New GCSE'S

[fayeso]

Hi
My eldest is 13 this academic year, therefore due to sit GCSE's in 2017. Am I correct in thinking that her English and maths will be the new exams.....graded from 1-9, and her other subjects will be the old style GCSE...graded a-g?
Feeling slightly annoyed if this the case (which I think it is!!)
Can anyone confirm?

[LordPalmerston]

They're changing grading to the magic 8 where English and maths gets counted twice. But everything else important

[RaspberryLemonPavlova]

DS1 is doing iGCSE and GCSE English Language next June, I think school is covering as many bases as possible! He is Y11 and everything keeps changing for them.

To the poster who asked about funding for buying new books for English Lit, as they are allowed to take 'clean copies' into the exam with them, they all had new copies to take in. And for poetry they got 2 new anthologies each, at the start of the exam, to cross reference (if I've got that right), so I don't suppose the costs will impact too much!

(DS1 did his English Lit and his Maths last year).

I did the Crucible too, along with a weird book called The Only Child by James Kirkup, never heard of it since!

[bsc]

DfE have stated that for pupils sitting GCSE and iGCSE, only one result will count in the performance tables, and it will be that which was sat first. I think we will see a decrease in those doing igcse tbh, as although pupils can count both, it will screw over a lot of schools in the tables.

Lord palmerston- maths and english are doubleweighted yes, however unless pupils sit english literature english is only single weighted. Its utter madness- child sits eng Lang, and eng lit, gets C for language, A for Lit, performance measure is counted as 2 Cs. Child sits Eng Lang only, gets A, perf table measure is recorded as A plus 0 divided by 2
Utterly beyond the achievment expectations for some pupils

[bookluva]

I can see lots of schools moving from GCSEs to IGCSEs in an attempt to avoid Gove's interfering policies. It'll be interesting to see if this happens...

[friday16]

I can see lots of schools moving from GCSEs to IGCSEs in an attempt to avoid Gove's interfering policies.

Gove is going to crack down on GCSE "equivalent" qualifications. He has already removed all the "worth multiple GCSE" claims and stated they are all worth, at most, one GCSE.

Amongst those equivalent qualifications are, of course, the iGCSE.

If the GCSE changes, the equivalence will be broken. The iGCSE would have to reapply to be deemed equivalent to a GCSE. If the new-GCSE is more rigorous (or whatever) in the eyes of Ofqual then the iGCSE, as it stands, would by definition not be equivalent.

Any maintained or voluntary aided school which failed to do English, Maths and other core subjects with the Ofqual-accredited new-GCSE, or designated equivalents thereof, would instantly go into special measures, because they would instantly fail the floor standards. Ofsted wouldn't even need to wait for the results to come it: they could fail the school based on the exam officer's list of entries.

People appear all too willing to believe exam-board hype. Why is is taken as axiomatically true that cynical exam boards are dumbing down qualifications in order to win more business when the topic at hand is the GCSE, while those self-same boards are selfless guardians of intellectual purity and truth when it comes to setting things like iGCSEs? Why is CIE assumed to be an honest broker of the iGCSE, but a venal commercial concern when it comes to the GCSE?

[mummytime]

The exam boards (Edexcel and CIE) are already writing new iGCSEs which will fit Gove's requirements for state schools. However, I am not sure how much control Gove can wrest back from Academies and Free schools.

[Asterisk]

I think the English syllabus can only improve. Currently, they study only two full texts over two years. 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is a brilliant book, but having to write three or four essays on it has dulled my Yr 11 DD's enthusiasm for it. A bit more variety can only be a good thing (although my DS is not too keen on having to do romantic poetry!). The grading system is arbitrary. Employers and universities are smart enough to equate the two systems. Agree that it's a shame about losing listening and speaking, but the episode of 'Educating Yorkshire' featuring the boy with the stammer made me realise what a stumbling block this is for some children.

[friday16]

I am not sure how much control Gove can wrest back from Academies and Free schools.

They get to choose their syllabus. They do not get to choose whether or not they are subject to government accountability measures. If a maintained or VA school was unable to show that it was meeting the floor standards for progress and achievement they they would be placed in special measures. At the moment it's 5A*-C inc English and Math, in the future there's a variety of 8-best VA and other measures. So if, for the sake of argument, iGCSE English were deemed not equivalent to GCSE English (and anyone who says "that could never happen" is, I would suggest, misguided) a school that used it would be immediately below the floor standard and immediately in special measures.

We know what special measures for Academies looks like. We don't yet quite know what special measures for free schools looks like. The two schools flirting with it, a flimsy Montessori school in Crawley and the current disaster in Derby, are sufficiently weird to start with that special measures for them may not tell us much about special measures for more standard schools. If somewhere that looks more like a maintained school, like Toby Young's project or the King's School in Bradford, dropped into special measures (and the latter, in particular, is not beyond the bounds of possibility) then quite who would intervene is unclear. But it's quite clear that the schools' funding arrangements are contingent upon keeping Ofsted happy.

