New GSCEs too difficult?

[Trishtrash]

"In GCSE English it's all exams – there is no coursework – and pupils are not allowed to bring in any of the texts. They effectively have to memorise three texts and 18 poems. The expectation is killing them.'

The above is a quote from today's Daily Mail - sorry!

Am I being unreasonable to think that that is not an unreasonable thing to require of an A-Level Student? I did my A-Levels over 30 years ago in a bog-standard comprehensive and we couldn't do any coursework ahead of the game and we certainly couldn't take any of the texts into the exam (that would have made it so much easier!!).

I remember having to memorise vast swathes of poetry (Keats, Wordsworth, Somerset Maugham etc...) and chunks of text (Doris Lessing, Return of the Native, A Winter's Tale are ones that I vaguely remember) in the expectation that we would need to quote from the poetry/texts to support a variety of themes/ideas that we might be asked questions on.

I have no idea about the rest of the curriculum as I did Art, English and History. I definitely had to memorise tons for the History element (I did modern History so stuff about Russian Revolution, WW1 & 2 and the EEC). I know that kids are under enormous pressure now and I got an A for my English Literature but there was no A* around then from what I remember (it WAS a long time ago!)

Is the problem that the teachers haven't been adequately prepared or supported to teach for this style of exam? If the kids are going in after two years of expecting another style of exam then I really feel for them but is this the case?

Ah OK. Then I have nothing to say

IGCSE's have no coursework, never have, as they were/are very similar to the old O'Level. Ours have also all moved to the 1-9 grading, other than English, I am not sure why. DD1 did a mix, her school decided which of the curriculums most suited ALevel preparation, which seems reasonable. Sciences for example were all IGCSE's as they were more rigorous. She found the GCSE's incredibly easy (6 years ago) and hated the coursework. DD2 school (different school) now does all IGCSE's.

LustfulInMiltonKeynes the point is certain education systems work for different people. I am good in specific areas so A levels suited me. My DS had more breadth but was probably less good at depth so the Bac would have worked for him.

You might find the Bac hard, my DS would have probably achieved higher grades. Swings and roundabouts.

From what I have read I do not think the new GSCEs are too difficult. I do think that there should be a limit on the number you can take, as to have 11 or 12 GSCEs makes it seem like collecting stamps or Pokemon characters.

It would not surprise me if the new syllabus was introduced too quickly though, as Michael Gove was involved and would not believe any sensible points from the teaching profession after he had alienated them so much.

I dont necessarily think the new GCSEs are ‘too hard’ but I do think it is now going to be very difficult for even very bright students to get the equivalent of 12 A-B grades, which is what I got 10 ish years ago. this isn’t a bad thing in and of itself but schools and unis etc have got used to asking for Lots of, 9-12, top grades, and to get that I think loads of kids are putting themselves through the wringer.

So the expectations of what 16 year olds are actually going to get need to come down - my Mum always claims that no one would have got 10 top o-levels when she was at school at maybe we need to readjust back to that - but what are the chances of that happening?

@Pengwynn - I read an interesting article the other day asking why we even still have GCSEs when education is now compulsory until 18. I thought it was a good point - it doesn’t need to be a high stakes test, could be more like a ‘matriculation’ to get into college.

Also for what it’s worth I think GCSEs are really hard now (don’t really believe in ‘too hard’)’ and, in the case of some of the papers, contain stupid questions. The ‘structure’ question in the English language paper has become the bane of my life (TA) I’d struggle to write a decent answer and I have a half -literature degree. There is also an enormous amount of content across the subjects - As one of the geography teachers pointed out to me there was probably no point in his degree where he would have been tested on such a range of content in such a short space of time.

I don’t think there is a perfect examination system which suits everyone and reflects their strengths. Also it seems fashionable to focus and give resoures to certain groups of students. Six years ago when we were looking at secondary schools for ds1 all the state comprehensives had a C/D border coordinator whose job was to ensure the borderline students achieved Cs in their GCSE but their was no provision made for students who were guaranteed to achieve grade Cs and above to do better. Now the whole exam system is focused on the high achievers those who are expected to get 6s and above. DS is doing GCSEs this summer and he would have hated coursework so prefers final exams. We use to have 2 tier exams: Olevels/CSEs, Higher/foundation levels but people always moaned dcs who did the lower tier exams were discriminated against and the system was elitist so now there is one exam which everyone takes and people are still not happy.

I always find it annoying when people go on about 'O' levels and education in the days of yore.

they forget that 'O' Levels were only taken by the top 15 -20% of pupils in the country,

They forget that GCSEs incorporated CSEs and that GCSEs where always supposed to be one paper for all, so it is going to have really simple questions to really difficult questions.

