The return of the O Level.

[hermionestranger]

Leaked reports suggest that the government is to scrap the GCSE from 2015, 2013 option takers will be the last year to take them.

I'm sorry it's the mail bug they were first on my twitter feed. I 'm on my phone so can't link properly.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2162369/Return-O-Level-Gove-shake-biggest-revolution-education-30-years.html

Realistically, the reason AS levels are such a shock to the system is that GCSEs as they are now are not adequate preparation.

The current system is set up for success, and therefore the questions are very clearly targetted so that the student knows how many marks a question is worth, and exactly what the examiners are looking for - an essay question will have a subtitle along the lines of "You should look at a)...b)... & c)... and consider the poet's use of....". This means that anyone of reasonable intelligence who works hard can get an A or A*. The whole system is skills-based, so you can pass the exam with a good grade, but still not understand the subject with any clarity.
The difficulty is that the more able candidates are not able to differentiate themselves from the the average. In O Levels, you were set an essay question in an exam with no idea of how many marks it was worth, nor were you given any guidance on what the examiners were looking for, so it was like a game of cat and mouse. The candidates who understood their subject properly and could express themselves clearly did best. It was not possible to learn by rote and succeed.
In Latin unseens, the latest mark scheme gives 5 marks per sentence, and you are allowed to award 5 even if the translation contains a minor error. So it is possible for a candidate to include up to 6 minor errors (one in each sentence) and still get 100%. Meanwhile a candidate with no errors at all also gets 100% but can't prove their work was better.
Having said that, I don't think that a return to a 2-tier system is a good thing. Too many students were mistakenly put into the CSE group, and then could not be moved up into the O Level group, and this could blight their lives forever. So we need a single exam, but it needs to be more rigorous, and people have to realise that it's perfectly fine to get Bs and Cs, and this should be praised, so that A grades can be saved for the top candidates. Non-academic and vocational courses could also be offered. Let's not return to O Levels, but create something new. The current system fails everyone, as too many people get an inflated sense of their own ability because they get so many A grades, but then can't get the university place they need, or indeed a job at the end of it.

Marysbeard beat me to it! There needs to be recognition that not all kids are academically talented. Not all kids will go to uni. I did, fair enough, my sister and brother didn't get the 5A-Cs first time round. It was obvious their talents lay in other directions. That talent couldn't be nurtured because of the target-chasing and that was over ten years ago.

GCSEstudent, please don't be disheartened. I remember being your age, working my @ss off and the same discussion going on about falling standards and exams being easier. Its awful and it doesn't feel like it at the time, but its same old same old. You'll hear the same when your sitting in my seat and its your kids they are denegrating. it was crap at the time and its crap now.

There should be a base-level standard. Possibly sat anywhere between say 11 and 16, possibly older, which proves that a basic standard has been reached, say in Maths, English, ICT, and an understanding of basic humanities, science and some lifeskills.

This could replace the GCSE A-C farce. Just prove you've reached a basic standard. This could be taught alongside vocational skills fir those so inclined and would be moved past quicker for those more academically minded who could go on to an advanced level, IB, or whatever.

just pie in the sky(hey, politicians do it, so why can't I?) but the academics could still do some vocational stuff and the vocationalists would still have some academic training. A base level of education could be achieved for all, and we could do away with the ridiculous idea of uni degrees for 50%, which means that graduates have to achieve higher degrees, to get the same jobs they did 10years ago on Batchelor degrees.

My issue is that while, yes, this WILL improve the qualifications of, say, the highest achieving 25% of pupils, what is going to be done about the other 75%?

My DD, who goes into Y10 in September, was offered a chance to do vocational, work based training (3 days in work, 2 days in school), but had to turn it down to do the traditional route of 14 GCSE's because the only options for the work based training were mechanics, hairdressing or child care. DD wanted to do Catering.

She will hopefully get a 'C' in both her sciences (lower set do double science), but a 'C' in English is doubtful, more like a 'D', and in Maths she is predicted an 'E/F'.

So she is essentially doing 11 GCSE's that will be worthless to her, in order to scrape a 'C' in Textiles (too writing based), a 'B' in Health and Social Care, and an 'A' in Catering.

Purely because they offered her no RELEVANT work based training.

And that, IMO, is what is wrong with the education system. It's not just failing the top 25%, but the bottom 40%, and it is only really working for the 35% in the middle.

Why on earth can't there be suitable, relevant work based training from the age of 14, in something that person wants to do, if they are unlikely to gain 'C' grades at GCSE?

