GCSEs to be set by just one exam board

[breadandbutterfly]

Acc to the Telegraph.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/9544800/GCSEs-to-be-set-by-just-one-exam-board-to-halt-decline.html

Iiiiiiinteresting.

OK in theory. The potential for 'The One Board' to become a Government lap-dog, corrupt and inaccessible, is a bit scary though.

Call me a cynic...

It works in Scotland.

There is no reason why this shouldn't work. However, I too am cynical about this remaining independent and free of political meddling, or worse, Gove's insistence that education ought to return to the golden 1950s grammar schools of his own experience. It would be a shame if all literature published in the meantime was excluded from the syllabus.

Surely this must be a good thing? the sheer variety of exams (how can you truly compare a child taking modular vs one taking linear?) means that there can be no meaningful comparison across boards at present. And lack of commercial pressure might lead to some consistency, at least.

Gove didn't go to grammar school and he wasn't even born in the 50's.
We have one exam authority in Scotland, it is not a private company and is quite good in a joined up thinking way as it covers FE college qualifications as well as all high school exams ( I think, must check with neighbour who works for them).

Mr Gove is a 1980s man, isn't he? I don't think he has any personal experience of 1950s grammar schools. There were no grammar schools in Scotland when he was at school.

He won a scholarship to Aberdeen's Robert Gordon school from a state school. His adoptive father ran a fish processing business and his adoptive mother was a university lab assistant. Anyone who went to school in the fifties is retired now.

How will one board be more corruptible than a number, hoping for business?

As someone who has worked for a number of exam boards, the profit motive is very big. I wonder how much cost will play a part in choosing which board is 'the one'? Or political considerations? eg Edexcel is run by Pearson, a US profit-making corp with lots of friends in high places and big bucks. Would it be the exam board with the chief exec who was mates with Gove that got it? Or the one which donated most to Tory Party funds? Or the one that offered Gove the best career on leaving govt? etc.

Plus one exam board can't mean one syllabus in most subjects eg need a variety of periods of history to study. Can't force everyone to do same books in Eng Lit surely etc?

According to the Telegraph article, this will be for core subjects.

What's Gove's excuse for bleating about O Levels and Latin and blazers, then, if he's not trying to recreate 1950s grammars? The man is, in so many ways, an arse.

I am not against having one exam board, but do think there would have to be guarantees that it wasn't run by the politicians in order to deliver whatever that year's target might be.

Interesting. Does that mean he'll do a u-turn on allowing schools to take iGCSEs too? If there's only one board allowed for core subjects it wouldn't really make sense to have them as an alternative.

So often one board is a bit dodgy. The examiner has 'bees in his bonnet', papers are inconsistent. It's not even about optimising results. It's good to have the chance to change boards because sometimes a particular board isn't doing a good job of providing consistency or the topics don't work well etc etc. I am happy for one board in terms of ending any pressure for grade inflation but it is really useful sometimes to be able to vote with your feet. Some subject chief examiners are much better than others.

It's one exam board per subject.

So he can keep in with all of them, just distribute the subjects evenly.

Probably why he is starting with three! AQA English Edexcel Maths and OCR Science with WJEC losing out because of their recent stance! Bet Im right......

I don't see why one exam board means inherent narrowing of the syllabus. For english for example you can set any number of texts; it just means printing a longer paper with questions for each. Ditto historical periods.

I would hope that by GCSE level pupils would be able to follow an instruction to answer one question from each of sections A, B and C and would have the gumption to find the ones on the things they had studied.

No problem with 1 exam board in Scotland, although they made the maths higher a bit hard in places this year and have apologised but it didn't get anywhere near the publicity the English GCSE paper did.
I think having everyone sit the same paper with the same standard is logical, if you were designing an exam system surely that's how you'd design it.