They forget that you can't compare coursework + exams to just exams.

Yes there has been gaming the system under GCSEs but there always has been even under those fantastic 'O' levels.

And lets not forget that the current system is only designed to appeal to the top 20% and that the marking will be done on the bell curve so the system is even more prone to 'adjustment' by the government and those that set the now ever moving grade boundaries.

People also don’t realise how much more pressure is put on kids to not just pass GCSEs but achieve specific target grades. O-levels? Probably sat a mock to prepare. Now kids sit up to 3 mocks, marks for each question are inputted into spreadsheets and analyses to find out where they went wrong, then there is intervention to improve. Endless revision lessons. Breakfast lessons on the morning of the exam. Barely any study leave if at all. The huge amount of online revision resources meaning there’s always something more to do to revise,past papers, mark schemes, discussions about grade boundaries. The churn of data is enormous. Nothing like when I sat my GCSEs in the 90s.

Andromeda - I think you’re conflating two very different issues there. The reason that schools had C/D coordinators is because the school would be judged on its A*-C grades in league tables, in Ofsted, and so on. I would be very surprised if the schools didn’t still have coordinators focusing on getting pupils a 4 or 5 now. So the coordinators were the schools’ way to try to succeed in the system the government put upon them.

The focus on top tier kids with the new exams is caused by the government’s ideology that there was grade inflation. It’s a different issue altogether. The ‘exam system’ focuses on the high achievers, but the teachers themselves will still be focusing on getting each child the best grade possible (with the schools probably pushing teachers to help especially those with borderline ‘fails’ because that will still be the way the school is judged).

And there is no data to support the notion that the education system was better pre-GCSEs.

Children being shipped off to special schools (sorry but that is what they were called) as there was no inclusion.
Pupils with behavioural issues were shipped out.
No records of quality of teaching.
No records of how many pupils failed completely or left school with No ability to read or do basic maths.

And if a pupil failed it was the pupil's fault for not working hard enough and not the teachers for not pushing them enough.

Goodness, in Canada (Alberta at least) it's very different!

When students write their Grade 12 diploma exam (GCSE equivalent) for English, there are two parts to it and they're written on different days. Part A is a writing exam. At this level, we were required to write two essays - one was a reader's response to a text that was provided to us for the exam (it was a poem for mine), and the other was a literature composition. The latter required us to expand on larger themes discussed in the provided text and to indicate how the theme was described in other literature that we had studied. (In my English course we were provided a list of novels and told to choose one to study, and then write an essay about it. The novel I chose happened to have themes that matched very nicely with the topic given for my literature composition for the exam.) We were allowed to bring our own dictionary and thesaurus for Part A. Part B of the exam is a reading comprehension test. It's multiple choice and the students are asked to answer questions about texts provided for the exam.

ScipioAfricanus

currently (depending on who you talk to) I am, as a teacher, being graded on

Progress 8
4/5/6 boarder line depending on were the old C grade falls
FFTB
FFTD
Value added
Projected grades vs Actual grades
Percentage attainment for individual classes
and Percentage attainment for all of my classes

There may be more.

Boney - ugh. I’m not in the state system at the moment, and will not be unless something miraculous occurs there or awful in my own life necessitating it. I used to be judged on

A*-C
FFT (which was pretty much all projected grades were based on at GCSE
A Level - projected grades based on GCSE
I think the percentage thing used to come up but I can’t remember how - there was a picture of a thermometer involved...

More recently in the private sector I’ve been judged on A*-B which is less stressful really as less wasted time tracking data. I didn’t have the option of entering for foundation to ensure a C which was good in a way, as no hard decisions to make (and now nobody does).

PinguDance

With no formal assessment at all, or just putting it off until 18?

Lots of European countries wait until 18 for formal assessment and just have an interim assessment at 16, same as the US - although I'm not to sure about the US system.

People also don’t realise how much more pressure is put on kids to not just pass GCSEs but achieve specific target grades. O-levels? Probably sat a mock to prepare. Now kids sit up to 3 mocks, marks for each question are inputted into spreadsheets and analyses to find out where they went wrong, then there is intervention to improve. Endless revision lessons. Breakfast lessons on the morning of the exam. Barely any study leave if at all.

I think that depends on the school. DDs' school doesn't any of that apart from having 2 mocks which are really no different to the tests they constantly seem to have throughout school anyway. They still have study leave, no compulsary revision lessons and certainly no breakfast lessons. No different to when I did O levels. They are at a grammar school.

The comparison between doing the Bac and A levels is relevant, people make too much of the fact that IBAC have to do maths and science etc, but what they forget is that most students only choose to do this at standard level, which is somewhere between AS and higher level GCSE and in no way as hard as A level.

