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?

No, to a 2 tier exam system.
If you have a student who is performing somewhere in the middle and is put in the wrong level, it's very difficult to catch up and learn a completely different syllabus in a shorter space of time. More than 30 years ago, I sat all GCE O'levels but due to a difficult teacher who put me in a CSE group, I sat my O'level English with very little preparation and was very lucky to get a B. (I had an older brother who helped me prepare and it was 100% exam based with no coursework required.)

cardibach You dont get questioned on all the poems, you get to choose which poems quotes you are going to use to answer a question. Obviously some are more appropriate than others if the question is about Love for example but there are only a handful of themes NOT 18. So you DO NOT need to learn quotes from all the poems.

It wasn't just my DC that found the exams 'easy', it was a large percentage in polls, the teachers and the parents. There have been NO really hard papers this year. Obviously less able pupils found them hard but not the able pupils. MN is not representative of the general population.

I did my GCSEs in 2011 and A levels between 2011-2013. No texts. All quotes. 13 poems, 2 texts.

I paid £65,000 for my uni degree. An extra £10k for my MA.

If everyone starts acting like everyone's hard done by there will be a 5 year group where we were FUCKED. So much money and stress and now everyone thinks the kids can't handle it?

Why did we not matter?
Sorry, forgot I was made of steel and all these kids are fine. It makes me angry.

You're right that you don't need to know all of the poems, but since you don't know which ones are going to come up you kind of do because there was no past-paper precedent here and no options on questions.

As it happens my children did Power & Conflict and were pleased Ozymandias came up as it was one of the 'easiest'. However, they didn't know it would be that poem and had to prepare for every eventuality which meant knowing them all. If all they'd learned was Charge of the Light Brigade they'd have been stuffed. Equally the unseen has to be compared and contrasted with a syllabus poem. Which means knowing them all so you can pick an appropriate contrast in the context.

I'm delighted some children found it easy. In fact my children also said it wasn't as bad as they feared, but the hype and preparation for this has been insanely stressful and pressured. It never needed to be that way.

Standards are not raised by making a test harder without providing the appropriate education to underpin it. This needed to be a long term project not a knee-jerk, last -minute change and experiment to the clear detriment of whole swathes of our future leaders of society. The 16 year olds currently subject to this experiment are our future doctors, lawyers, plumbers, mechanics and if they aren't significantly suffering as a cohort from stress disorders as a result of this mess I'll be amazed.

My DD is about to do her year 10exams,she has 18,I don't think any of them realise that they will be doing 30next year.
I did 10 O levels and did 2 of them in what is now year 10.Most kids now are doing10 and all in the same year.In triple science they have only allowed the top set to take it,it is being taught at breakneck speed and may need extra time just to get through the syllabus.
I think most schools will reduce the subjects and start teaching to the exams in year 9.Not sure how that benefits children.
As for English there's nothing kills an interest in protest like learning them by heart,especially little bits of them to make a point.
I still enjoys Shakespeare on stage,except the ones we studied to death at school,scripts that were never written to be read by other than the actors.

I did o levels. I only managed to get 6. They weren't easy no, but then they weren't supposed to be. They were hard yes. All from memory and comprehension.

Agree that it was good that Ozymandias came up, ds was very relieved as he knew a few of the other similar ones to compare it to. That was the point of knowing the 18 poems, knowing which ones to compare according to the genre.

He already knew that last year theme was "love" so was told to expect a different theme.
My ds studied these poems for months, he remembered key quotes and knew the lexical set for each one. It served him well during the exam but still his problem was getting what was in his head onto the paper.

We can only wait and hope. I've told him that I know he has done his best and that's good enough for me.
He had friends who equally revised and others who didn't do a thing. One friend relied on his fantastic memory and forgot everything on the day.

As a said upthread I'm glad he did this exam a year early as it's given him an insight into what exactly is involved in the preparation for an exam, time management, prioritising different topics etc.

He is not a grade 9 student and I will be proud of him whatever the outcome in August. The real work is about to begin.

corcaithecat learn a completely different syllabus

Yes you had to do that with O levels v CSEs, but the whole point of the GCSEs tier system was that it was the same syllabus but in greater depth/understanding. Thus you could move tier to try to protect your pass or stretch for a higher mark. From what I saw the low tiers had more simple questions with more scaffolding as to what types of things to include - perfect for lower achievers.

I think the removal of tiers from most subjects is a massive retrograde step. It is just really hard to set a paper suitable for 3/4 grade and 8/9 grade simultaneously.

It is just really hard to set a paper suitable for 3/4 grade and 8/9 grade simultaneously.

In Literature I don't think that's true.
I am seeing a whole range of responses (in terms of quality) to the same, quite straightforward questions: "Explore how the character of X is presented in Y." It's not unreasonable to expect a grade 3/4 student to make supported points about how an author creates a character.

Pen You may well be right for literature. I was (perhaps mistakenly) thinking about kids (like my DD1) who need more scaffolding to remind them what type of things to consider. Plus maybe more 'obvious' characters rather than the more obscure ones?

I'm a teacher. And I'm a pretty sanguine kind of person normally.

If I ever met Michael Gove, I may make newspapers. I loathe the man that much. He has screwed this up so badly. Kneejerk changes without enough time to bed them in, and to change the preceding years so that the students have a cat in hell's chance of getting the grades they deserve.

