How 'hard' are GCSEs compared with 'O' levels?

[ProperLush]

And yes, how long is a piece of string??!

This is why I ask:

• Obviously because I don't know, or maybe I should say 'am less sure' than I was
  

• I just finished watching 'Educating Essex' and, tbh, was rather surprised about the number of DCs who appeared to have a limited idea about what their subject was about, yet they were shown passing the GCSE (memorably: 'What is pi? WHERE did it come from?'); and the drifting, troubled truants seem to be getting 5 to 7 GCSEs.
  

• My slightly aggrieved friend who has 2 x DDs in uni and a struggling Y10 DS (and who herself has 13 'O' levels) was at pains to tell me GCSEs aren't easier, they're 'different' BUT then said there is no need to remember the whole syllabus. You break the subject into small chunks, learn that chunk, sit a module in it, then resit til you get the right mark. That sounds very different to me! For a start in my similarly aged social circle, the non fellow-HCP one, I am often, well, surprised at how few have any 'O' levels or even more than a clutch of GCSEs if they're younger which leads me to believe that 'O' levels were a different beast entirely to GCSEs
  

This isn't an 'exams were far harder than in my day' rant. But they do appear to be different!

I have been tying myself in knots about my DS2, Y6 who to my mind, is not academic. He 'passed' his KS1 SATS and I'm told should 'pass' his KS2s if he 'keeps progressing as he is now'. In my opinion that either means the school is a bit deluded or the 'pass' level is lamentably low! MY 'target' as his parent was to help him get '5 GCSEs at A-C including Eng and Maths'. Of course, that goal post has now shot off around the pitch; it's now the Eng Bacc. I'd think I was realistic enough to recognise that the MFL component may prove too much for DS2 but then I think, 'Actually, I am comparing the degree of difficulty with an 'O' level, but that may not in fact be the case. Maybe DS2 will 'walk' a reasonable clutch of GCSEs as they are 'easier' if only because of the 'small bit of knowledge then test, and resit if necessary' approach'.

I am wondering if the fact the uninterested, gobby, non attending, slightly gormless, or at least appearing to not have grasped the basics of their subject Y11s are getting a good slew of GCSEs whether I need not fear for my quiet, attentive, well behaved DS2!

WDYT?

[MintAero]

I have just looked at the passmores school website and they have the exam results on this link.

They have divided the exams into grades for the 2010 sitting. Interesting reading. There are very few who have clearly taken the higher level because there are not so many results there, but looking on the C level, the numbers are much greater, meaning that they pretty much put alot of the capable kids in for the foundation level to secure the schools results of so many A to C grades. I am pretty sure some of those would have been able to obtain a higher grade if they had been allowed to sit the higher paper. Which is very poor on the school to do this.

[MintAero]

passmores 2010 results scroll down

[Kez100]

They are not fails - they are passes at D-G and that is a level 1 qualification. A decent number of A* to C gives a level 2 qualification.

So, with their D-G's they can now apply to do a Level 2 qualification. Whereas the others go onto a level 3 (A levels and the like).

Years ago, a lot of these children would not have sat exams. Not everyone did CSEs. Now they almost all do, so the system has to cater for their ability.

The only ones who get D-G's who 'fail' are those quite capable of gaining A* to C grades and didn;t put the work in to get them.

[MintAero]

I agree Kez they are not technically 'fails', but they do show a low level of learning.

[Kez100]

Yes, but some have low ability so it was all they were capable of.

Obviously, if your children are capable of plenty of A* to C, then you will not be happy with their performance at that level. It's important, though, to remember for some children (children that don't need anymore negativity in their lives in many cases) that is good attainment.

[MintAero]

I know exactly what you are saying and I do agree about those with lower level ability.

What I am saying is it would appear that there were a great many of those students in particular who have gained foundation level C and must have been capable of more than that. It seems a prime example of schools ensuring they get their place in the league tables.

Didn't know a G was a pass. Surely you must just get out of bed for that!

[ProperLush]

League tables have a lot to answer for, don't they?!

[MintAero]

yes they bloody do!!

I was just taking a closer look at those passmores tables.

1467 exams taken. 42 A* out of that. 8 of those were for maths english or science.

I don't believe that almost an entire school is of a low ability. Doesn't look like many reached their full potential.

[Minx179]

Kez - you're wrong in stating that those with D-G's have a level 1 qualification and can go onto a level 2 qualification. Many level 2 courses in this area require D-E grades to get onto them. So below an E children are doing level 1 or level entry courses.

