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.

Gove's divisive education policies, apparently informed by Daily Mail opinion, are disastrous for all age groups. It's not true that exams have been getting easier it's just that teachers have been working their butts off to get good results. I've marked A level papers and had three sons go through the system and, in my opinion, exams have become more demanding not less. My youngest is taking A levels now and the courses he's applying for all require at least AAB grades. A few years ago my eldest son got into uni on a B and two Ds and now has a good job and freelances for respected national newspapers. None of which would have been possible if he hadn't got a degree. I believe this government would like to see a number of universities closed and subsequently less opportunities for young people and for adult returners to meet their potential. Why?

I am most certainly not conflating ALL SN's with being unsuited to academic subjects.

I have upthread provided two examples of my family members, both on the Autistic Spectrum, but with different diagnoses. One is my Dbro, just returning to UEA to do the last year of his environmental sciences degree, and he is on course to get a First.

The other is my DD, who is probably not going to be able to follow her chosen career path, due partly to the change from modular GCSE's to linear, partly due to time constraints on the finances available for her to train, and partly to do with the fact that the FE College will not be dropping their required grades for the first year of linear GCSE's, all of which combine to make it unlikely that she will be able to ever earn enough to live independently without State support, which is what our aim has been for the last 10 years since her diagnosis.

Just provide one type of qualifications that are suitable for the more academic and another type of qualification for the more vocationally able.

Why the insistence on one size fits all?

And Catering DOES have a place on the Secondary curriculum - it is just as valid a career choice as medicine, and you expect a doctor to have taken Biology GCSE, or triple science, so why would you not expect the chef in that fancy restaurant to have taken Catering GCSE?

The massive expansion of the university sector was probably not well handled or properly thought out. However, the expansion has happened now, and it has created thousands of jobs, significant associated employment, and in university towns the university is often the biggest employer and supporting many other businesses almost completely through its existence and custom. To shrink the sector would be economically catastrophic. What is needed is a properly conducted review and then maybe some refocussing, or some managed change - not a slapdash hotchpotch born out of arrogance and ignorance.

Just a reminder of Cameron's O-level grades - a collection of Cs and Bs.

My dh (exactly same age as Cameron) achieved mostly As at his northern rural comp.

I sometimes wonder whether politicians spout on about grade inflation because they can't believe that children from comps. frequently do better than their own children at expensive private schools. Or am I cynical?...

I was thinking of sitting, this year, a Spanish GCSE. After a decade of talk of grade inflation I assumed I could do it with minimal prep. However, it looks just as hard as it did when I did GCSEs at 15/16! (actually, the amount of grammar expected now seemed greater).

Couthy
You can go to catering college with no qualifications and do an access year or
a level 2 entry requires just 3 gcses with g pass. If they don't have the required level of English and maths, they are given extra classes along side the course.

The expansion of HE is international not just national. Many other countries have more of their DC into HE than we do.

So if we decrease the number of UK students going into HE, rather than less jobs demanding a degree, more people from overseas will fill them.

And before anyone starts demanding the borders be closed, please remember that we all live in an international environment and if big companies are can't or are prevented from recruiting in the UK, they will move their offices elsewhere.

The days when immigration can be controlled without harming the economy and wider society are over

@cream I completely agree. There is an argument for looking at how we provide HE, how it is funded, how it is accessed, what we expect students to obtain from it, etc etc (and we should always be thinking about these things, times change, economies change) - but certainly not for just suddenly cutting off the flow of young people to HE through the manipulation of exam results. Which might be what is about to happen.

Pliudev

Gove's divisive education policies, apparently informed by Daily Mail opinion, are disastrous for all age groups. It's not true that exams have been getting easier it's just that teachers have been working their butts off to get good results.

If that's the case, then why the complaints from universities and businesses? Why are universities running remedial catchup courses? Why are businesses objecting to the quality of school leavers who can't spell or add up? Someone has to be wrong here, either you or the people on the receiving end of the school leavers.

I've marked A level papers and had three sons go through the system and, in my opinion, exams have become more demanding not less. My youngest is taking A levels now and the courses he's applying for all require at least AAB grades. A few years ago my eldest son got into uni on a B and two Ds and now has a good job and freelances for respected national newspapers. None of which would have been possible if he hadn't got a degree. I believe this government would like to see a number of universities closed and subsequently less opportunities for young people and for adult returners to meet their potential. Why?

Why do you assume that the only way to achieve is to have a degree?

Not completely relevant but I have just interviewed five people for a job. All had at least 5 gcses (it is worth saying not all in 'good' subjects). ONly one had a good level of spelling and punctuation. Some of them were appalling! So something is not getting through somewhere down the line. Not sure whether new exams are the answer but clearly GCSE's are not necessarily a good marker for a reasonable level of education!

Also a bright dd of a friend has just got THIRTEEN GCSE's. That seems a ridiculous and irrelevant amount of GCSE's where the only benefit would be for the school who used it a lot in their post exam marketing! What's the point of 6 a stars, 2 as and 5 bs?

creamteas I totally agree.

Moreover at the moment the children of the elites in all those education systems that focus on rote learning and examination are being sent to the UK and US for their education because they recognise the value of the skills like critical and creative thinking that they can gain here but not there. The exponential growth in Asian economies is largely down to a busness, and political elite, that is overwhelmingly educated in the west. It is great for our universities, essential financially but it also exposes our students to competition with the brightest from around the world and to a global perspective that UKPLC desperately needs if it is going to compete in global marketplaces and keeps our university libraries open 24 hours . Yet this government's education and immigration policies are completely divorced from the realities of the global marketplace.

