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?

DS is doing 9 GCSEs and he has to sit 21 examinations. That includes short exams such as French listening.

Yes GCSE's were dumbed down. I saw test papers and they were easier than the test paper I had kept from my own O Levels. And yes we need equivalent of CSEs.
See the same at degree level. Getting a First used to require extremely high ability and an incredibly high level of work. They were unusual. Not any more.

I did 9 O Levels. I had 11 exams. All but one exam was about 2.5 hours to 3 hours long. The shorter one was in the language lab and I think was about 1.5 or 2 hours long. If some subjects have shorter exams, they will have more of them.

@lostinsunshine GCSEs always had papers where the highest level you could achieve was a grade C. In theory you could be entered for all exams that could get you a grade but in practise due to the number of exams you would have to take, schools tried to limit it to one/two per area that had to be tested to get a grade.

And you used to compete against all people in your year. There was no grade inflation because only a certain number of A's etc were awarded. Although when I took them only a certain number were given to girls - less than to boys. This is why boys used to be "better" at certain subjects. As soon as they abolished this, girls started to get more higher grades.

@EmilyAlice yes but having to memorise the seen texts is testing memory more than understanding. Obviously you won't get high marks if you can just do one but it distorts marking.

Also rarely now in day-to-day working life do you do things where you can't look something up.

lost You rebel

A 2-tiered system that is valued by all would be an incredible leap forward! We could,a s a country, join the rest of the sane thinking world!

I know that the current GCSEs are mostly tiered but that isn't the same thing! CSEs were taught differently, the questions were different. Just as BTECs are different these days.

We REALLY do need to have a properly designed 2-tier system. One that allows students to be recognised for their academic AND more vocational skills. Sadly the latter are seen to be 'hobbies' or a relaxation from the REAL subjects.

But we won't! Cos consecutive Ed Secs and their coteries don't value hands on work as work! As you can see by the way they are happily drowning many small business under a pile of paperwork that makes no difference whatsover to the tax they pay... just how much they have to pay accountants, who also don't see the need for the additional load!

I know that the current GCSEs are mostly tiered but that isn't the same thing!

That's a big part of the problem - they aren't. Only Science, Maths and MFL now. All other subjects are untiered.

Okay you don't think they should be testing memory - fine. That is a relevant discussion to have.
But given lots of children used to do it, it is wrong to say that it is too hard to do it.
And it is wrong to say that memory does not matter. In meetings I often asked things about projects that I am expected to remember. I can get away with saying I will get back to them with information if I am asked one unexpected question, but not if I keep saying this. And yes I can take in sheets with key info, but I still have to remember a lot. This is not unusual in many professional jobs.Memory still does matter

GCSEs demand far more analysis than O'levels used. Poetry didn't have to be learnt off by heart at all. And Quotes used to be big chunks - and almost always the big obvious bits eg. Hamlet's Soliloquy not lots of little sentences from all over the text (so all characters and themes are covered). You also were okay to write down a quote and talk about it, not embed it in your sentence structure.
So in O'level you would write: "To be or not to be.......etc." In this passage Hamlet is cnsidering his own mortality and whether it would be better to commit suicide.....
In GCSE you have to write something like: Hamlet contemplates the very futility of his existance and as he says "to be or not to be" he contemplates his own suicide and the futility of existence. Which can be compared with.....

Also GCSEs have been steadily getting harder over the past 10 years or so, so some of you quoting about early GCSEs are out of date even before the latest changes.

We also need to consider what do you really want to be testing? A student's ability to analyses and write well about a Poem/Play/Novel or their ability to remember huge quotes? Which is the skill that the modern workforce needs?

Personally I found the memorising of synthesis methods needed for my Chemistry degree was ridiculous - as in real life you wouldn't rely on your memory but check it in books/internet etc. before you started.

Surely you’re not going to have to memorise the text — just discuss it. I don’t think it’s a big deal tbh— I think greater differentiation of grades is a good thing (not everyone has to get or should be getting top marks). It’ll probably just go back to how it was 30+ years about, when getting Bs and Cs at olevel was perfectly respectable.

Firsts at university, as someone said, were rare. When different universities started "competing" as to the number of firsts they awarded so more students applied, they did not reflect academic achievement any more.

Education became more and more a competition with universities and exam boards willing to take "short cuts" for their aims - in my philosophical moments I think its a case of "the market" taking over everything.

Educationalists and exam boards have never explained why they lowered standards for GCSEs compared with "O" levels in the first place, at least as far as I am aware. If anyone would like to enlighten me that would be great?! I know CSEs disappeared at some point. Now we have this sea of pain as a result. And I suspect now that current GCSEs are harder than the "O" levels I took a the end of the 1970s.

I can see how the smaller, separate papers for each exams is a pain. At least when you sat your 3 hour paper, that was it over. If that had been broken up over 3 different papers, interspersed with other subject papers in between, I would have had to revise so very differently.

