The English Baccalaureate has really affected the League tables...

[MrsTweedy]

Is anyone else finding this fascinating? I am really surprised at how few pupils at well-regarded schools in my area have done what I would consider core subjects eg
Richmond Upon Thames

The Ebacc is basically English, Maths, a science, a language & history or geography with A*-C passes. These were compulsory in my day (okay I am ancient and did O Levels). It just shows how the curriculum has changed and how schools have been slanting it recently to improve their league standings on the previous benchmark.

I suppose it depends on which criteria you use to rate them ie either the EBacc or just 5 A-C GCSEs at the end of the day but it is certainly a surprising result in some cases.

snorkie - Yes, it wasn't a particularly difficult GCSE. But, if the RE courses are so unchallenging that they don't count as a real humanity anymore, then you'd think the answer would be to revamp the GCSE content rather than just throwing it to the side as an 'easy' subject.

usualsuspect - Latin is less widely applicable, for obvious reasons, but I'd argue that French prepares you more for the world of work than business studies at GCSE would. The Business Studies that is taught at GCSE is very watered-down and despite getting near 100% in it, I don't feel at all prepared for the actual business world. The same could be said about French I suppose, since I don't feel prepared for communicating in France either, but at least it's a skill that can be built upon. If someone wants to do something business-related in the future, they'd be much better off doing some sort of apprenticeship or vocational qualification.

If I was in control of these things, everyone would study PROPER subjects until the end of GCSEs. No Business Studies, Hairdressing, etc as GCSEs. Then those that wanted to could go to do well-respected courses in these subjects and gain actual skills. Others would go to university, but uni wouldn't be seen as the 'default' path for everyone with half a brain. More like how it used to be.(before I was born tho..)

It just seems stupid that people in my class are doing BTEC/NVQ Hairdressing or something with a view to being a hairdresser, when it would be so much better for them just to get a job at a hairdressers and work upwards. I suppose it's good for people that aren't sure what they want to do, but if there was a choice, I'd much prefer someone with real life experience to cut my hair, rather than someone that studied it at school.

Ah, I dunno.

ds did btec in ict and business i guess i should tell him now that no business will accept him (lol)

most people in real life know that it's drive and eagerness to learn within the work setting that's important - not something that you had to (or have mummy pick) at gcse at 14!

I too am stunned that pupils don't take the 'core' subjects anymore(i was the first year to sit GCSE)and our timetable was structured so you had no choice but to end up with one of each of those now considered core. As to retrospective application yes a little underhand but if the schools were teaching sensible subjects rather than easy stuff - media, business studies etc it wouldn't have mattered. And as for things being marked on a bell shaped curve - that's how it USED to be done, before some bright spark put absolutes into the equation so rather than the mark given being relative to everyone else that year it actually is the percentage gained; which is why grade inflation has set in and we're in this mess in the first place - with children who can't read, write, spell or punctuate correctly getting decent grades and heading off for A-levels and University without the first clue as to what's expected of them! There, I've had my rant i'm off to try and sign up for Hugh's fishfight :)

do all you know it alls actually try to change anything at core level? or just like to rant about it on websites?

southeast
DH has been working with lots of schools all over the country to promote Science, Technology and Maths for the past 12 years.

I find it fascinating to see how his work is (or in fact isn't) perceived on here.

southeastastra - I just like to rant about it on websites. Why do you ask?

It's a times like these when I'm glad I live in Scotland. Things aren't perfect up here but grief - what is Gove ON? This is real 'back of a fag packet' stuff. If he genuinely wishes schools to have autonomy and be "free" (which is a good thing) then why dictate from above what he thinks is right? The man is obsessed with producing an academic elite and very little else. Hasn't this always been the problem with the UK? Vocational/Applied learning is second rate and for the "less able"? Not so in Sweden Mr Gove. Finally, not including any arts subjects in this Bacc menu must surely make him unfit for high office!

"You can learn GCSE business studies by watching the news and reading a decent newspaper once in a while."

That's how I got an A in O-level geography (which dates me but it was the last year, honest...) My geography teacher was highly pissed off I managed to get the grade without doing any real work.

