DD's GSCE controlled assessments in English being scrapped...

[Kbear]

DD (year 10) has come home from school raging because her English teacher has told the class that their controlled assessments from past two years' work in English are not forming part of their GCSE any more? In the light of no actual information from the school at all to explain this, is there anyone here who can take a stab at why this would be. Apparently the Head of English has decided.... they are going to do iGCSE instead. I have no idea what that is.

A letter will be coming home from school next week I am told but I wondered if anyone here can explain a bit?

Just checked DFE league tables thing for Win Coll it say "NP" which I'm assuming means not published so the data is not available. The school also doesn't publish it's IGCSE results on its website only Pre U results so its clearly not gaming "the league tables the same as any other school" or trying to "hood winking" current or potential parents.

I would say though OP, I would be pissed off if your DC has done three controoled assessments and that's now scrapped. A lot of work for nowt!

And have they even covered the literature for IGCSE. It's not the same stuff ...

You are indeed incorrect
www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=GR&f=4bbXfLoVsN&superview=sec&view=&sort=l_schname&ord=asc
The tables include IGCSE etc because state schools do them

The super high grades are due to selective intake, not necessarily amazing teaching.

Schools that charge are judged by their results.
THey therefore have a clear incentive to take all appropriate steps to improve those results - including the well known approach of forcing kids to move schools who will not get the results the school wants.

IGCSE is used by state schools to get D grade students through a grade C who would not be able to do that with the GCSE.
Fact of life.

TalkinPeace you are talking rubbish. So DC was "insulted" by the A* questions on the IGCSE maths exam? They would have been even more insulted by the questions on GCSE then. IGCSE includes work on calculus, which is not usually encountered until AS level, and on functions as well as the harder topics from GCSE such as vectors.
It is not a lightweight exam, nor is it perceived to be so by those with an understanding of it. I teach maths.

DD's (London private) school use IGCSEs in most subjects. Their reason for doing so is that they are better preparation for A Levels and Pre-U. They were high in the league tables before the switch and are still high after the switch. There would be absolutely no point in changing to 'easier' qualifications at GCSE level because this would have a detrimental effect on A Level/Pre U results which I suspect parents pay even greater regard to than the tables at GCSE, given that the vast majority of pupils stay on for sixth form.

If anything, I would have thought that schools with no sixth form are more prone to 'gaming the system' at GCSE level.

Edexel or Cambridge IGCSE? it was the edexel she snorted about

maybe the A* is harder to get
but the C is not

So your DC has intimate knowledge of these syllabi? Or is parroting some comment passed on by someone else.

Talkin you just letting you prejudice cloud your judgement. I never mentioned amazing teaching although if as you say IGCSEs are so much easier then the teaching at Win Coll must be bloody amazing to enable over 50% to achieve an A* in the more rigours Pre U when they have been insufficiently prepared by being made to take the IGCSE .
word I'm interested to know the grade boundaries for an A is higher for IGCSE than GCSE do you or anyone else know what they are? We've been told 90%+ for an A in IGCSE.

talkin has read this shizzle on MN and jumped on it as it confirms her personal paradigm ...

It doesn't have to be true in any way shape of form .

I have twins. One is taking IGCSE, one is taking GCSE. I have no paradigm to cleve to.

Like it or lump it, the higher grades are harder to achieve and can rely completely on terminal exams. Which is a touygher gig than those silly controlled assessments (and I say that as someone whose DD has got full marks in virually all CAs).

happy I don't know the exact boundaries, but yes, they're around the 90% level.

For french oral last year it was 38/40 ...that is one tough boundary! And the listening paper last year was really hard. Much much harder than GCSE.

English is interesting as the teacher can choose to do coursework, but I don't know any private schools that opt for that. It kinda defeats the purpose.

The CAs in GCSE are a complete joke.

DS2's school doesn't do Eng Lit at IGCSE level so I can't comment on that but does do Eng Lang they do do course work they submit a selection of their written work I believe but it's only worth 10% of the overall mark.
There was no course work for any of the other subject he did but I believe those doing geography submit a field report but even when I did geography O level a frighteningly long time ago this was the case.

