To think GCSEs and A levels are crazy

[Chimichurrie]

I think there is far too much pressure on the kids in secondary school with GCSES and A levels. DH and I grew up in different countries and didn’t have to go through all this. We went to have successful careers.

We feel we enjoyed our childhood and teenager years without this constant pressure that exists in the UK about exams and success. Maybe is the same in other countries.

Our kids used to be very creative but once they started secondary school that just got to be put behind; school seems to consume their life. I have always worried whether they are having a nice childhood.

Do you think there is something wrong with the curriculum? Should our kids have s bit more opportunity to do other things to be more rounded?

@Chimichurrie‘s description sounds like the education system I went though.

Uni’s accept on teacher assessed grades (we had one set of externally invigilated exams but many Unis gave out unconditional offers so you already knew where you were going).

The universities then would test if you were up to their standard by testing us on our first set of modules after 12 weeks. If you failed, you had to keep retaking them until you passed or give up and move to a different course/uni. Exams were tough. In certain cases (I remember this from chemistry) they would raise grades (say give everyone an extra 5 marks) so that 70% could pass and only 30% fail.

This was over 20 years ago. I don’t know if 30% still fail first year chemistry at university.

The difference was we were all mostly 18-19 at this point instead of 16 so had attained a high general education up to this point (a-levels in math, English and a language if studying for a BA was pretty standard if going to university) and we were allowed to fail a module or two to work out what style of education for us best with no real consequence other than having to retake it or switch to something more suitable. Not the drop offs you see in UK education. These types of module results would never end up on your cv though would show on your transcript.

my Dcs grew up in China and the exam pressure there is enormous, considerably more than in the UK.

My son was in the lower sets at school, he struggled academically, what bothered him most was the teachers saying that if you didn't get your GCSE's you wouldn't get a good job etc and stressing that anything under a grade 4 was a fail.
This attitude from the teachers effectively wrote him off and it really knocked his confidence knowing that he was predicted 2's and 3's leaving him feeling his life was doomed before it started.
It makes me really cross. Learning is life long with many opportunities for adults who struggled at school to take alternative routes in order go on to lead successful lives, there are many work-arounds and many ways to do well in life and learn many skills.
The approach within schools seems very narrow-minded and it just knocks the confidence of those who probably need the most support.

Where did the prof go? America?

The U.K. doesn’t care about educating the masses. Nor does USA. USA drain all the best minds to work in top research from around the world.

UK to some extent too but less so. We don’t have the funding and capital markets for raising money that USA does.

So these countries don’t need fo educate the masses. Let them rot in their poverty is the mentality from on high. Give them enough so they don’t complain too much. But that’s it. It half the kids come out with 4s in maths, British government couldn’t give a stuff.

China, India, there is no brain flight to these countries. Few westerners want to live in China though there’s no doubt that this country is extremely accomplished in many many technical areas. The CCP is off-putting.

If China were a democracy it would easily be number one economy very quickly.

India is an interesting one to watch. At some point brain fight may start to divert there.

Amercanised Indians now control much of the money raising in the states. Extremely hardworking and educated workforce.

While exams are horrible and pressuring they are fine for some, but I agree much more flexiblity is needed earlier on for children in the U.K.

While Labour idea to send half of kids to university was a morally sound one, just seeing nowadays how little a degree guarantees work shows how commodified degrees are, well, certain ones.

Instead of having exams and studying subjects for the sake of having studied them, we should look at industry and our needs across the whole of society and be training kids into these jobs at least as part of their education.

Some kids will never be good at languages, some kids will never be good at maths. Some kids can stare at a screen all day, some kids can’t sit still for more than 20 mins, they need movement in their day. Flexibility is key for giving us what we need to flourish as a society.

Agreed it was the same for my son he also missed a whole half term in year 11 just before Easter 11 due having a sudden health emergency and being in critical care which didn't help .

I agree with this and you op

glad we are not in China

Exactly. Genuine learning remains for life. Learning for exams just get forgotten

I don't recognise that as someone who did exams, and whose dc do get challenged by the current system, in a good way

That's an uninformed comment. That poster's children are quite possibly very much more educated than your children and in a war for jobs, are therefore more likely to get the higher paid one compared to yours. Her kids will be the boss of your kids.