Alexandra I imagine trying to get exam boards to change their syllabuses would be time consuming & difficult, Ebacc is aiming for more immediate results. In the longer term I should think if the RE exams can be made more challenging they might be included (if it was my choice I would add it in that case anyway).

The RE full course GCSE that I teach which covers 2 religions is not an easy GCSE. It is certainly comparable to the other humanities GCSEs. I teach both History and RE at GCSE.

I know I am going back a bit but do they really NOT teach calculus / differentiation in Maths GCSE any more?

If not what do they teach?

arcticwind- Nope.They're taught at AS I believe.
S'alright though. Although probably easier than what maths exams used to be, it's one of the few subjects I think is actually taught correctly and at an appropriate level. I found it reasonably challenging and feel I actually learnt, rather than just memorization geared at exams.

jenandberry - Yes. It's no less rigorous than Hist/Geog. as far as I can see. Wile I didn't actually study Geography or History and have nothing to compare to, it never seemed to me that RE was significantly easier than them or anything. I personally found sections our course easy, but mainly because I'm a Catholic and that was one of the religions we studied. I wish that hadn't been the case though. I could've done without our teacher's persistent ignorant comments and questions about Catholicism. She acted as if it was some kind of weird cult far detached from 'normal' Christianity, and that got a bit tiring. But I digress..

Surely there are very few careers you can do where you would not benefit from having a Grade C in English and Maths, let alone them being useful for general life?

I think the biggest danger with the EBacc is that internationally it's going to be a laughing stock. We already are in most if Europe for allowing children to specialise so early, to drop MFLs, for the vast array of non-qualifications. Now other European systems aren't perfect but there are some bloody good examples of what well taught students are achieving at a similar age and the breadth of the curriculum precisely because there isn't a choice.

At 16 it's not about the information you learn in many ways, it's the skills you have to acquire. People will turn round and say why does a physicist need a humanity and an MFL! Well they need the humanity to develop their analytical skills, to help write research papers in future (and make them accessible) and maybe know something about the historical context of science/get an understanding of global systems (or understand ancient science in ClassCiv or ethics from RE). An MFL will be useful when travelling to conferences, if they ever want to work abroad or to access papers written in a different language.

I'm not against vocational education but it makes my blood boil to see 16 year old school leavers working nurseries when they don't have the skills they're supposed to be laying the foundations for, a hairdresser who can't quickly tot up how much a cut, this base colour, those highlights and a blow dry is or a receptionist who struggles to spell a simple message. It's not their fault, I feel they'd have been better served by a thorough grounding the basics than given a veneer of vocational skills.

I would strongly support a 'proper' vocational path at 16 which included vocational maths, vocational English and a reduced core in terms of content because by not taking those subjects you're missing out on skills. The knowledge doesn't matter so much - it'll probably be gone in 10 years time, but the skills set from the core should stay for life.

As to what I can do about it...well it'll take years before I get to a level which is high enough (and I need to cosy up to potential PhD finders first) so for now I'll rant on websites and encourage people to keep their options open as long as possible.

Arctic wind - they didn't teach calculus in the the early 1980s within O-levels. I know, having sat tons of 1980s O-level maths papers.

Calculus comes in at A-level.

This is not a new thing!

I think the league tables are misleading. The school I attended comes out high on them, but it wasn't a school where I felt happy or confident. There are more important things than results aren't there?!

The Bacc. thing is very misleading too, as the Bacc. in other European countries is done at 18 not 16.
I don't know what language teaching in the UK is like now, but when I lived there, it was appalling... I speak and understand two foreign languages and think that the UK really needs to be looking at other methods of teaching language effectively - British people are exceptionally lazy about learning languages and this is where many other European countries are ahead. If the publication of these league tables helps this, then that is positive!
Maybe the danger is that students will be encouraged to take subjects they do not like or have a facility for.... As Ken Robinson says, "Schools kill creativity" and any hierarchy or subjects is questionable!

Well, I did calculus in my O Level maths in 1980. And differential equations. And sine and cosine.

Agree wholeheartedly with others who have said that kids need to learn the broad basics. Full stop. You can always do hairdressing etc at college. It is absolutely not a substitute for core subjects. Far more useful to have a bit of knowledge about history than business studies. I have seen it trotted out on here countless times how relevant it is - like hell it is. Things change every five minutes and are we saying that all those involved in business today are the poorer for not having a business studies O Level/GCSE?

