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?

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.

I know that the comprehensives near us have been starting GCSEs three years before but I'm not convinced that was the intent.

This article suggests schools are choosing to do it but they are still designed to cover two years. www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/10/11/schools-teaching-gcses-three-years-ofsted-finds-amid-concern/

They don't do it at DDs' school for most subjects as the children get bored (apparently) if they start too early so counterproductive.

Some O Levels were harder than the new GCSEs, some less so. All O Levels were harder than the old GCSEs. There had to be an end to the girls with swishy hair jumping in the air on the front of the DM every August waving full houses of A*s.

It was not helping anyone, least of all the candidates themselves who believed they were top notch at a subject. All ds's friends (and ds, for that matter) got A* at French; they are to a man (boy) crap at French.

A pp said her dm said that barely anyone got a full house at O Level. No A* back in those days, just A to C. I went to a (what is now termed a super selective) grammar, and I think only two people got all As. As previously mentioned, the grades were awarded on a curve which was a bit off, I think, so 90% may have been a B if it happened to be a swotty cohort!

Furthermore there was a culture of re-taking going on at some schools up until a couple of years ago. I know that dn took History and English three times until she got an A*.

They just needed to tweak it slightly

No retakes, no coursework to start and then from the year 7's at the time bring in the new exams gradually

@IrmaFayLear - absolutely agree that GCSEs had become ridiculously easy (how can 40 odd % be a grade A-A* in some subjects?). It’s just gone a bit far too fast the other way now though.
I also went to a grammar school (hence the stupid number of OLevels taken over a 3 year period) and hardly anyone got As either. I got a broad range of A-Cs along with a very well deserved U in French. I barely did any revision but did listen in class and did my homework. If I took the same approach in the old GCSES I would have probably got As. If I did this with the current papers I would have def failed the lot.

... and you are right about retakes. I took French 3 times and finally reached the dizzy heights of a D hahaha

Were they particularly easy in the nineties? I did pretty much sod all revision (none at all for subjects such as English) and got mostly Bs. I don’t recall anyone doing hours and hours of revision.

@GlitterGlue. Exactly!!! I did next to nothing, none of my friends did a lot either and we passed with no problems across the board.
DD way smarter than me with a higher IQ but her and all her friends are working their socks off. That alone must tell us something.

"how can 40 odd % be a grade A-A* in some subjects?"

Because they stopped grading on a bell curve and set limits. 80% was always an A in some papers, with 90% being an A*.

With O levels they were graded on a bell curve, so that only the top % of marks were awarded with top grades. Problem was that meant that some years the top grades were easier to achieve than in others, so they weren't accurate at differentiating candidates.

I've also never heard of any subject where 40% of all grades awarded nationally were an A*. Some classes may have managed that, but not as a grade across the country.

They’re reckoning that 40-odd % of all entries for Classical Greek will be a grade 9 this year. That’s because the type of people who take Classical Greek tend to be super smart.

Ds is doing the 3 year GCSE, the first cohort in his school to do it. Guinea pigs...

@topcat - check Cambridge IGCSE grade stats. A or above in 2017

Add maths 53.7%
Biology 42.7%
Chemistry 47.6%
Computer science 45.6%
Lots more....

Edexcel GCSE can be found on line too (Pearson.com)
Pearson also shows M/F breakdown and whether it’s a school or a FE college and it has a similar pattern.

....I haven’t looked at the other boards so it may be different in them? But these are 2 representative boards covering IGCSEs and GCSEs

So yes, in some subjects in 2017 over 40% of entries were an A or A*.

Noble is def more clued up on this than me. I just wanted to point out that GCSEs (as in the content of the papers, the pressure teachers have been under to deliver the new courses and lack of past papers/resources) have made it a tough year and the papers I have seen I couldn’t have just ‘winged it’ in the way that I did in the (supposedly tough) O Level day

@zoflorabore - Your DS may be a Guinea pig, but the 3 year option is a very wise choice IMO.

That's IGCSE, not what is taken in most schools.

IGCSE tend to be taken in international and private schoools too!

Ofsted aren’t a fan of kids taking their options in Y8 and starting GCSE in Y9 - they think that it narrows the curriculum too early (especially with the Ebacc focus meaning fewer kids taking art etc). They would prefer a two year GCSE course (as it’s meant to be taken) and kids taking fewer GCSEs so having more lessons in Y10 and 11 on them.

22/27 exams.

Ds is utterly exhausted.

Too much work. Too much pressure.

Yes, re: Ancient Greek - originally they were going to try to arrange the bands for new GCSE so only 10% got a 9 or whatever. Ridiculous as Ancient Greek is a v self selecting subject - you simply don’t get lost of people doing it who aren’t 8-9 material. Luckily they back tracked. Same thing happened with Latin. I rarely teach a class where people aren’t capable of an A if they’ve chosen it. I’d imagine 6-9 for vast majority of Latin GCSE grades from now on.

I do hope we might return to a smaller number of GCSEs as the norm now that they are all harder - but it’s hard for those who want to do a broad range of subjects.

Cblue Crazy to have over 40% getting an A. And the curve of results that used to exist meant that only the best got an A. The reason it was changed was so that the Government could trump about ever improving exam results.

But crunchy, if you ration the amount of As available, then you will put bright kids off taking ‘hard’ subjects like additional maths because they would be less likely to get an A as there would be more competition for them. It would make more sense for students wanting a sweep of top grades to take subjects more traditionally taken by less academic pupils because then it would be easy to get an A.

That’s why they changed it.

"And the curve of results that used to exist meant that only the best got an A. The reason it was changed was so that the Government could trump about ever improving exam results."

No, it was because some years 70% was enough to get an A, and in other years it was 90%.

It meant that the standard was different for each year group, so that standards were much harder to ascertain.

Yep. I think the outcome of the reforms to make them harder is that more DCs will drop subjects earlier so they can do them in 3 years plus they will drop even more than they currently do so that they can end up with fewer but good grades.
So a far narrower curriculum will be taught.
All schools will also focus on the Ebac subjects (maths English science a language and a humanity) so a lot of the other subjects will suffer narrowing the curriculum even further.

It’s finished in the CBlue household but the entire process has been a real eye opener (rewind 2 years and I would have said ‘what’s all the fuss about, man up this is real life’ but I would have been wrong because it’s nothing like O Levels)

...,,and I also feel really sort for the teachers going through this too!!!!!

**Sorry for the teachers not sort!!

Yes you were competing against your year. Which meant that you could not get grade inflation.And bright kids were not put off doing harder subjects. Those are the subjects that are rated by University and employers.

"Yes you were competing against your year. Which meant that you could not get grade inflation.And bright kids were not put off doing harder subjects. Those are the subjects that are rated by University and employers."

But you don't just compete against your year for jobs or university places, if you were lucky and got an A in a "hard" subject in a year that had lower grade boundaries, you were at a distinct advantage over people who had years with far higher boundaries.

It means the qualification from year to year is not the same standard.

Wasn’t part of the issue that the variation in standard of the papers meant that when the standard on some of the papers were set too low, then the difference between an A and a C was negligible because the mark distribution was clustered at the top end?

Although the same could happen when the standard is set too high and the marks cluster at the bottom.