Is anyone else shocked about this? EBaCC introduction

[pointythings]

So not only are they going to use the current crop of Yr7s as guineapigs, they are also not going to pilot the new exams - straight in at the deep end with our children.

I'm horrified.

It's not good, but it doesn't surprise me. Gove is not prepared to listen to any dissent so why bother trying....

it's the same for all of them t5hough isn't it? so a level playing field

I recognise that DS2, Y7, will be summarily screwed. He should have been born 5 years earlier, back in the days of modular GCSEs. That's the only way he'd've passed much. The 'Return to O levels that EBCs, allegedly are, will do him no favours, anyway.

I have to admit I am not shocked at all. It is characteristically govine.

There are so many changes being brought into the education system, so quickly, that something is bound to go terribly wrong. But when it does this catastrophe whatever it is - the funding system for schools is the most likely candidate - will be merely quoted as further evidence that the system is broken and therefore needs most urgent action to fix it.

There are undoubtedly going to be some really big problems next April when the new funding formula comes into use. The question is how bad and how much the minimum funding guarantee protects the funding. Some schools are going to find themselves on the minimum funding limit for the next 20 years from some of the figures I have seen - it will be death by a 1000 cuts.

Dd started year 9 in September this year and her History teacher told the class that they will be the first lot to do the Ebacc. Is she wrong? And the German teacher told dd's class that they will be the first ones to do the new exams. Is she wrong too? I haven't a clue whats going on as parents evening is not until next March.

I'd say she's wrong (the teacher, not your DD)!

The EBC (not sure that that is the correct chosen moniker!) and the EBacc are 2 different things, surely?

EBC is the new 'O' level style exams, first due to be sat in 2017 (I think!) when today's Y7's are in Y11.

We've been clearly told that the new EBCs will only apply to certain core subjects initially (Maths, English and is it Science? Not sure) so today's Y7s will be the first sitters, but only in these subjects. They'll do GCSEs in the others for teh time being.

The EBacc, as I'm sure you know, is a (crude) measure of a secondary's performance, 5 GCSE passes in Eng, Maths, Science, a MFL and a Humanity, either Geog or History wheeled in 2 years ago.

I'm horrified, but not shocked (I don't expect much different from a tory government with people like Gove and Osborne in). My dc are in the years which are likely to be most affected by this, so they'll be guinea pigs, but I'm not too bothered about them, I feel more an overall horror of what they're doing to the education system (along with the university system and the NHS and the libraries and the forests....).
I worry about all those less academic children who are going to be condemmed to leave school with no qualifications, if these plans go through.

All exams regardless of what they have some kind of trial run, it's just not a big scale thing, I'm forever getting letters at school asking me to put a year group of kids through an exam to test our it's suitability! Last one was wanting some new Yr 7s to sit a L6 Scottish paper deisgned for the end of KS2.

You also have to remember that exam writers are people with huge experience and in a subject like Maths for example it doesn't really matter what's on the front of the paper the questions are pretty similar!

"asking me to put a year group of kids through an exam to test our it's suitability"

I'll overlook the spelling mistake & stray apostrophe - but the thing is, you're being asked to test its suitability. No one will be testing these new EBCs for suitability, except our less able DCs who may just leave school with nothing!

And, in subjects like Science, you can completely alter the approach, like has recently happened where suddenly the teachers were told to drop some theory and add practical, something to do with the end exam being rejigged to 'demonstrate an enquiring mind able to invent experiments to prove or otherwise hypotheses', rather than 'learn these facts about these substances'. Thus is you'd been taught and learned towards the latter, you'd fail an exam of the former!