Do you reckon the EBCs will go ahead or be dropped by the next government??

[LittenTree]

Won't it be too late by then - 2015, isn't it (the election)?- the DCs are due to start the curriculum in 2015 aren't they? Presumably in the September to be examined in summer 2017.

I am praying that an ex-teacher friend of mine is right as he recalled how relatively 'easy' the brand new GCSEs were the first year they were taken. He thinks the EBCs will 'go easy' for the first year. DS2 needs for this to be the case. He'd've been a great candidate for the hey-day of modular GCSE but he's just gone into Y7...

Cynically, I reckon they'll be kept.

Labour finds it very convenient to 'let" the Tories (or right now coalition) take the difficult choices, then they make a hoo-ha about nastiness, but then carry on with exactly the same policies.

But it could be there'll be no choice other than to keep them, that late in the day, won't it?

I heard that Gove has an associated plan to reintroduce CSE style exams alongside the EBCs which he dropped. DS2 would have been an ideal CSE candidate, actually!

Whilst Labour currently oppose EBCs there must be a reasonable chance they will drop that opposition if the new exams are as popular as current polls indicate. I would be very surprised if Labour actually scrap them (assuming they win the next election which is by no means guaranteed).

I must say I don't oppose EBCs in principle. What I do oppose is:

-The complete lack of dry-run testing them
-The possibility that less able DC will leave school with nothing to show for 5 years of hard work
-The potential lack of provision for these DC
-The way the new 'linear style' GCSEs aren't being differentiated, via title, from old style 'modular' ones which your mum could do for you which actually puts current Y8 & 9 DCs at a disadvantage as few employers and increasingly colleges will make the connection between the exams sat in different years.

Personally I had no problem with GCEs and CSEs but they'd've needed to be run by proper comprehensives so a DC could do a CSE in a couple of subjects and GCE in others (god, my GS in 1980 taught CSE Maths & French!). But we are only just emerging from the Blairite notion that 'All DC must have a higher level of educational qualification' to mean 'All shall have degrees', aren't we? So the idea of differentiating exam types according to need is still anathema.

I think a CSE is a good way of demonstrating that 'this DS has shown a good, solid, basic grasp of this subject, sufficient to see him through a) every day life and b) the requirements of an apprenticeship or traineeship'; the GCSE to demonstrate 'a higher level and more academic grasp of the subject to lead to either a higher academic level of traineeship or A levels'.

As it is a lower ability DC sits a different paper at GCSE than a more academic DC yet they get awarded the same qualification (I mean Foundation v. Higher).

I appreciate that the GCE/CSE thing won't happen again although it so could be re-examined in the light of comprehensive education, as opposed to the GS/SM 'pass/fail at 11' split that delineated them in the 1980s.