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

Children can leave school at 16 if they go into an apprenticeship, or full time employment with a day a week in education. But as these are vanishingly think on the ground, it basically means college or school for the majority.

Exactly TheFallenMadonna

They are few, and of course unevenly placed in the country. In my area, there are quite a few apprenticeships in a certain few subjects, and next to nothing in anything else

As the (Tory) head of the Parliamentary Education Committee said on the radio 4 news today.

• This is a leak of a draft internal policy idea. It was either leaked by an ambitious kite flyer or somebody who thought it was daft.

• in the past 2 years Gove has already introduced the Ebacs, Academy converters and Free schools and abolished modular GCSEs

• in the pipeline definitely are restrictions to the number of retakes for GCSEs and A levels.

FFS would Gove just SHUT UP for a bit and let what has ALREADY been brought in start to take effect (ie see how the GCSE results of June 2014 look) before messing about any more.

He has ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE for the effectiveness of any of the changes he has already brought it.
Why on earth should we trust him to make good judgements about even more.

I reckon its al a ploy to keep the economy off the front pages for a couple of days. Or Dave (Offshore Dad) Cameron's daft comments about Jimmy Carr - gorgeous George chose not to close the offshore loopholes - how can he be upset that people use them.

soooo - just as a matter of interest, how is anyone supposed to become a carpenter/electrician/plumber/glazier/brickie etc. these days? Do you need a degree for it now? What's the route in? Is it all BTEC? (Does that still exist?)

I still cannot see how doing 4 days a week in college and 1 on the job equips you properly to do a trade that is pretty much all hands-on, with a limited amount of paperwork that really only requires basic literacy and maths to deal with. 1 day a week in college is enough, surely?

Thumbwitch
City and Guilds is the one the trades like best and then they join the CSCS scheme
BTecs are not liked by the tradesmen who take on the juniors as they have too much paperwork and too little grubby hands - the kids think they will get to be the guvnor right away rather than having to graft for ten years.

Thanks, Talkinpeace - and how are the C&G doing these days - plenty of spaces available? Does it cost a lot to do? Are the Govt fucking about with them as well?

I wish the government would look at the cohort involved here. My daughters both just missed out on £500 of Child Trust Funds (never did understand why they couldn't halve that to £250 each and double the number of children who got it by giving some to those who were toddlers at the time). They will be paying God knows how much in Uni fees without having had that nice £500 to invest from birth. And now they will fall either side of the GCSE swapover - one in the final year of GCSEs taking exams that no-one cares about anymore because something shinier is coming along, and the other being a guinea-pig for new exams that they won't have set up properly and that the teachers will be trying to work out how to teach.
Note to the government - just keep the name and sort out what you've got, instead of pretending that a "new" name will somehow make it all better. (And a £250 donation to my kids' uni fees at the same time would be nice.)

www.cityandguilds.com/42638.html

Oh, and GSCEstudent96 - good on you for joining in and putting your point of view as a student.

I was in the last year to do o levels. I did well but not sure i would welcome their return as they labelled children early. A grade 1 cse was only nominally the same as an o level and it didn't enable the child to achieve its maximum potential. CSEs were seen as non academic and it was easy for a child to be deemed CSE standard throughout and a range of exams wasn't easily acheived.
Exam board selection was rife (and similar at A level)- schools tried to get the most recognised board with the easiest option or went for the gold plated boards to impress at university level.

GCSEs in theory were better - but for some reason they had a dumb down element- as a class we tested them out and they simply had less academic rigour in them ( i remember my maths teacher despairing of how he could bridge the gap between gcses and a levels when calculus was removed from GSCEs - the answer being to change a levels) - but i don't think this had to be the case.

Also coursework/multiple choice doesn't necessarily make things easy- my professinal exams had multiple choice it which were widely considered the hardest element of the paper

to me the principal problem with GCSE's is grade inflation- ultimately are exams to test relative ability or absolute?

Grade Inflation can be cured at a stroke. It could even be done for the exams that are being sat at the moment.
Once the marks are in and being moderated, for each subject, across all exam boards

the Top 5% get an A*
the next 10* get an A
the next 15% get a B
the next 20% get a C
the next 20% get a D
the next 15% get an E
the next 10% get an F
the bottom 5% get a G

so yes, an A at Chemistry will mean being brighter than an A in General Studies - but so it should be.

There were far more exam boards in the good old days in fact.

Absolutely agree with you LeQueen.

Can I also just say that the worst thing that could happen to us who are taking exams at the moment (or in the next couple of years) is to change grades without changing the name of the qualification. If they give out less As this year for example to try and get rid of 'grade inflation' we'll look like we've done worse, when we haven't, and that will make things harder for us in later life.

