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.

@seeker the problem might be solved if Antonia Forest's The Cricket Term was placed in the curriculum.

Unless I had convincing proof otherwise I would always assume that apparent failure to read the instructions was that, rather than an inability to understand them.

We don't speak or write in the same way as we did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Language changes and evolves.

But, then again, I am only a teacher and an examiner, and have only spent the last twenty years in the classroom. So clearly, I know fuck all. Mr Gove has certainly made that point.

So are you saying that they can choose to answer 2 questions out of 20? With that amount of choice, they are bound to find 2 questions they can answer.

'We don't speak or write in the same way as we did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Language changes and evolves.'

Some people say "aks" instead of "ask", but that doesn't mean we should ditch the greats of English literature.

No claig - you are misunderstanding me.

We study a range of texts - one Shakespeare play, for example. There is a choice of three plays on the paper. Every year, one child panics and thinks that because we did Macbeth in Y9, they need to answer on that. Then they go on to the text we have just studied, say Romeo and Juliet, and answer on that. Time is running out, they hit the next question and realise we have never read Merchant of Venice. By then it is too late.

claig where did I say we should ditch the greats?

He is a giant of American Literature, part of their canon, and should be studied in the context of his time and place, late 19c Mississippi. One of the major developments in the study of Litearture since Goves time is that we now study it as the work of genius yes but genius that comes from a context. The context helps us understand the work better but also helps us through their work to understand the context better, and in Mark Twais case that is 19c Mississippi.

Well I think that is a narrow, even political, reading of novels. The classic novels are timeless and stand above time, they speak to us now through universal, human themes that stretch beyond the narrow confines of the time in which they were written. Yes, some historic, economic and social understanding can help to gain a greater understanding, but those are mere footnotes and are side issues to the greater themes.

Actually, one of th things I found depressing about my dd's recent GSCEs is that the set books were all on the potential list for when I did O Levels more than 30 years ago. And so much fantastic stuff has been written since!

Dostoevsky is not just a Russian author, relevant to his narrow time, and Dickens is not just a Victorian author. They are giants of world literature, above and beyond time, who convey the human condition as it has been and will be forever.

MordionAgenos '@seeker the problem might be solved if Antonia Forest's The Cricket Term was placed in the curriculum'

I actually use that extract with my year 11s, as it happens. .

Mordion- I missed your post!

But I was wondering how I could work that scene into the thread. You don't get much more Govorgasmic than Kingscote!

'Traps for heffalumps' is a phrase with which many of my minions are now very familiar. With good reason.

FFS, don't say that, seeker!

It was bad enough when my dad nuked Narnia for me with a few well chosen comments about Christian allegories & inherent misogyny...

Gove would hate Kingscote. Even the brightest of the bright (Nicola and Miranda) thought things like the school play and the netball (and of course the cricket) were far far more important than exams. And look at Patrick's O level debacle - that was played by all and sundry as a 'thing' because of the issues it threw up wrt his relationship with Gin, and the way his headmaster behaved. Not because he probably failed his O levels.

We all know shit loads about the tempest though, right? Even if we didn't study it for O level ourselves.

claig I think the narrow reading of novels is the one that says they are works of genius transcending their context. I realise you get some sort of transcendental fix from the English Language used at it's best, we all do, but that was what led to critics looking at novels in a narrow way as mere cyphers of genius, and they are so much more than that. How much better to teach students not just the beauty of the prose, the development of plot and it's themes but that authors give us an insight into the perspectives of other times and places. For instance Jane Eyre is not some early feminist, as she might appear through 21c eyes. She is actually a high anglican tory who believed in self determination, who was following her own Pilgrim's Progress, (Mark Twain and Dickens sent their characters on similar progresses), to find a respectable role for herself as an educated middle class woman at a time when it was a real issue. On one level you can find so much more in the novel when you understand that, go back read the passage where she is lost on the moors after walking out on Rochester, the references both to Pilgrim's Progress and the Israelites in the desert actually emphasise the spiritual elements. On the other if you think that is political, well it is. Charlotte Bronte was passionate about her politics, so was Dickens, whose work arose out of his opposing views, highlighting that poverty was not a matter of personal accountability. It teaches students to appreciate that in different times and different places people have different perspectives on universal truths, and they are not always the ones that seem obvious to our 21c / male / female / western perspective . Gove is so keen that the products of our education system can compete globally. One of our greatest weaknesses in global markets is our ability to understand issues from the perspectives of others.

I suggest you tip your toes back into the academic world. Both Birkbeck and Oxford do online courses that enable you to easily access the latest academic approaches in literary critisism, or area studies. We are never too old to learn

Working as an exam invigilator with SN and BESD kids I am highly appalled and angered by the loss of modular exams and coursework. Some kids are very very highly intelligent but just can't sit through a great long exam and go to pieces. The ammount of anxiety attacks I have witnessed in exam halls has been tremendous and yet every one of those kids does well with coursework and shorter modular exams.