I still don't agree that the ability to memorise large quotations necessarily means that you have no ability to think critically and analyse. I had the ability to do both but obviously it was an advantage to instantly remember what quotation would be relevant to the question and recall it in the exam to support ideas/analysis. I worked very hard to get those quotations memorised and to fully understand how they were relevant. Obviously if you have difficulty memorising stuff then you were definitely at a disadvantage with the old style exams.

I also remember the critical analysis papers within English where you would have to analyse a piece of text. I perversely quite liked them because you COULDN'T revise for them!

But I hear what those going through it are saying. There just seems to be so many disparate exams for the same subject and it really doesn't seem as if the schools have been able to teach the curriculum properly through lack of support, time, preparation etc. Be interesting to see how/if this improves over the coming years.

The old GCSEs contained a significant element of coursework so gradually people started doing more and more. When the new ones came in some schools immediately cut the kids down to 7/8/9 max.
Why they all haven't I really don't know. You only need 5 to go to Uni!
Some of the top selective school aren't offering 11 GCSEs so why are so many comps still doing this: it unnecessary pressure. It is madness.
7 covers all the EBACC subjects, plus one more and then if they do music or art or something more spread through the year they could do 8.
2 papers for each should be enough if the papers aren't too short.
My eldest is doing A levels at the moment and one of the papers is only 40 minutes!

Bekabeech I think you may have a point about some GCSEs being harder - but I think less top grades were awarded ...

Yes because they were much harder then.

What was? The O Level? The CSE? The OP specifically is mentioning O Levels without acknowledging that O Levels were not considered doable for everybody.
However, currently GCSEs are considered doable for everybody and yet is solely based on the principle of the old O Level and therefore, to make the argument that the OP is (and I presume you as well), you need to also consider that it is harder for a whole cohort of pupils to sit the current GCSEs than it ever was for a whole cohort of pupils in the 1960s to 1980s, which the OP has conveniently left out to mention.

Grade inflation over the last couple of decades is real. Look at the historical percentages of students obtaining the different grades here

The grades are awarded after the exams are marked and then the grade boundaries set so that à certain percentage obtain each grade. When the A first came out it was as elusive as I suppose the grade 9 will be today. For example just 1.8% of students obtaining A in maths in 1994 compared to peaks of 6.1% in maths in 2015. Last year when the 9 came out it has dropped back down again.

But crunchymint there are lots of jobs that aren't professional that still need doing, I wish I'm general people had more respect for all jobs, the theatre in the hospital would be useless without the cleaners.

I had one go through it last year (severely dyslexic) was predicted g-e worked her arse off and got d's only to be told (and feel like) she'd failed by the powers that be, where as in reality she has done exceptionally well.

The new GCSEs are all about differentiating the A/A* students by 7/8/9 and are not suitable for the people at the other end of the scale imo.
Children these days are expected to be far more technical with English these days starting with the y6 SPAG tests.

Last year the most common grades in endlidh and maths were Ds. The year before when it was the old spec the most common grade was a C

If some subjects have shorter exams, they will have more of them.

And that's another point, they aren't shorter - the current GCSE exams are longer and as others have said, only three subjects are tiered.

For my subject, in 1983, there was just one 2 hour paper. Currently, there is one 2 hour paper, another 1 hr 40 paper and another 20 hours to find in lesson time for practical work that does not count towards the final grade at all. The questions are less straightforward as well (not, what is this? but a paragraph of scenario to read through and try and find out what is being asked, before putting pen to paper)

It is good to have challenge, let me be clear on that but one just cannot compare fairly, the old O Levels and CSE levels structure to the current new 9-1 GCSEs.

Surely you’re not going to have to memorise the text — just discuss it.

No you actually have to memorise and quote and therefore whether or not you get good marks depends on your memory rather than ability at English Lit, . I don't remember having to do that for O levels. Not to the extent required for the new GCSEs anyway.

crunchy I don't disagree with testing memory. Just not to the extent where an excellent memory can completely distort the results upwards, or vice versa for an average memory.

I’d like to see something from the exam board rather than the daily mail saying that memorisation of long chunks of text is required... Yes, if you don’t have the text in front of you you’ll have to remember key quotes. But in an exam, having the text is not going to me much help unless you already know it very well- it’s not like you’ll have time to read it again to find a quote to jog your memory. I’m not convinced there’s as much of a difference between open book and closed book literature exams as some are making out.

Having sat the old-style 'O' levels and watched my DD revise for and sit the new style GCSEs (Biology this morning) I'd say they may not be harder but there is a lot more breadth. Children are having to spread themselves much thinner. My DD has had to sit in excess of 25 exams over a 6-week period including half term.

The biggest problem is the lack of past papers, they've had to rely on the old style papers and there's not really any comparison.

Oh, and this morning's Biology paper focused on Climate Change.