I do think that one exam board is a great idea. I read a couple of threads that argued that it wasn't good for all students to read 2 or 3 books. The English GCSE exam I sat had about 20 books to choose from. I was supposed to write about Macbeth but I saw they had 12th night so did that instead as it my favourite piece by Shakespere. I got a B which was the highest mark I could get due to my teacher hating me entering me for the middle paper where an A wasn't possible.

I don't care what they call the exams but the expections have to increase. If a child is not academic then they should be sitting fewer subjects with the core being Maths, English Language, Science and History. All children should be leaving school with at least a C grade in these basic subjects.

GCSEstudent
Sadly the change in grades WILL happen, and yours is the first year it will hit.
Last year was the highest set of grades there has ever been and will ever be.
The modular and retakes that allowed 6 pupils at my childrens' school to get 14 A* is history.
DD is in year 9. She knows that just to get straight A's in 12 subjects in two years time will be bloody hard work.

THe point of the Normal distribution system is that if it was brought in and you did get a B in your Chemistry you could say that you were in the top 30% nationally
whereas last year a B meant that you were below average (55% having got A and A*)

But they shouldn't do that with the same name as employers won't see the difference between a GCSE achieved in 2011 (which many people my age have because of early entry) and one from 2012. They can't just decide overnight to make a change which not everyone knows has happened because it will reflect badly on the people who took the first year of un-inflated grades.

to me the principal problem with GCSE's is grade inflation- ultimately are exams to test relative ability or absolute?

Nope, disagree.

Its about teaching to pass exams rather than teaching how things actually work thats the problem. GCSEs just before the national curriculum so they are being blamed but I honestly think its teaching to targets rather than teaching to understand things thats the issue.

Not only that there is also a problem with tiered papers and school policy.

School A likes to teach kids to understand properly. So they take the decision to enter kids of a certain ability to do a lower paper. They then teach so they know the kids fully understand the subject to that level. To pass the lower paper and get a C they need 75%.

School B is more concerned with its league position and grades. So they take the decision to enter kids of a certain ability to do a higher paper. They then teach them to pass the examine, by knowing how to answer certain questions, knowing that they only need to get 30% to get a grade C.

In theory, what ends up happening is School A pupils might get slightly lower grades but they have the understanding and ability that is useful in life. Whilst School B pupils might get slightly higher grades as they could pass the exam but its bloody crap as they still lack understanding and the ability to use that skill in real life.

Changing the exams isn't going to solve the problem imho. It might be a step in the right direction, but unless you can find a way to teach that ensures the subject is properly taught and so kids have an application for what they are taught beyond the exam room it won't change one of the major issues.

As for a two tier system under O Levels. The idea that GSCEs have stopped this is something of a myth because of two tier paper systems. Schools are not always necessarily doing the thing thats in the best interest of the kids, and system means that average ability kids have decisions made about the highest grade they can achieve and the way in which they are going to be taught anyway. Its just not as obvious and is being misused by some schools.

Very educational site. Thanks. I just find Mr Gove hard to like.

I think it's a fucking disaster and Gove is a complete loon.

The idiots clapping their hands with glee either know sweet FA about what actually goes on in schools, have forgotten what it was like in the 60s/70s/80s, or are as weird as Gove himself. Possibly all three.

Reading beyond the Mail and the Telegraph would be a start.

The stage we need to get to is where average is something to feel very satisfied indeed with. We have to stop nurturing this culture of having to be made to feel special every time we hit a rut. It does no one any good, brings the average down because this awful brand of complacency starts setting in once people are praised for every tiny meaningless thing they do.
In a Chalet School book a character was described as "average" and I was on the verge of thinking, hang on, that's not very nice! And then I realised how fab it would be to have a school where you were pleased and proud to be average. I don't think most 11-16ers today would come round to the idea that happily though because the drive to be told that we're gifted/talented/top is so ingrained in us (without the effort and hard work to match).

If they manage to overturn and scrub down the curriculum thoroughly, so it's deeper, wider and merges the subjects successfully, I'd be much happier without needing to relabel everything. Whether it's "Ordinary" or "General", improvements are what counts. Why aren't we learning History and Geography together? Why aren't we learning the basics of psychology and how they link to History, literature, language learning and the classics? Why aren't we learning poems by heart and learning the names of plants, insects and trees, and having gardening lessons? Why aren't we learning about the exhibition of 1874 and how to approach art and consider it critically, and why in art lessons are we not, I don't know, designing our own Exposition Universelle of 1900, to tie in History and colour and stories? Why is children's potential constantly, always underestimated in this country!