Why do they insist on pushing all DC to stay at school until 18yo, when the least academic will have given up on an impossible task long before then?

If there was decent vocational, work based training from the age of 14, in ALL trades, then people who maybe would end up on the dole might get a taste of what the working world is like, and have a good grounding in a trade before they get disillusioned with education in a system that is set up for them to fail.

And as for Controlled Assessments being easy - they are sat under exam conditions with no chance for resits, coursework has already gone.

And that really hurts those with SN's, like my DD, she has epilepsy, which causes her to have issues with knowledge retention, and retrieval, so a solely exam based system will MASSIVELY disadvantage her.

When will people realise that the state education system needs to work for EVERYONE, not just the top 25%, and if they fixed things properly for the non-academic, it would have a knock on effect of making a whole section of the population MORE employable than they currently are.

You can't make a system that is supposed to educate EVERYONE only work for the most able 25%, it has to work for EVERYONE, and IMO that also means making a huge investment into SEN education, to make those with SEN more employable.

And don't tell me that Inclusion did that, because all inclusion did was move children from schools that were set up to effectively help them into mainstream schools that didn't get given enough funding to help them.

When the system works for everyone, from the person who would currently get 14 'U's at GCSE to the person who would currently get 14 'A*'s, then will I be happy. Until then, it's all just buggering around the edges really, isn't it?

Hi CouthyMow! My brother wasted two years not getting his five GCSEs to head straight for catering college. He lasted a year before one of the high end restaurants picked him up, and he finished his NVQ level 3 there :D

Another who spent two years wasted in education. I completely understand what you are saying.

Well said, CouthyMow - like your summary !

Yes, the key will be to see what is proposed for non O level pupils.

But you mustn't blame either the coalition or Gove for introducing the higher school leaving age. That was passed by Labour with a deferred start date to allow for planning. Anyone know how that planning is getting on?

What's proposed for the CSE lot? More straightforward exams for example about reading a bus timetable or counting out change. No mention of vocational training.

Hardly inspiring, but then the CSE lot aren't really worth spending any time on are they?

couthymow it's worth remembering that the new O-levels are being proposed for the top 75%, leaving only 25% to do CSEs. Your DD with her Cs and Ds would be in the O-level group and forced to take even less suitable qualifications than now as I can't see O-level catering being on the table.

I don't think we should compare ourselves too much to Singapore, hong Kong and Shanghai and think we can do to our education system what they are doing to theirs. For a start they are much smaller very homogenous populations with higher GDPs. Also their Confucius heritage means all socio economic groups have a huge respect and desire for education and the vast majority of parents will make big sacrifices to ensure their dc get the best education. So just because the Singaporeans manage to get 70% of kids to do Olevels I think this will not happen in the UK as most parents here not committed to providing additional support and learning opportunities outside of school, resulting in the less bright kids not being able to assess Olevels.

" access"

To be fair mumzy, in Singapore, though all state schools follow the GCE O level route, the rates for attaining A's, or even passes for that matter, are not that high. There are many many people who are not academically-inclined in Singapore. You don't hear much about them because they end up doing low-paid work or unglamorous jobs, and they don't tend to immigrate to other countries either on their own merits so most of the ones you see here in the West are either rich enough or smart enough or some other family circumstance landed them here. My own sister and brother both flunked O levels in Maths even though my parents paid for private tutors for them since they were 12. They had to resit and get a C before they can access higher education. I had pushy parents who insisted all their kids must get to Uni... but in reality, in Singapore, if you don't have a Uni education, a lot of the better jobs are simply out of reach because unlike England, they really do value paper qualifications way above many other personal traits for example.

On the other hand, you have someone like my husband, who did badly academically but the English system served him well - today he is in mid-management earning a good income which is better than many Uni grads can say. He worked his way up. In Singapore that would be very very difficult to do as the institutionalised snobbery with regard to paper qualifications is so established. I hated the Singaporean system and was very rebellious there and refused to go the way everybody expected me to - ironically it was me in my family who never completed Uni whereas my brother and sister did. My brother and sister however were very good at sports but that wasn't encouraged as in Singapore sports were seen as a pastime, not something anyone ambitious in life would bother doing as a career.

I wouldn't hope for that kind of education system to happen in England. In fact I chose not to raise my DCs in Singapore for that exact reason. I thought it was all a bit sad for kids having to give up what they like in the name of a University education to compete in the rat race. I know my DD1 isn't academically-inclined and there would be no point trying to push her toward that path, but if she grew up in Singapore, she would be forced to tread that path and the peer pressure to do so would be immense.