@smells it depends if you think school education should be all about getting a job. I don't think it should be.

You're reading a lot in to my post that just isn't there. I gave no indication that I believe future job preparation is the entire point of school education.

@couthy It's not all about you. Several posters have conflated having SENs with not being academic. The fact that you haven't is irrelevant.

Why not expect the posh chef in the fancy restaurant to have catering GCSE? Well - very few if any of them do have catering GCSE, so that's one good reason.

Vocational training does not belong on the secondary curriculum. It belongs on the post 16 curriculum.

Why are universities running remedial catchup courses?

I went to a Russell Group university back in the late 90's and catchup courses were offered then. My degree was biology related and some of the students on the course did not have A-level biology so needed some sort of remedial course to bring them to the same level as the rest of us. I should imagine that that still happens now.

'Moreover at the moment the children of the elites in all those education systems that focus on rote learning and examination are being sent to the UK and US for their education because they recognise the value of the skills like critical and creative thinking that they can gain here but not there.'

Yes, but they're being sent to mainly private schools where they are likely to do IGCSE and other alternatives to the GCSE.

I teach at a 6th form college and I want to say that any problems with the GCSE (and there are many) will NOT be sorted out by these proposals.

In sciences we get students arriving with higher grade passes who have no idea about the basics of science... but... the reason for this is not the content of the GCSE and is only partially the way the courses are examined. The big, big problem is the way it is taught, no coached, to the students. So is it the teacher's fault? Well actually no because we have NO CHOICE. Everything that we do is based around our results (A-level is even worse which answers your point flatpackhamster about why universities are so unhappy, rightly so, with the quality of students) and this has become much worse since the current government came in, because an increase in redundancies means that not-excellent exam-results = no job. Furthermore, if we started focusing on education again and not exam results, can you imagine how the parents/students would feel?

The answer is to 1) keep GCSEs and to work on exam-quality 2) less emphasis on GCSE results as an indicator of how good a school is (from experience, Ofsted only really 'inspect' this when they grade an institution) and 3) most importantly is money. More money = more contact time and smaller classes = more time to educate students rather than intense exam coaching.

Soapbox vacated.

Independent schools and grammars routinely out perform comprehensives, and by a large percentage.

Comparing like for like? Or broadly comparing overall results? What was found over state side is that when you compare like for like students from independent schools and state schools, differences in achievement vanish. It's only because the state school system has more SEN children, more children from chaotic and dysfunction families that at a glance, state school children appear to not do as well. I would be surprised if that wasn't also the case over here.

Also, you can't compare a grammar schools to a comp. Grammar schools just don't have the same range of ability that you find in comprehensives.

BTW, when students have similar GCSE results, state school students are more likely to get a first at Oxford University than privately educated students. What does that suggest about the state school system?

"Independent schools and grammars routinely out perform comprehensives, and by a large percentage."

Of course they do. They are selective!.

Comparing them to the top set only of a comprehensive will tell q different story.

It suggests that state schools aren't doing a shabby job of equipping students for academic degree courses.

Really lequeen just take a moment to ponder why a selective grammar school that has an entrance exam and only takes the top performing students would outperform a comprehensive that accepts anyone regardless of ability.

I think what is happening is that standards have gone up for all, but not enough.

University participation has increased, so nearly all the brighter students get to.go. Years ago, my parents didn't have a chance of uni though they were bright enough as they had "know your place" working class parents. So they didn't go to.uni, and there were lots like them, very bright but just having O Levels & no more.

That means some of the people getting GCSEs then leaving school don't have good spelling & grammar. Nearly all the ones who are more literate have gone to uni. The ones leaving school at 16 now in the past would have left school at 14 & gone into jobs that didn't require you to read or spell, much anyway.

Now every job has become "skilled" - a lot which don't need to be. Today's society requires us to write & communicate more than ever. Years ago, people would have got away with it for lots of jobs. Now those type of jobs don't exist - in great numbers - any more.

Sorry for my ignorance but what exactly is the difference between a controlled assessment and an exam? They sound like the same thing to me.

I don't necessarily think everyone was good at spelling in the past. My mother said very few of her managers could spell I'm the 50s and 60s, it was het job ad a secretary to get the spelling and grammar right.

I hate the way he has rubbished the current system when he comes from a background of pure privilege. I know that coursework is open to all sorts of things but there is a lot to be said for continual assessment esp for children who just freeze at the though of an exam. Gathering information ,collating it,presenting it etc are all worthy for the workplace.

Back in the day, bosses used to dictate to secretaries so probably didn't write much anyway.

IMO spelling well isn't quite so vital as say, learning your x tables until you know them without thinking (probably rote) because most of the time, it doesn't detract from your meaning if you don't spell properly. On the other hand, grammar is important because it can result in lost meaning.

I went through comprehensive from 1977-82. I distinctly remember that there were people up in arms about poor grammar even back then. I had an English teacher who taught us grammar despite it not being on the curriculum - she told us she was taking time out of what we were supposed to be doing to cover this. Probably what we are seeing now is a result of that period because people my age are today's teachers.