It interesting with the Passmore stats that 173 took English Lang, but only 83 were entered for English Lit. I wonder if they did the same as our school were going to do - English Lang sat in the November, children were going to follow the Lit course until the end of the year, but not be entered for the exam.

[ProperLush]

I realise this thread isn't about Passmores specifically but- re what mintAero says, one thing I was interested in was how ready to answer back, how unafraid of consequence those DCs appeared to be, like they'd never had their 'right' to 'have their say' challenged. I recall in an earlier programme that the deputy head (I think it was) did 'allude' to poor or sub-optimal parenting as being at the root of a lot of the DCs under-performance, and I wonder whether this is what translates into such relatively poor exam results?

Just pondering!

[bruffin]

The children featured from Pasmores are the troublesome pupils. My friends children go there including one in yr 11.
I have heard about some of the back stories and they are very sad.

[ProperLush]

Of course, very true- they make better telly! but the thing is, as MintAero says, why are the majority of results so apparently poor?

[MintAero]

A shit upbringing does not always equate to bad exam results. I am sad that so many of those children were quite clearly not reaching their potential. They have been in the education system since they were 5 and to come out with a string of very low grades also begs the question of the teaching.

I also noted the english lit/lang but would think those results were the whole year, whether they were taken in the november or the summer. Not postive but think that would be the case?

The majority of the high grade results came from vocational subjects too. And they only taught one language - spanish, which i am not sure if it is the norm but thought one could learn at least french and german too in a run of the mill secondary school

[bruffin]

I really don't think it does attract the most academic of pupils, it is in a very poor area with fairly low expectations. There are other schools in Harlow and over the border in Herts that will attract the more academic of children.
Passmores doesn't have a 6th form and most of the pupils go on to Harlow College.
I know they were putting a lot of student in for english and maths etc a year early but I think that is more of the current year 11 than the 2010.
The other thing is that not all pupils are A/A* unlike MN in the real world most children are average.

[MintAero]

average is not a string of E to G grades though.

Neither are a string of A*, but there should be a wealth of grades across the board rather than what we are seeing here.

You are probably right about the area, I do not not Harlow and anywhere around it so not able to comment on that.

[noblegiraffe]

MintAero, if the children weren't making sufficient progress the school would not have been awarded an Outstanding and their CVA would also be lower than 1000. As it is, the results appear to reflect the school's intake, which according to the league tables has 20% of its students with statements or on School Action Plus. This is exceptionally high.

[MintAero]

In your opinion though, do you think those results spell satisfacotry progress? Would you be happy to have your child there? Wrt league tables I do not really understand them and all the different ways of looking at them, value added, cva etc means nothing to me as an ordinary parent trying to see through all the jargon.

I look at the results in a bit more detail, not the tables and from what i can see there were not many doing alot of academic subjects, loads of vocational ones, only one language and it all looks good in the tables, but pick it all apart to the bare bones and it is not very impressive reading.

BUT as you say, they must be heading in the right direction if they got an outstanding. What is the outstanding for though? Results, teacing, pastoral care or something else?

[ProperLush]

Quoting you, Aero! :"A shit upbringing does not always equate to bad exam results....They have been in the education system since they were 5 and to come out with a string of very low grades also begs the question of the teaching."

I'm really not so sure about the last bit about being in the system since 5. I am of the Japanese '3 legged stool' persuasion: A successful educational outcome requires 3 legs; the child, the teacher and the parent. If one of those is missing, the stool falls over.

School has a child 25 hours a week ('contact' time). There remains 70 hours per school week (deducting 10 hours a night sleeping) where the school's influence is minimal if non-existent. Apart from the 13 weeks school hols when it IS non-existent!

FWIW, I think this school is doing extremely well. I remain deeply impressed by the teachers we see. They are inspirational and have the patience of Job. I have no doubt they 'add value' to an enormous extent due to their dedication, but the reality of life is (and like the Deputy tells one young Miss 'No one, ever, in the rest of your life, will show the patience and tolerance we do with you') turning poorly performing DCs into less poorly performing kids is fantastic but calling the school, effectively, 'still failing' is maybe a bit unfair. The people who have 'failed' these kids are their parents. Pure and simple.

Sadly we watched as one 15 year old girl and boy most probably added to these statistics.

[bruffin]

CVA should be a 1000 if children are making the progress they should. Passmores is 1025 which is quite high.
WhHavent read the ofsted but I don't think you get outstanding without being outstanding all round

[mumzy]

I don't think you can equate O level grades with GCSE grades. Only approx 30 % of the population took O levels whereas 90% now take GCSEs. Of that 30% , about 10% achieved an A grade in O levels ( 3% of population). Last year 27% achieved achieved A or A grade in GCSEs ( 24% of population). IMO an A or A at GCSE is anywhere between an A to C O level grade hence why the universities find it hard to distinguish the average from the truly outstanding.