I think though that there should be some consistency in the way O levels and GCSE standards are set-up. It seems obvious to me (having experienced both kinds of exam systems) that the ones doing O levels abroad are expected to know and understand so much more than the ones doing GCSEs here. AS level syllabi should not be covering stuff that pupils who took GCE O levels abroad have already studied.

Take your point Tiger but it's also the case that even non academic children in countries such as Singapore, HK etc tend to do better, usually obtaining the basic qualifications, than their equivalents in the UK because almost all parents in those countries value education and will push their children harder. As you say in those societies you can't access the better jobs if you don't have qualifications means you have to try harder academically.

'At our local comprehensive, the Maths teacher has 2 Es at A Level (one of which was Maths) and then a 3rd class, soft science degree, from a Mickey Mouse University.'

As a Head of Department, I am sure he has some other qualities which are unexaminable.

I just hate the Gove/tory nonsense of
'let's go back to the good old days' ...
where everybody knew their place.

Maybe we need to distinguish further the really bright pupils but don't they all or nearly all come from a socio-economic group and don't the GCSEs suggest a large number of people have reached the required standard - feeling good about themselves. Is education for the pupil or the employer?

Just want all pupils to be valued. Somehow that never happens

I haven't read much of the thread, but didn't kids do about 5 O-levels or so - if so, then that's a very narrow secondary education.

If GCSE's are easier, that's fair enough if they do 10 or more - that also means that they are getting a broader overall education, and isn't that what is desirable at the moment?

Also, less academic children should be able to achieve some good GCSEs and then do what they are good at.

The one thing that is missing here though is a good system of vocational education that is well known and valued in industry - and where industry and colleges work together.

I think it might be better to leave qualifications alone and just continue to improve on what we have. I do agree that coursework is a bit of a farce and often pointless in establishing what a student can do, and other stuff could be improved, but changing around the whole system is in my opinion a power trip for Grove and a recipie for a big mess and confusion.

A vocational system where, for example, someone could become a mechanic or an electrician that will later qualify him/her do an engineering degree if they wanted to - so, there is a route of progression.

Isn 't that what we need, a well qualified work force?

In my comp in 80's most of us did 9 O levels in academic subjects followed by 4 Alevels one of which was the compulsory General studies which was not taught and for which you just turned up and sat on the day.

Hm, then I was wrong about the 5 o-levels, but do children take more GCSEs then they used to take O-levels?

9 O-levels would be brought enough, I suppose, still I do feel A-levels are very narrow.

Realistically, the reason AS levels are such a shock to the system is that GCSEs as they are now are not adequate preparation.

I think you will find that A levels were also a shock to the system back in the O level days. I remember finding A levels complete gobbledegook and it took me most of the first year to know what was going on. In fact, so many in our class found this, that we had remedial classes after a lot of kids just dropped out of 6th form (I went to grammar school as well but there has always been a big jump up to A level). At least AS levels prepare students for the more challenging A2, but I do think that January modules are a bit crazy. They have only just started for goodness sake, and they have exams almost immediately.

I must be another one who lives in a parallel universe . I cannot think of a single teacher within our faculty who does not have linked to their teaching aubject. Within our department half of us have firsts and the other have have a 2:1. Having been part of the recruitment process , having anything less than a 2:1 means your application will usually be ignored.

All of our department have been to good universities, we have a healthy number of Oxbridge teachers across the school and a good number from Russel Group.

My students who get at A star work bloody hard for it and it is a good preparation for the A Level. The exam courses I teach are on a par with or even harder than the ones I sat.

I agree that it seems that a vocal minority of posters just want to belittle others. As for saying hat you could sit any literary based exam and get top results with no effort , just laughable arrogance. Despite what the Daily Mail may tell you, we do teach them facts and it requires effort.

AS levels aren't a shock to the system, really.....they're in exactly the same style as GCSEs, very prescriptive, very formulaic. I think it's just that you probably get more homework- we didn't get that much and it didn't get chased up, so I didn't notice any jump. There's no leap in terms of wider thinking and creative exploration. It's very marginally better in A2....but languages especially are a farce. Comparing them to Maths/Sciences makes no sense, if you look at the syllabus.

Do you think at 16 there is any need to separate out the top 25% of students, surely A levels do that? If I'm going to generalise, the top 25% of students will go onto university. When applying they may need a base number of GCSE As (which they will have) but it will be their A level predicted grades that put them apart from the rest of the applicants along with their personal statements and aptitude in a test for some courses. For the top students, GCSEs are essentially redundant - if they've gone on to get A levels and a good degree surely employers won't take into account their exam results at 16?