Gove to announce scrapping of GCSEs

[Itchyandscratchy]

But before anyone is taken in by the leak announcement in the Daily Hate Mail here, take the time to then read this for a more informed version.

With any luck they'll be out of a job in 2015 when this is sposed to be brought in, but there's no doubt GCSEs will be scrapped. What I woud hope is that Labour will get is finger out and propose a system that has had full consultation with schools, teachers, employment agencies, industry chiefs and unions.

It will change how every child is currently taught at secondary school. And I hope that doesn't mean some children's futures are determined by the age of 11.

In the Times today they are commenting that the hope would be that less modular exams and controlled assessments would give teachers more time to actually teach the subject - if so I think that would definitely a good thing. I am from Germany and this is something I have never understood here - this spoon feeding of pupils to guide them exams. It just doesn't (or didn't) happen when I was at school.

boffinmumI think the difference is that people were more likely to start an apprenticeship at an earlier age, often because they had a contact in that industry, or they were able to join the family firm/trade. I am not convinced that the job market was more open..

It is interesting how people assume that it was Labour who introduced GCSEs.

The same people I suspect think that it was a Conservative London Mayor who won the Olympics bid.......

MR GOVE YOU IGNORANT PLONKER!

What a bloody disaster!
I hope this idea is scrapped - ARE YOU LISTENING YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING PATHETIC LITTLE MAN?

Do the government actually give a shit about what we think any more?

This is shit on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. It lets down children with special needs, children who are struggling and well, every single child apart from those who are in private education or whose parents can afford extra tuition.

I've seen bright, intelligent kids produce the best coursework, who fail every single exam because they crack under exam pressure.
My own dd has never finished an exam or test yet but she's in the top set for everything bar maths. That won't count at exam time though will it?

Every child deserves to leave school with something - just like in the US where they all graduate with a diploma.

This new system is appauling. It's only purpose is once again to throw the poor, struggling students onto the scrapheap to make way for the rich and clever. No doubt colleges and Universities will raise their criteria too.

The Tories think higher education should be reserved for the stinking rich. I've not seen this much inequality in a single government since Thatcher. If they want to tear this country apart they are doing a bloody good job.

Bastards.

T was also the conservatives who scrapped home economics and introduced the abominationnthat is Food Technolology - with its emphasis on Market research and packaging- designed to produce the factory workers of the future.

I was in secondary in 1970s and learnt to make rock cakes in HE that was all. I did make a few things in sewing

Last Friday, in her practical catering GCSE lesson, DD had to show that she could prepare carrots as small diced, julienne, slices and crescents. She then had to cook a stir fry - having researched recipes for oriental sauces - and prepare all the vegetables and cook a stir fry.

Her Cookery lessons have been excellent. Since Y7, she has taught ME how to make a risotto, she has baked cakes, she has advanced that to making and decorating a heart shaped Red Velvet cake for Valentines Day, she has learnt to make puff pastry, shortcrust pastry, sweet shortcrust pastry, a basic Bolognese sauce, that she then had to add her own choice of ingredients to, and far far more.

She has learnt SO much more than I ever did. Macaroni cheese FROM A BOX, and fruit salad is all I remember from 4 years of English Home Ec lessons. I got taught more cookery in 18 months in Scotland than in 4 years in England.

But DD's school teaches them very in depth, proper home cooked food, expects them to research recipes and adjust them, be able to correctly prepare every item they use, be knowledgable about food hygiene regulations, have excellent knowledge of food safety.

You can't compare a modern Cookery lesson with the crap ones we got in the 90's!

Claig well said. And no, I am not Michel Gve undercover either, just dperessed at teachers' knee-jerk visceral rejection of anything other than wallowing in self-pity and maintaining the abysmal status quo.
As it happens, my DC will also be the 'guinea pigs', but since someone has to go first or nothing never improves, we will support it and any other efforts to stop the rot in edycation in this country.