[noblegiraffe]

MintAero, sufficient progress depends on what they came in on, doesn't it? If you have a very high percentage of SEN and the more academic pupils from the local area get sent elsewhere (I don't know the area but I suspect this to be the case) then those results could be actually very good.

[mummytime]

I went to a school very like Passmore, back in the dark ages. In my year of 300 probably 30 got 5 O'level equivalents. I think 6 went onto University. Most people sat either CSE or O'levels.

[RiversideMum]

When I look at DD's maths and science (she's doing triple) it does seem to be quite similar to what I did in the dark ages of long ago for O level in terms of the course content. Although like a poster said above, she is due to retake some modules next week (originally taken in Y9) so that she can get A* rather than A. History is very different and I think the skills applied are more sophisticated than in O level and much less learning by rote. I find myself agreeing with Gove (help!) that the History coverage needs looking at through all key stages. English Lit - there seems to be much less reading than we were required to do, although I'm sure what my DD writes is superior to stuff I was putting to paper at that age. There is heaps more work in Art, which in my day had no course work whatsoever and you just did a 3 week project and an observational piece for O level. Of course, they can't be as challenging as O level because they take 11 (in DDs case) rather than 8 (me at a grammar school). But is that a bad thing? Keeping lots of subjects going is an advantage in my view.

What we often forget is that GCSEs replaced O levels and CSEs. CSE was graded 1-5 (I think) and O level passes A to C. CSE 1 was equivalent to pass O level (C). So that is in effect 8 grade boundaries that the GCSE was trying to replace with grades A to E. It's a little surprising that it took so long to come up with the whole A thing because clearly there was not sufficient differentiation at the top end. So my theory would be that A A and B are equivalent to the old O level A B C. So the current C grade that is so important in terms of Govt figures is actually not technically an O level pass equivalent at all.

There is no doubt that teaching has been refined in the past 30 years and that teachers and schools are much more accountable. This has its pros and cons, but I think results have been improved because teachers and pupils are much more aware of what they need to do to get better grades.

So, conclusion of ramble - I'd say you still need to be very clever to get lots of As. I know that my DD is working very hard (harder than I ever did) to get the As and As she has been predicted. I think the pupils are required to apply what they know rather than regurgitate what they know. Are modules so bad? Is it fair to measure 2 years work on 1-2 exams at the end?

[ProperLush]

Some interesting points there, riverside.

I must say from my dim recollection (girls GS 1973-80!) that CSEs were different to 'O' levels, they were taught differently and therefore measured a slightly different body of knowledge rather than one being 'easier' than the other. We could do CSEs in 2 subjects, Maths and French and there was no overlap or no taking of both as the syllabuses were so different. 'Syllabuses' looks wrong but my spell-checker won't have 'syllabi'! I guess that's why they have 'Foundation' maths and so forth now.

DS1 is in Y8, so early days and I'd agree that already we're seeing a degree of 'use of knowledge' rather than knowledge of knowledge. The flip side of this is there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of learned knowledge there! They seem to be endlessly asked 'their opinion' of something without actually knowing that 'something'. Or maybe the requirement to know stuff is a lot less onerous if they only have to retain that body of knowledge for that module, or however many resits they do in that module. There does seem to be an emphasis on 'knowing where to look stuff up' rather than learning and remembering stuff. I'd certainly agree than regurgitating 2 years of knowledge in 2 exams wasn't perhaps the best way of testing that knowledge (though I recall the method favoured boys disproportionately!) but I am also unsure that the bite-size way that it's done now really enshrined that knowledge, either!

However, it does mean that DS2 is far more likely to 'pass' a GCSE whereas he'd've stood no chance of passing an 'O' level so I'm not complaining!

[Kez100]

Properlush, your CSE experience was probably to do with exam board. I double entered French - C and Grade 1- (and English Language where I got an A and Grade 2).

Back to the comments by Minx, they are level 1 qualifications per the Government documents I was given, but I accept they may not allow you access to lots of level 2 courses if they are the poorer of the poor grades. What I was trying to illustrate is that although G to A* are passes they are, no way, passes which will ever be considered as equivilent. Able students get great passes and therefore access to courses no Grade D to G student can access.

So, are D to G grades 'fails' - they can be, but it depends on the students ability. If a school is turning around a CVA of 1025 but lots of D to G's they are not necessarily failing. Statistics show they have actually done very well. That is statistics, mind you, who knows what strange Labour qualification credits have been used to determine the CVA.