Why are we referring back to o-levels as if they were better? Haven't we moved on from there for a reason?

If you didn't work at school - over a period of years - it doesn't matter how hard you studied during study leave. Unless you got every mark going, you didn't achieve to your potential. And that's okay - your life

"Unless you got every mark going you didn't achieve your potential". That assumes that getting top grades was my baseline, what if my potential was only a C grade?

Either way, most of my grades were A*s and As, and the B's and C's (two of each) that I achieved were higher than my predicted grades for those subjects, so I'd say I did very well and definitely feel like I achieved my potential.

I'm not saying everyone can do it, but it's possible for some.

Ok so here goes.., current GCSE way harder than O Levels (1980s) and I would argue that manu of them have content that would have been on the A Level Papers.

Issues

1. New course content - massively increased
2. Teacher inexperienced in teaching new syllabus. Historically Many schools finish teaching at Xmas and spend the next term going over previous learning. This year many teachers misjudged how long it would take to teach so ran out of time. Some schools were finishing the course the week before exams during lunchtime/after school. DDs school gave them 2 sections of history to self learn from the text book
3. Lack of past papers to practice
4. DC put themselves under pressure to succeed (in my day you just turned up and didn’t worry about it)
5. Last questions on the paper were aimed at those aiming for a 9 which is fine but DC left thinking they had done terribly due to inability to answer the last questions which knocked their confidence for the next paper
6. Some DC had 3 papers in a day (DD had 7 in one week)
7. Some topics on a few papers they hadn’t been taught
8. Along the same lines as my point 5 but the questions are really hard so the grade boundaries have been set low to compensate - what’s the point of that other than to make them feel bad about how well they have done
9. There are multiple papers for one subject (rather than just one long one) spread out over a days with other subjects sandwiched in between so you are studying the same subject twice

10. Grade boundaries are set after the exams so DC don’t even know what % on the papers they are shooting at 11. I understand that the course was devised to be taught over 3 years with 8 subjects but current cohort have needed to do it in 2 and schools are still timetabling 10 subjects

Just sent my DD off to final exam after a total meltdown- she was predicated all 7-8s. Working 4-10 hours a day revising since before Xmas and confidence so shaken that she thinks she failed and life is over!! We are talking about a girl who was a confident outgoing kid who is now a stressed out jibbering wreck.

To give this some context I did 13 OLevels (took some early so did a few extra in Yr 11), 5 A Levels, a degree and a masters.....and I can categorically state that I couldn’t do them and couldn’t have coped with the volume of work.

.....don’t get me wrong GCSEs had been dumbed down (IMO), you do need hard questions and a large volume of work to ‘sort the men from the boys’ but this has gone too far the other way too fast.

Rant over
Ps Ex did a maths past paper yesterday (maths degree and uses lots of maths for work) he got a 4!!!! Made me chuckle since he was of the opinion that it was a lot of fuss over nothing and any excuse to prove him wrong is alway good

I understand that the course was devised to be taught over 3 years with 8 subjects but current cohort have needed to do it in 2 and schools are still timetabling 10 subjects

I don't think that it was devised to be taught over 3 years. DDs' school aren't doing that and they don't usually get things wrong. I'm sure that if your DD has done 4 to 10 hours a day revising since before Xmas she will be fine!

10. Grade boundaries are set after the exams so DC don’t even know what % on the papers they are shooting at

'Twas ever thus; the difference is that we had years' worth of data to enable us to make informed estimates of grade boundaries.

11. I understand that the course was devised to be taught over 3 years with 8 subjects but current cohort have needed to do it in 2 and schools are still timetabling 10 subjects

I'm interested to know your source for this. The guidance remains 120 hours of teaching time per individual GCSE. Many schools are choosing to begin delivery of the courses in year 9 to create 2.5 or 3yr GCSEs but this is down to the individual school to decide. If schools haven't managed to fit the content into their teaching time then this is due to poor planning on their part. We've known that these were coming for some time, even if final specifications weren't available.

@dungeon - google 3 year GCSEs. You will see LOTs of schools switching to 3 years and 8 subjects in response to the reforms (especially the private sector) Check the TES articles, the Guardian and Independent. I remember reading that 3 years was the intent but the reforms were introduced without it being explicitly stated.

As for DD you are right. I have absolutely no doubt that she will pass them all - maybe not a full suite of 7-8.....thank goodness!!! My comments above were more generic and related to why this year is way harder and the kids in general are buckling under the pressure . Can’t think of any of her (very able) friends who haven’t had a meltdown at some point during the exam season.....which is a pretty bad state of affairs!!! Are we trying to break them or educate them to be useful members of society? I can’t even begin to think how the less able are surviving