Home economics GCSE wasn't scrapped. It's still available now. It must be up to individual schools/colleges which they offer and why.

Interesting analysis of the Daily Mail's report here

And you rather contradict yourself, do we need people who can just spell and add up or do we need thinkers?

No I'm not. We need both. We need the elite, the best & brightest to thrive in our knowledge based economy. And those who are not shouldn't be left abandoned. There's simply no excuses for perfectly able children to leave school unable to work out how much change they get or spell.

In the good old days, University education was free. The government all got their tuition for absolutely nothing - yes that's right, nothing! And yet Universities got along just fine. In fact the poorer students were able to get grants, imagine that! No, you didn't have to pay them back. It was money given to help you study. Yet there was no mass influx of students into Uni because what was also on offer was an apprenticeship.

In the good old days you see, industry was still very much a part of this country and so young people could get an apprenticeship in car mechanics or welding and they were offered jobs at the end of it. Good eh?

Only for some reason, oooooh the reason escapes me now, industry has all but collapsed in this country. For some reason that only Osbourne can answer, most of the big industries have relocated to offshore factories.

Oh and do you remember Remploy? The largest employer of people with special needs? So every child actually had a chance to leave school and get a job. The skilled ones could get an apprenticeship, the clever ones could get grants to go to University and the ones with special needs could get jobs with Remploy.

I'm not saying the country was perfect. Far from it. But there was hope. There were opportunities and that is something that seems to be lacking today. Kids will wonder why they should even bother trying. Why work hard when you will leave school with nothing to show for it? Why aim high when you can't afford to go to University? Why try to get a job when unemployment amongst school leavers is the lowest it's ever been?

As for kids with special needs, well they end up at the bottom of the pile don't they? Not only have most special needs schools been shut down, forcing some kids who can neither read nor write into mainstream schools to learn about Shakespeare when Life Skills would actually be more useful to them, but when they leave school they may end up with absolutely nothing to show for it and no job to go into because Remploy will no longer exist.

Yes, actually the good old days were bloody good. I envy my parents the opportunities they had. Shame my kids won't get them.

Why bring Xenia into this anyway? Has she a devotee?

'Why bring Xenia into this anyway? Has she a devotee?'

She's got thousands!

Lucky old her.
It must be fun to be worshipped.

'It must be fun to be worshipped.'

It's not all it's cracked up to be.

LaQueen - that is because of the lack of quality TAs at primary level. Children were going into secondary school lacking basic reading skills because they had been let down at primary school.

So what we did at secondary was to allow them to verbalise their answers which would be written down by special TAs (of which I was one). We'd often read out the questions too.

We had to write it all down vertabim.

If you want to improve the system you employ better trained teaching staff at primary level. Many primary school teachers have left Uni having just scraped through their degree. That is not good enough.

Hello Xenia, I did wonder where you'd done. How's the island?

My thoughts on this having picked up the basics from the very useful "Newsround" that basically there'll be less emphasis on course work and more on a final exam. Well, I'm glad that my DD who has mild dyslexia but is very bright, will be under the existing system where her excellent course work will be taken into account, and hopefully some stress can be taken off those final exams. My DS who has a more sanguine disposition is currently in year 6, so I gather may be the first year heading towards the new EBacc. I'm hoping that he will cope quite well with the new system compared to others but I feel it will still be more stressful for him and for us all. Like most families we could do with less stress not more

Basically I feel it is unfair on any children with SEN and their families. A very retrograde step.

I hope I'll be forgiven for thinking first how it will affect my two - I'm guessing most other mothers will understand that. But I am thinking of everyone too - such as the young children that I work with, and the children of friends and family.

I'm a but late to the discussion here, but why are we calling this the English Baccalaureate when it is not a school leaving qualification? Seems to me like trying to get a continental style well respected and well rounded system on the cheap. I think a true reformer would go the whole hog and say that in academic terms the gold standard for school leavers is to study English, Maths and at least 3 other subjects to 18.