I agree happygardening, much of foundation tier is very easy and that's because it includes G F and E grade questions (NC L3 - 5) as well as D and C grade questions, so 50% or more of the paper is very similar to primary school tests. The threshold for a C grade is about 70% so only C grade students can accumulate enough marks to get the grade. Many people think it's easier to get a C on the higher tier paper where, even though the questions are much harder, the threshold is much lower. The problem with gcse is that the D and C grade questions often (Ocr at least) have many contextualised into 'real life' problems which test several skills at once and can be worth 6 or more marks. iIf you can't access the question, that is 6 marks gone. The igcse on the other hand have discrete questions worth a maximum of 4 marks and if they are contextualised, only assess one skill (and definitely no unrelated skills). This suited dd much better as she has a good memory and can learn procedures. What she cannot do is work out from a 'problem' what the maths is that she needs to do. So somehow she managed about 70% on the igcse foundation tier papers and about 60% on the gcse foundation tier papers

Well DD has done three controlled assessments in eng lit, Shakespeare, poetry and novel. It's very easy to do well. She has banked very nice marks towrds her overall score.

DS has done none. He will have to do exceedingly well to attain an A* in the final furlong.

Word I'm am reliably informed that the French listening paper was pretty easy this yr, and the oral as expected, but my DS felt part of the written paper was harder, anyway fingers crossed for the 90+%.
Olive well done to your DD I'm sure you were relieved she passed.

happy yes when I listened to last year's listening paper it stood out as partcularly hard! Unfairly so, I thought.

Good luck your DS.

Bloody relieved (and thankful that igcse could make it happen ;))

It's just such a ridiculous long wait till the results. Someone told that this does not happen in Europe don't know if it's true.

Olive DS1 whose basically hopeless at math passed first time with a C we cracked open a large bottle of champagne we were so relieved!

Cosmiccreepers, thank you. DS is year 5 so I'm hoping the new system will have bedded in a bit by then. He'll be fine with final exams, DD woukd however have benefitted from more course work/ controlled assessments but is mostly doing exams at the end of year 11. Apart from she's doing Core science at the moment which is a highly painful process everyone in the house and I'm dreading next year now.

just to jump back to talkinpeace's original post up thread - I thought that IGCSEs didn't count in the new ebac . So how could schools use them to achieve Gove's ebac?

What worries me about Talkin's posts is that they are phrased in such a definite, authoritative manner that those who are unaware of which 'axe she grinds' may take them as fact rather than 'smile and nod' as WordFactory says.

Yes summer her posts always remind me of somone I know in RL who says the most proposterous things but shouts FACT afterwards and does those quote marks with her fingers. The reality is that talkin doesn't know the first thing about IGCSEs! But it's extremely important to her world view that they're inferior to the GCSEs her DC are sitting... 'FACT'...

I do not think that the IGCSE is inferior, but neither is it superior.
They do count towards the league tables for last year and this year : after that is anybody's guess.

The baby of flexible testing has been thrown out with the bathwater of getting rid of retakes.
Some kids show their ability better with final exams, others by modules.
Education systems need to get he best out of as many pupils as possible.
Gove sadly thinks that what suited him will suit everybody.

Controlled assessments were less than ideal and needed changing, but scrapping them after kids had done the work was just cruel.

Talkin earlier in the thread you said IGCSE is much easier than GCSE. Are you now saying you were wrong?

Because if that is what you are saying, could you stop popping up on any thread where IGCSEs are mentioned and peddling the same bollocks please? Not only is it tiresome, it's also an insult to all the DC who are currently taking these qualifications having worked very hard to prepare for them.

From what I can make out from our school, all CA were abandoned for the current yr11s and younger. If op's dd is in yr10 and has done two years' worth of CA then it shouldn't have come as any surprise. And yr8 seems a bit early to have produced GSCE work with all the changes that have been mooted for years for the current GSCE cohort. (ie the current yr10s and yr11s).