I myself got many As and Bs at GCSE level but these were mostly down to my coursework..... Suffering from palmer hyperhydrosis sitting in an exam hall writing for ages just gave me sweaty palms and made me anxious so I couldn't think properly, coursework I could take at my own pace.

Now I know some people will say 'well exams are good trials of how someone will cope under pressure' but..... Unless in a quiz show like mastermind or in other exams and tests, I cannot think of any example in live where you are tested on your ability to recall facts and figures about a given subject - its not a real life pressure.

Ok it's late at night and I'm probably not making much sense, but knowing the kids I work with this system to me is just ludicrous! Grrrrrrrrr!
(and now to bed!)

@properformer But equally many kids with SEN conditions would be very disadvantaged by coursework (which was actually abandoned a few years ago thank mumps).

And exam type pressure is most definitely real life pressure - but equally so is coursework pressure - different jobs have different pressures. But not all jobs have all pressures.

Surely Gove would love Kingscote - lots of hats and blazers and people going around actually thinking in Latin!

I disagree that exams aren't like real life pressure. Any job where you have to think on your feet and have the facts at your finger tips has more in common with exams than coursework. How would you like it if you went to your GP and they had to refer to books and look up symptoms before they gave you a diagnosis? You wouldn't have much faith would you? Same with many of the professions - their customers/clients/patients need them to know instantly what to do and how to do it, which is why a vast majority of them don't have course work as a route to their professional qualification. It is the best way to test recall, analytical skills and breadth of knowledge.

The techniques used in coursework can just as easily be learned in the classroom as part of the learning process on the way to exams. I have managed perfectly well to do the project based part of my jobs that way (I have only had to sit exams and haven't had to suffer too much coursework thank goodness).

I also have to disagree that coursework suits all children with SN better. That is a really sweeping generalisation - children with SEN aren't all the same, you know. I have a DS with SN and he would be absolutely rubbish at coursework. I can see now, that if coursework were to continue he would only do it with a massive amount of help from other people just to get something worth handing in and then that won't be testing him nor showing his abilities. I am hoping he is able to avoid it under the changes. Of course some children do better with coursework but some would much rather not have the constant stress hanging over them and would rather have 2 years learning and exploring a subject properly (which may need some schools and teachers to change their attitude to teaching admittedly) than to have to have to constantly be up against a deadline with no opportunity to go over bits they don't understand or enjoy the bits they do understand because they have to move on to the next module and the next bit of coursework.

Coursework may suit some better but to be 'appalled' about the introduction of more exams is equally unfair to those who prefer them. You can't assume that coursework is the right way for everybody.

Well I think that is a narrow, even political, reading of novels. The classic novels are timeless and stand above time, they speak to us now through universal, human themes that stretch beyond the narrow confines of the time in which they were written. Yes, some historic, economic and social understanding can help to gain a greater understanding, but those are mere footnotes and are side issues to the greater themes

You know that's all the total opposite of anything that's been said or thought by and literary critic or theorist for about 30 years, right?

Except probably John effing Sutherland.

John Sutherland sounds like a lone voice of rigour and rectitude. I ended my study of English at O level, so I have missed the thoughts of the literary critics. But I don't believe in restricting authors to their time and place, I believe that art is universal and deals with issues that are beyond time. I don't believe in over-specialisation and categorisation which treats Yorkshire artists as different from Lancashire artists. I don't see Picasso as a Spanish artist, I see him as a world artist.

I think that if you academically study blues from a Mississippi Delta point of view, then you are missing the universal point of the music. The Rolling Stones were British, but they were a blues and R&B band who were influenced by blues and Chuck Berry etc. They had no link to that place or that time, but they felt the universal power of art within that music. The Rolling Stones are not a London band, they are a world band.

Dickens and Austen didn't study Pilgrim's Progress from the perspective of the time that it was written. They drew on its universal themes, which are timeless.

Artists are products of their time and are influenced by their time, but their art transcends time and location through their shared humanity. We are also products of our time, and we can only look at their time from our perspective. We can never truly understand their time's perspective, but we can understand their universal humanity, because it is the same as ours.

I don't believe in cubbyhole learning, in categorisation, specialisation and modularisation. I don't believe in bite-sized chunks and modular exams. I believe in seeing the whole picture, of seeing the thread from Pilgrim's Progress to Dickens and to today.

ha ha ha at JS being a voice of intellectual rigour - 'Can Jane Eyre be happy'

Writers and artists are like anyone else - they are formed of multiple discourses. Of course the Rolling STones consciously drew on the blues etc, but they were also a band of people who existed in 1960s Britain and it's daft to pretend not, or that their superhuman artistic souls were untouched by the social mores, politics or economics of their time.

If we say the point of art is that it is transcendental, classic and human and that classic works are the best at achieving that, what's left to do except read it and say 'wow that's good, it's so transcendental and human, oh and that metaphor there is particularly nice'. What would be the point of that? Even if FR Leavis hadn't done it 100 years ago already.