Secondly, I find the assumption that continuous assessment and coursework is a bad thing is simplistic. Granted, it is difficult to police coursework, but surely the answer is to address that rather than throwing it out of the window. I would argue that coursework is actually what stretches genuinely bright students rather than well-trained monkeys. It's an opportunity for sustained thinking and research, rather than just fact spewing or equation-solving, and was the only reason why I actually had to put in any graft at school at all.

flatpack hamster This is an excellent summing up of the value of education versus personal qualities for entrepreneurship. If you deny educational opportunities to entrepreneurs whether because they have SLDs or they are frustrated by other aspects of the education systems then they end up in the school of hard knocks which makes it much tougher to survive and succeed.

The article was outlining a study hypothesising whether the qualities that give Dyslexics strengths as entrepreneurs were the result of genetics or the way they had developed to cope with their learning difference. Noone will know until there is extensive robust research. However the research was initiated because it is well established that Dyslexics, or those with SLDs are overrepresented amongst entrepreneurs. If you and others have never encountered any, here are a few and here is some UK research on the subject www.cassknowledge.com/sites/default/files/article-attachments/419~~julielogan_dyslexic_entrepreneurs.pdf.

Completely agree Matsikula.
My experience at both primary and secondary level was that teachers found marking coursework a bore and time consuming.

In primary, TAs were often given the job of marking and usually most of them just used stamps. I would complain that spelling mistakes were not picked up (because some of the TAs couldn't spell either) and bad grammar was not corrected. In fact I offered to take on the childrens homework and mark it during my own time, for free, at home because I felt their efforts needed to be rewarded with some proper marking and good feedback. I was turned down.

I realise teachers have a heavy workload and bloody hard jobs, but coursework is all part of that. It's something the children enjoy doing and are proud of. It gets displayed on the walls of the classroom and some teachers actually do some brilliant coursework with kids that enables them to really focus on their abilities and challenge themselves. It gives teachers a great indication of what pupils really can do if they put their minds to it and are set a task that they can get their teeth into.

It's just a pity that some other teachers cannot be arsed and would rather hark back to the days of repetitive teaching that meant very little and was forgotten the minute that kids left school.

I just read the article in the Guardian.

I feel quite sad its all about introducing more academic qualifications, more rigorous exams and this one EBac qualification - but what about all those who won't quite manage it, those from families who don't read and do interesting stuff with their children and those who don't have educated parents. I feel there is no hope for all these children.

It said that those who do not achieve the EBac will get a detailed account of achievements from the school they attended (I wouldn't want to show that to an employer, it would basically say that I am a failure) and they would be encouraged to re-take the exam at 17 or 18 (how many will?).

There seems to be no positive route for the not so academic, who usually have other talents and skills. True, this country lacks scientists but it also lacks good plumbers and electricians and all these other skilled people who may not be very good or interested in academic work.

Do I need to look at Gove's detailed plans or is he missing out a whole section of society with his reforms?

I loved coursework and writing essays at uni, it really got me motivated to find out stuff, I read more and more about the subject and forgot about time.

In comparisson, at school (late 80's Germay) we didn't do coursework. I remember history lessons where the teacher came in, talked for 40 min, then we copied from the board for 20 min and then she left again.

On the other hand, I have to agree with Grove when he talks about spoon feeding. Sometimes there is too much support and feedback so that the coursework can't really be described as a student's original piece of work - but that can be worked on.

Yes they do. So Gove's shake-up of the exam system will not help. It will merely let bad teachers off the hook as all they have to do is teach children, parrot-fashion, what will come up on the exam sheet. Just like back in the 70s and 80s when bored children copied page after page of their textbooks and learnt whole paragraphs by chanting them in a dull monotone.

What this education system needs is a higher standard for teachers, basic qualifications for TAs (and higher pay to go with it) and strict criteria for coursework.

We need to change HOW we teach, not WHAT we teach.