It's a shambles. I teach geography and paper 2 this time was really not nice. Very ambiguous and worded like an A level paper. I'm all for adding stretch and challenge but for lower ability pupils it was awful. Some came out virtually in tears.

TeenTimesTwo

Well, I think the papers do do that. The questions on An Inspector Calls were about Eric Birling and social class. Both the character and the theme question were about aspects of the text that are absolutely integral to understanding the play. Two bullets per question. I honestly do think the scaffolding is reasonable for all but the weakest students.

But - and this is where some people might think this harsh - the papers really do need to distinguish between the weakest, the middle and the strongest students. We cannot have students who can barely comprehend English or make a salient point getting a 4. It would make a mockery of the idea of examination.

And I say that as someone who loves my students!

Peng I am glad to hear what you say. I'm more worried about my y8 passing Eng Lang than Lit as the pass in Lang is so critical.

I do wish there was a Numeracy GCSE and a Core English GCSE that passing (with GCSE status) was the required level for standard employment and access to level 3 courses. Yes they would be a shoe-in for more academic kids but for others it could make all the difference.

TeenTimesTwo

The thing is, I am not sure they would be a shoe-in. The pass rate nationally for English Language is around two thirds. That's two thirds of our kids getting L4 or better last year, and prior to that getting a C. But the standard for that isn't that high. Even if you made the exam more 'functional', focusing on writing skills (basic punctuation, spelling, sentence structures) and comprehension (understanding and ability to summarise/synthesise), the level of skill required in order for the exam to mean anything at all to employers would be such that that third of students would still fail, because those are the areas in which they are weak, and it is those areas that are affecting their skill levels in language analysis, character analysis, etc. The basic problem is one of poor literacy.

Peng I think maybe I am biased from having an outlier as my DD1 has dyspraxia. You are giving me hope for this time in 3 years for DD2.

TeenTimesTwo

I'm glad. I hope she does well.

I did my GCSEs in 2011 and A levels between 2011-2013. No texts. All quotes. 13 poems, 2 texts.

This is strange. I did my English GCSEs in 2011 also. We were allowed the unannotated texts. Although we also had controlled assesment for Shakespeare. And controlled assessment for creative writing element.
We were also allowed the unannotated poem anthology for A-Levels (this was 2015 for me, I had a long break). Also coursework for Catcher in the Rye/Huckleberry Finn comparison.

I did 9 O levels in the 70s, and that was unusual. I also remember back then an absolute cramming in of science stuff in the curriculum.

In some ways the problem goes beyond the design of the exams. It’s that an exam system measures and validates a fairly narrow type of intelligence. I have no idea how you get round this. I will keep reminding my children of that though. I am ‘academic’ and have a good career now (as an academic) but it took a while. My skill set is also fairly narrow. My DH is not academic but has a commercial instinct and really strong emotional intelligence and is now much more ‘successful’ than me if measured by money and seniority.

Lemony - so do you feel that others should suffer because you did?

I wish you hadn’t had to pay such stupid amounts for your degree when the generation before me didn’t pay at all, and I had to pay only £3k per annum tuition fees.

I wish that I hadn’t had to suffer at uni because there was no pastoral care or adaptation for people with chronic illness, or place to report sexual harassment - but I’m glad to hear that 20 years on things are starting to improve in that regard.

I would like things to be better in the future, regardless of how bad they may have been at certain times in the past. Believe me as a teacher when I say that the mess of the new GCSE system and its introduction is nothing like I’ve seen before. But even if it were, we should still care about pupils now.

My friend and I had a bet a few years ago that I could sit the Spanish GCSE with no prior knowledge of the language and get at least a C.

I got a B. Because you are allowed a dictionary! And the standard required is very low. I couldn't, and still can't, speak or understand Spanish but I got a fecking B. That just shows how easy GCSEs had become.

I used to be all "oh I had to memorise this that and the other" "WE didn't take books in" etc etc

Then I had dcs taking GCSES and A Levels

The exams are absolutely stupid. If a child has worked well and diligently for 2 years they deserve to be rewarded for that (coursework). Some of the exam questions are deliberately designed to trip up kids and I think that's not on. They should be a straightforward test of what they've learnt.

Tbh I'd scrap GCSES altogther.

I think most teachers were happy with the idea that GCSES be made ‘harder’, allowing more differentiation at the top. I certainly was sick of seeing very creative behaviour from some departments in ‘controlled assessments’ and yes, the idea that learning anything by rote be dismissed in favour of ‘skills’ and dictionaries in exams, modules at AS and A2 meaning many retakes.

However this wholesale and chaotic change is penalising those who were struggling anyway far more than anyone else. It would be different if there were other exams they could do, like when there were O Levels, or even with foundation/higher GCSE.

I think BTECS should be used more widely at GCSE level

BTECs are great.

*My friend and I had a bet a few years ago that I could sit the Spanish GCSE with no prior knowledge of the language and get at least a C.

I got a B. Because you are allowed a dictionary! And the standard required is very low. I couldn't, and still can't, speak or understand Spanish but I got a fecking B. That just shows how easy GCSEs had become.*

We weren't allowed dictionaries in French GCSE 2011. Seems to be so much variation in what is allowed!