I'm just getting my head round Gove's changes to the exam system- and I am even mor horrified than I thought I would be!

[curlew]

The three things that leap out at me are 1)all year 11s have to do 8 GCSEs of which 5 have to be EBacc subjects, which will be a real struggle for many, 2) no more tiered papers, so one exam for all, so kids for whom a C is a real achievement have to sit a paper which has also to cater for the effortless A*, and 3)only the first attempt at an exam counts for the league tables. This means for a school like ours, where the vast majority of students are middle/low ability, and where we have always let many have a "practice go" early, won't be able to- because the risk to the school is too great.

I'm not sure how an underachieving, badly taught pupil suddenly does better because you give them a harder exam.

Surely the point is to prepare them better in the first place.

I do wish people would stop assuming that a kid who is going to get a C is badly taught and underachieving.

From here: research.ncl.ac.uk/ARECLS/volume_6/ogbonnia_vol6.pdf

It can, therefore, be deduced that the following factors can cause underachievement in
school children:

1. lack of motivation
2. parental/home influence
3. lack of nurturing of intellectual potential.
4. conflict of values
5. disabilities/poor health condition.
6. life experiences of specific groups of pupils; for example, resulting from brain damage/cerebral dysfunction or neurological impairment.
7. inability to recruit and also retain highly qualified personnel in schools.

There are tons more, you just need to look.

as I said yesterday

warehouse shelf stackers and petrol station attendants do not need an A* - many of them struggle with basic literacy

if only you lot were forced to send your kids to comprehensive schools you might have some comprehension of what lower set learning entails

these are children at the opposite end of the IQ bell curve from Oxbridge undergrads - they will never read and write competently

getting through school at all is an achievement and getting a C grade in a foundation paper is a real credit to their teachers

As you can see curlew talkin's school allow all pupils to cover the curriculum.

You don't need to leave out a chunk.

There is absolutely no reason to make a decision in years 8/9 that certain pupils will sit lower tier and then teach them and timetable them accordingly.

Although of course that's the much easier way of doing it!

It is not normal for an adult without SEN to struggle with basic literacy, sorry. It's not the middle ages.

I do send my child to a comprehensive.They only set for maths and PE till the end of Y9.

It is not normal for an adult without SEN to struggle with basic literacy, sorry. It's not the middle ages.

This.

You seem to have a basic misunderstanding of what teaching to the Foundation paper involves, wordfactory. They all still have to read a novel. They all still have to read a non-fiction text and analyse it. They all still have to learn to write informatively, persuasively, descriptively (and hopefully accurately!). Until recently they all had to do Speaking and Listening tasks. There's no magical cupboard with 'Course Content for Higher Paper Candidates only' in big red letters.

wordfactory
talkin's school allow all pupils to cover the curriculum
with the caveat
that the lower sets work at the speed for them - so they are still covering stuff that DD had rattled off in year 9 and 10
they will not cover the whole of the curriculum, they will put much more time into the basics that are examined in the foundation paper
BUT
the middle set will have done enough that those children can be assessed individually in year 11 to see which paper they will result in a better outcome

it may be they can do it because its a big school with 10 sets (at 5 levels)
but they are most certainly not unique
and of course not at the top of the Hampshire comp league table - so nothing extraordinary.

Oh and if we take the example of writing, the examiners' report for last summer basically pleads with teachers not to cover higher level skills like semi-colons with children who can't use full stops and commas correctly.

Of course, they should be able to use full stops and commas correctly, I'm not getting into that - the point is that covering things that are basically inaccessible to some students is bonkers counter-productive.

SEN is not "the bottom 20%".

Bottom 20% of what?

I apologise.
Its 18.8% in mainstream schools in the UK
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmeduski/478/47808.htm
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/225699/SFR30-2013_Text.pdf

Talkinpeace. Are there no examples of people getting U and G grades at Gcse at 16 , but by the time they are 38 or so having a Masters degree in Chemistry and being the best teacher in their school?

This being the case of one of my close friends who was "labelled " a dummy at school.