[NoComet]

SM for an academe is just as horrible, shity, pointless process as it is for any other school.

DDs school was doing a satisfactory job before, it will be doing a satisfactory job afterwards, but on a shoe string because so many pupils have left, not joined Y7.

Had it got RI and a bit of support, it would be doing a good job by Christmas

[richmal]

I thought in the new GCSE they had made 9 the highest grade so a level 10 can be added more easily as educational standard improve in future years.

[ShipwreckedAndComatose]

That sounds like planning for grade inflation to me richmal

[noblegiraffe]

Grade inflation = kids getting better marks as teachers get to grips with a whole new system. It's inevitable.

[ShipwreckedAndComatose]

Totally agree noble.

[ShipwreckedAndComatose]

I was making more of a dig at the political nonsense of it all rather than anything else

[AfricanExport]

I am really worried about this change as is is going to completely screw up my dd's education, she is year 8 and dyslexic. The teachers don't even correct her spelling or grammar, as apparently before we didn't need to know how to spell
So how is she ever going to pass these GCSEs? The standard of education of dyslexic pupils is simply not good enough to force this on them.

She thinks she is doing Okay because they lie and don't correct her work. Now I must tell her that no honey your doing shit and are unlikely to pass English because. ..

a.. the policy changed

b.. your teachers were crap for not correcting bad spelling and grammar

Pissed off that my DD's education is a fucking experiment

[SidandAndyssextoy]

I'm worried by the fact that study after study has shown that the final exam model disadvantages girls, who do far better through coursework and continuous assessment. I worry that the problem of boys' underachievement and the consequent gender gap in results is being addressed by bringing the girls down, rather than finding a way to bring the boys up.

[NoComet]

This 'girl' absolutely loathes course work and thinks continuous assessment is the work of the Devil.

Course work favours the hard working and the dull, who don't have any hobbies or any interests out side school so have time for it.

Inventive, imaginative, exciting teens that you'd like to have in your course are riding, singing, preparing for concerts, doing ballet, scuba diving, going on Ranger trips and scout camps, playing sport, drawing, reading, doing gymnastics.

Not worrying about some stupid CA that's marks can get fudge up by their teachers and down by Gove.

[MadameDefarge]

starball, that is frankly an objectionable statement.

hardworking children are dull?

Those involoved in a plethora of expensive extracurricular activities are exciting?

Good god.

[ShipwreckedAndComatose]

Wow starball, you sound very bitter and far too ready with your wildly sweeping generalisations!

[ZingWantsCake]

star

DS1 is year 8 and is going on a launch trip as a start to a course that identifies " University - bound" kids.
he is year 8 and is predicted to have straight As.
outside of school he plays chess & piano, is learning latin and is a chorister at a famous Royal Chapel - we've just got back from the concert he sang at.
he puts effort into his homework but

he has time for fun and games. he is not dull, but smart and funny and what you said was very rude and ignorant.

[ZingWantsCake]

but he doesn't do ballet (no interest) or horse riding (clashing with Sunday activities), I give you that much.
I do hope he will become a lovely, kind and smart man though.
fx

[noblegiraffe]

Girls outperformed boys in maths from 1997 till 2009. Now boys are outperforming girls again.

That's when they scrapped coursework in maths. I suppose girls in general must be boring and have no life outside school for coursework to favour them so obviously.

[friday16]

When men outperformed women at school at university, it was taken as complete proof that women were intellectually inferior, and any suggestion that the sexism of the school system and societal attitudes to women's education might be to blame was derided. More recently, a lot of the systematic blocks on women in education have been removed; it's not that long ago that girls' schools had almost no lab facilities, for example, and an unofficial quota system to fix the proportion of women in medical schools operated until twenty or thirty years ago. Lo and behold women's performance has become at least as good, and now ahead of men. Oddly, this isn't proof of the obvious superiority of women in education, but is now regarded as evidence of bias in assessment methods.

When women were being actively denied opportunity and kept out of prestigious universities by casual sexism and the assumption that they'll only have babies anyway, their lower overall performance was evidence that they were inferior. When men are given exactly the same opportunity as women, in the same classrooms, taking the same exams, a similar disparity in performance is taken as evidence that the assessment process should be changed to suit men's particular requirements. Some might find this rather interesting.

[noblegiraffe]

Don't forget in the 50s and 60s girls had to do better than boys on the 11+ to get into grammar school, otherwise more girls than boys would get in.

[SidandAndyssextoy]

Friday, I have said the same myself many times - why is it assumed something is 'wrong' if girls outperform boys. On the other hand, if boys are underperforming for some reason it does no one any favours not to look into that. If, and I don't know if this is the case, any part of the reasoning for the return to final exams is that it will raise boys' marks, then I would find that a very lazy way of addressing the problems of academic engagement that many boys are struggling with.