I'm white by the way, not Chinese but I can't bare to see people not understand where this goes.

Prepare to be working your arse off in a factory 996 like the Chinese do as they rise into the ascendant due to their fierce work ethic and outsource the shitty jobs to us. I congratulate them on all they have achieved. It has been hard fought and they deserve what they have created, in my opinion. You cannot whine on the other side of the world and say "I don't like the pressure". You have to find a way to get smarter - however that may be.

At the end of the day, money talks. And where money is, education 95% of the time, is very close behind that money.

As already mentioned I don't like to see my kids working so hard, I hate the stress. It's far more than I ever went through. But the world changed and a new set of rules exist. Ignore them at your peril..

Oftsted and league tables
Constant pressure on teachers to prove what they've taught and how much progress the children have made is passed on to those children.
I've seen y10 /11 taken out of some lessons of subjects they love because they are already good at that subject but they need a bigger focus on English/ Maths etc.
It's wrong
It was a huge contributing factor to why I left teaching

We definitely need to more "skills based" education system rather than knowledge based. Of course, some professions need "Knowledge" that has to be learned/memorised, but for the vast majority of the population, "skills" are more important, especially now that it's so easy to go online to find facts etc - just no need to rote learn in the same way anymore. When I say "skills", I don't mean just the old fashioned "manual" skills, i.e. the trades, etc., I mean the "skill" in knowing how to find some facts from the internet, "soft" skills such as people management/supervision, and logic, comprehension, enquiring mind, etc.

At the risk of being flamed, DH has spent many years working in South Korea and China as an engineering consultant. The one thing that stands out for him is their lack of initiative and thinking outside of the box due to their hothouse education system.

The people he has worked with seem to be unable to think for themselves. They probably achieved 100% in a maths exam, but seem to be unable to think creatively and laterally and are unable to troubleshoot (which is why they employ his skills).

He thanks their education system for this.

I don't get the accusation of constant testing.

When I was at school in the 80s/90s we had.

Years 3-6 exams twice a year with marks, and form position.
Years 7-9 exam once a year with marks and form positions, but all the subjects would do tests 1-2 a term on top of that. Again marks going home in report every term
Year 10 exams twice a years, and tests from subjects 1-2 times a term on top.
Year 11, mocks and GCSEs
Year 12 exams once a year
Year 13 mocks and A levels.

My dc had:
Year 2 SATS
Year 6 SATS
Year 7-10 "quizzes" in lessons, which would normally be at the end of a topic, and only on that topic. No marks home. Progress/effort report twice a year, but no real detail in it.
They also did one exam in year 9 (their choice, could be a GCSE or might be something like LAMDA) and one in year 10 (RE, that none of them took seriously).
Year 11, 2x mocks, GCSEs
Year 12, two sets of exams
year 13 2x mocks A-levels.

We were so used to doing exams, that GCSEs didn't seem like that big a deal. Yes, they mattered more, but we'd had periods of lots of exams since we were 7yo and knew what to expect, how to behave, how to revise for lots of subjects at once etc.

I think in a lot of ways what mine found hard at GCSE was the shock of having to revise all subjects intensely, as well as the length of exams-because most of the time they'd done them in lessons, they were 50 minute exams (to fit in 1hr lessons). We were doing 90 minute exams at junior age.

I think what does put the pressure on though is in a lot of ways the greater knowledge that is out there. They know about grade boundaries, they know what they need to achieve to get onto the next course etc.
I don't remember grade boundaries ever being discussed barring the teacher who used to tell a cautionary tale about one of his pupils who refused to write a conclusion for his coursework that would have got him at least 1 more mark, and missed a grade C by 1/2 a mark.

Yes, there’s a lot of rote learning in China. The nature of their language requires rote learning, but it’s expanded to other areas too. I remember my mandarin teacher picking up ds’s science text book and asking me how much of it he would need to memorise- I answered with ‘none’. She was flabbergasted.