and an increased element of luck as to whether your preferred topics come up.

Last summer, students took modular exams. Results fell because grade boundaries rose.

No, switching from modular to linear isn't effectively a resit. The kid goes into the linear exam with nothing, in a resit, they can hold their previous grade. A module is 20% or 30%, linear is everything. They are very different.
If you are trying to suggest that it's a resit because they have sat previous exams on the same material, then that's a bit silly because on a linear course they sit plenty of exams leading up to the main event too! Y10 exams, mocks, plenty of time to experience failure there.

Students on linear (even from the start) did better than modular in maths last year, I believe. Pass rates fell in maths on the modular course. Politics at play there, (grade boundary manipulation) not exam styles. Exam results also were rising before the introduction of modular exams.
You have a very simplistic view of things which appears to have been informed by the tabloids rather than any actual data.

I thought that the reason pass rates soared after modular exams were introduced was because the results were no longer normalised (to fit a Bell curve). It became a threshold exam, instead. Fixing the threshold to 1985 standards it's not surprising that more & more people pass each year, as teachers get more cunning over time about ensuring passes. That's what human beings do, we learn how to do things better than we did before.

May I ask... what does it mean if a child gets to 5b or even passes a Level 6 paper? I'm thinking it means four things:

1. affects GCSE targets for that child (what about KS3 levels?)
2. % L5+ passes gets recorded separately in published school results.
3. in some cases may be taken into account for setting in secondary
4. personal-parental-teacher-school pride (obviously)

Does L5 or L6 mean anything else?

"The present governant has been moving away from modular exams and last summer the GCSE pass rate fell for the first time in history. "

given the messing around with the pass rate and when it was shifted it is hardly a fair comparison.

It won't affect GCSE targets because current Y6 won't be sitting them! Who knows how we're going to generate targets for exams that apparently won't have even gone through a pilot run before the first cohorts sit them.

I expect they will make the primary look good, but mean very little at secondary. There aren't enough kids coming in on a level 6 for it to make a difference between set 1 and set 2 for the brightest anyway.

I can't believe this government will give up on targets and measuring progress from one point to next, whether it's target for something called an O-Level or something else.

If modular courses aren't easier then why did all the schools flock to the modular courses. It has been a race to the bottom with multiple exam boards offering easier and easier exam courses.

If linear courses were easier then schools would have opted for them years ago.l

Ofqual have to accredited every specification. Nobody is jumping up and down about their part in any so called "race to the bottom". All Science GCSE courses are modular. As I said, the sheer number of papers that would need to be taken at one time if they were taken in a linear style is ridiculous.

One reason schools 'flocked' to the modular courses is that they make it a damn sight easier to track the achievement of students, instead of it being all or bust at the end of Y11. If the kids know what grade they're currently holding and what UMS they need in their final module to meet their target, it removes a lot of uncertainty and stress.

We put our weaker kids in for linear; they usually can't cope with the sustained and ongoing pressure of modular.