The EngBacc should be like the old School Certificate. It says, "Here I am - I have a achieved at least a decent level in a range of subjects which proves I am reasonably literature and numerate."

DD refused to carry on with the 2 languages she had been taught in the first 2 yrs at secondary school. I tried to persuade her to keep one but she hated the lessons and didn't feel that she was making progress with them. I wish it had been compulsory. Now it looks like she is excluded in the figures for this Ebacc because of this even though she got high grades in other 'real' subjects. So I think the figures are misleading. Her school's 5 A-C grades already included English and Maths.

She has started to learn french again but would rather self study for some reason.

"I'm not against vocational education but it makes my blood boil to see 16 year old school leavers working nurseries when they don't have the skills they're supposed to be laying the foundations for."

I agree very strongly with this.

did any of you making comments about business studies ever take the subject? Admittedly i did a degree, but it was as hard as any other subject i've ever studied - in some ways it was harder as you have to be good at maths and english. And i fail to see how some of the components - statistics, economics, law, can be deemed any easier than geography (i did to a level) or say history.

just because we've historically studied some subjects, why should we always do this?

could we not have more relevant topics - business, accountancy, psychology, law.... and make them more accademic? If the stuffy attitude of university tutors was changed this wouldn't be to the detriment of students attending non-private schools.

Bexcat, meant to say I agree with you. How many people can actually speak the foreign language they studied at O'level, GCSE now, or by studying it to that level could you actually hold a proper conversation in that country or was it holiday 'french' etc. I really don't think it's the teaching is that great.

None of the unis we have looked at require a MFL so by including it in the Ebacc when it hasn't been compulsory is wrong.

I did calculus (very very basic calculus) in my Maths O Level in 1987.

The issues I have with law/psychology/business studies at GCSE is that they are very much 'lite' overviews. They are not easy subjects, but they are not suitable for study at 14. These are huge areas - you aren't 'studying law' at GCSE, the best you're going to acheive is a basic understanding of the legal ststem and how it interacts with society. That ain't the same a studying law!

It would be very difficult to make those GCSEs harder because to study them properly at degree level requires the transferrable skills you require from other subjects and, in many cases, a mind free from preconceptions and simplifications. For example, at Chemistry GCSE there are 8 electrons in the shell and this is then readjusted at A-level when you find out that actually they're paired in subshells is only one example of how subjects become progressively more complex, and that simplfication at GCSE is not damaging to future understanding but simplifying, say, law could be infinitely more dangerous.

Teaching something in not enough depth or to people who lack the skills to process the subject in its entirety does more harm than good in the long run. If you have solid core skills, such as maths and English, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to follow a course in Business Studies later at more advanced level where you can explore complex concepts fully without having to learn how to write an argument, how to do basic statistics etc becuase you've learnt those transferrable skills from other subjects. If you have been drilled solidly in the basics (maths, english), your mind has been trained to approach evidence critically (science, humanity) and from multiple angles (english, science, humanity, MFL) and you are a confident communicator both orally and in writing (English, MFL, humanity) able to explain and justify processes (science, maths) in a reasoned way (science, maths) then there is no reason you shouldn't succeed.

I know some people will argue that some learning styles suit an integrated, contextualised approach better but that's why the skills are embedded in subjects and cross-curricular use of math, english and other key skills should be encouraged at all time. Geography, for example, requires decent English to write an answer more than 3 words long, arithmetic to analyse, say, population density and migration patterns, other mathematical skills such as the graphical representation of different quantities and interpreting bar charts, population pyramids and spheres of influence AND hones critical thinking and encourage a balanced examination of evidence. Yes, there's a certain amount of rote learning but memorisation and recalling appropriate information is a valuable skill too.

It's not that subjects themselves are easy, it's that we've been forced to make them easier to make them accessible for study at 14, which we shouldn't be doing.

Ahem, issue, singular.

Or that should probably be the biggest issue.

The other issue is that it gives the learners themselves false expectations of what they'll be able to do, what they've actually learnt and what study of that subject at an advanced level involves.

No, get back up on it ! Agree wholeheartedly with you.