Help save the arts

[plymouthmaid]

I wonder if you can help. The government is intending to restructure the education system at Key Stage 4 and introduce the English Baccalaureate. The proposed reform sees all creative subjects removed from the curriculum, I feel that this has huge and far reaching consequences for many of our young people and will have a massive impact on the cultural life of the country.If you feel that these reforms are wrong could you please spare 2 minutes and sign the petition asking the govenment to rethink these proposals.

Thanks

www.baccforthefuture.com/index.html

Really? You think Gove has "brought back a decent education system"?

See my previous comment about people making basic errors.

EBacc is 6 GCSEs (science is double), it also won't exist in four years, so dont waste any energies trying to change it op. EBC is being consulted on now so if anyone has strong feelings on whether RE should be included as one if the humanities options, or whether an arts subject should also be in there make your views known to the Dfe.
(The reference to Cambridge lists of hard or soft subjects is in relation to A levels not degrees by the way.)

Thank you Titchy - I will do

If you read the national curriculum you will realise that there are 4 core subjects:

English, maths, science and RE

It's not me wishing it had the same importance. It does have the same importance.

After all these posts I still don't get why anyone is campaigning to save Arts subjects when no one is stopping them from doing Arts subjects ... The new EBC subjects which will lead to the EBacc in 2017 are only the voluntary core of an attempt to improve the decline in our education system. I predict schools and pupils will flock to these new exams once they have started, people will vote with their feet.

chloe- EBC and EBacc are two different things. Neither, IMO, have been thought through. EBacc currently means that students have sat current GCSEs in certain subjects. It means nothing to the students, but is a measure by which to judge schools, which was applied retrospectively. EBCs are examined courses, dreamt up by Gove, and due to start in a couple of years. Given the lack of details available about EBCs (probably because Gove hasn't made them up yet) no one is in a position to comment about them.

I think it is Titchy who (wrongly) thinks EBC will replace EBacc, not Chloe.

I would put a slightly different slant on it from EvilTwins.

The purpose of EBacc is to discourage schools from boosting their league table position by entering students for subjects regarded as easy options. If you find that a school has a high number of students achieving good grades in GCSEs but none of them get the EBacc that tells you something about the education offered by that school.

The proposals for EBCs are currently undergoing consultation. You can find the consultation document here. The details are, of course, not finalised otherwise a consultation would be pointless. However, plenty of people seem to feel able to comment!

I am pretty sure I have it the right way around, the Ebacc is like an award to those students who have good GCSE passes in 5 core subject areas. It is also going to be used to rank schools in league tables, similar to the current system of 5 GCSE's A* to C. It was applied retrospectively to get a base line from schools and prevented them from fudging outcomes. As prh47bridge says it should stop schools entering students into soft subjects like 'equivalents' to boost their standing in the tables. Sounds pretty good so far.

The EBC's are essentially an overhauling of the 5 core subject areas to produce a more rigorous academic curriculum and they will replace the GCSE's needed to get the EBAcc. A logical progression.

I have read most of the consultation and it all sounds a pretty good improvement to the current devalued system we have now.

Pupils will still be free to choose arts and drama courses to complement these, indeed the EBacc isn't even compulsory. It even sounds like less able kids will be given until 17/18 to get a good pass in English/Math. I cant see any down side.

Instead of saying this is a bad idea, perhaps someone could explain what exactly is bad about it as all I can see is improvements.

My main problems with it are:

1. Not enough information has been released- possibly because Gove hasn't made it all up yet- will new EBCs run alongside existing GCSE/BTEC qualifications or will EBCs replace all other qualifications? If the latter, then when will this be addressed? If the former, then this isn't an overhaul of the whole system at all.
2. The pass/fail nature of EBCs. What about those who fail? There has been talk of kids being allowed to leave education with nothing. How is that a good thing?

If it will be running alongside other subjects, then it will not be very different from the current state in many secondaries these days where the number of compulsory subjects heavily outweighs the options. In dc's school, there are only 2 optional subjects: everybody has to take maths, science, double English, one MFL, RS, one Tech, and a BTech in PE (think I may have left something out here). This has not meant the demise of arts subjects, as plenty of students take those as options. But noone is allowed to fill their entire timetable with less academic options.