I have previously told the full story.

People may be "Thick" at 16 but be brilliant at 35 ....

it just involves planning

I agree.

Many years ago when I was at school there was a graphic demonstration of how some heads are much better at this than others. We operated a "pool" system that gave pupils a huge amount of flexibility over their subject choices. Without going into all the details it wasn't a completely free choice but pretty close. Most people were able to choose the combination of subjects they wanted.

When I was in the sixth form there was a change of head. The new head immediately declared that you couldn't possibly timetable the pool system despite the fact that the school had been doing so successfully for 30+ years (having had the same head throughout). As a result my sister had a far more limited choice. She had to take some subjects she didn't want, couldn't take some subjects she did want and was forced to take some CSEs whereas previously pupils were able to take O-levels across the board (showing my age!).

1. There is nothing about your 18.8% being "the bottom"
2. All SEN do not affect basic literacy.

soul2000
I'm quite sure that many, many people slipped through the cracks in education in the 1970's and 1980's.
Reporting systems for all sorts of things were not in place then that we take for granted now.
I therefore do not believe ( based on my experience round here and DH's work all over the UK ) that such clangers are being dropped by the school system nowadays.

Scarily its one of IDSs ideas that I agree with : if benefit claimants cannot read and write they should go back to college ....

Around 85% of the kids in our school are low or middle ability. What possible benefit could it be to them to sit an exam that goes to A+?

When curlew said this ^, I couldn't help but disagree.

20% is way better. If genuinely had the opportunity to study for the higher paper and were not discouraged from trying.

And another thing - those 18.8% of SEN nationally are not all going to be low achievers, are they? You can be a middle or high achiever with SEN. And you can be a low achiever without SEN.

Thanks Talkinpeace. She is an amazing person who came though difficult circumstances.

( Not least the constant Bullying and put downs by her Oxbridge Educated Barrister Sister).

It is also quite ironic that she is brilliant at Maths , Chemistry and Physics
because at school they would not let her in to the Science labs. In Maths lessons when she was 14 they would give her maths books designed for 7 year olds.

This now becomes really scary. If people equate bottom 20% with SEN, then it is so clear why there is this wide-spread acceptance... It becomes comfortable then to accept 'low achievement' as an inevitable fact of life as it becomes eagerly equated with a disability.

I seem to remember that O level questions were quite subtly set so that every candidate (whatever their ability) could at least have a go at every question. They were either multi-part where parts (a) and (b) were relatively simple and part (d) would identify the A grader. Similarly essay questions were deceptively simple. "Was King John a bad man?" can be answered by anyone who has studied his reign. The A grader would write a nuanced, fact-supported argument. The less able would at least be able to list some of John's faults.

I may be looking back with rose-tinted glasses.

Coffee break?

I agree with Gove - exams need to be able to differentiate between candidates.

I did my O Levels back in 1980.

I got a C in history and C in French.

I got good grades in other subjects but the exams were quite testing.

I then did my A Levels and got good enough grades to be worth entering for Oxbridge but the A Levels were hard.

I did the Oxford entrance exam. That was extremely hard.

I got in and did my final exams. They were eye wateringly hard.

Many of my friends at school didn't do so well but all did get decent jobs. Exams have to be testing enough to differentiate.

My DW teaches in University now and she says that A levels and university exams are so dumbed down that many of the top employers like accountants and City bank now set their own entrance exams for potential employees. Many of her students fail those job entry exams. The employers are looking straight through A level and university exam system results and know full well the 'all will win prizes' and '50% can go to university' is just utter tosh.

The employers are saying they just cant trust A level and university degree grades anymore. the same thing can be said of GCSE results.

I think it is a little disingenuous for people to be comparing our schooling system negatively against other systems. Our comprehensives are comprehensive. Unless you live in a grammar school area (or go private), and most of us dont I think, we have one school system for everyone up to 16, unlike Germany or indeed France who at some point have to decide whether to go to an academically focussed school or a vocationally focussed school.