GCSE exams

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Feel current exam cycle, with all 10 GCSEs taken in the Summer, is too much for young people. So far, my daughter has taken almost every day,so 16 exams since the 6.5.13 with another 6 to go this week. She is both mentally and physically exhausted. My older daughter took exams in under the modular scheme given her 14 exams which she found stressful enough! For young people to complete 22 exams in one go seems borderline insane. If Gove wants to reform GCSEs he needs to look at the whole exam not just when you take the exam. I think he needs to try 22 exams in five weeks to see how he fairs!

Completely agree it goes on too long and is so difficult to keep them motivated. I feel I couldn't care less now so I don't blame them if they start to think that towards the end. It used to be you'd have a break between now and A levels but they've got AS levels next year. Constant examining and monitoring plus the ever changing goal posts and requirements from Gove.

I will have had 6 years of this. DD2 starts as DD1 finishes as they are three years apart. AS levels really are a set of exams too many.

Generations of students did perfectly well without them.

As for Goves changes, no one seems sure what DD2 will get.

CA do add another level of pressure but I think they teach different skills so are a valuable part of DCs education. The trouble is not the Exams but that the recent changes often piecemeal and lacking oversight which appear to be more political motivated than a well thought through reform of secondary education. The aim is not to educate young people but to make it difficult for them to pass exams or at least to pass them well.....

The English system is insane.

At university we had a maximum end-of-term 2 week exam period, which started the day after teaching stopped. Most people finished all exams within 7-10 days of when teaching finished.

Re CAs teaching different skills - I think much of it is mostly memorising stuff (especially with MFLs).

Totally agree though with the aim of the latest changes seeming to prevent young people actually doing well in their exams. So unfair that this year's cohort are being disadvantaged compared with previous years' Year 11s. Bloody Gove.

My memory is that in the O Level days we did far fewer exams (one paper per subject?) but that the exams themselves were way way longer.

I agree the GCSEs do feel like a hell of a lot to cope with - it's a very long time to sustain the momentum and stay motivated. DC3's final exam happened this morning, but some of his friends finish next Friday, which will be 6 weeks since they started.

Gove has little interest in Education... To reform a system is to comprehensively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses making well reasoned changes to benefit all..... Anyone recognise this in the past few week... I suspect Gove believes if lots of YP are doing well the system must be flawed, best ensure a higher percentage fail. Interesting when a the higher the percentage of failure the greater Gove can claim success Hmmm?!

Basically they have just shoved the modular papers to the end of the year. Different subjects seem to have wildly different numbers and lengths of paper and amounts of CAs and practical work to equal one GCSE.

Its been done in too much of a hurry. It's a total mess!

One PP mentioned the number of hours of exams - I think that's stayed pretty much the same from when I did my Olevels - fewer papers, but longer ones.

And that's why pupils typically took 8 subjects routinely: only the very diligent took 9 or 10.

The actual length and number of papers is determined by the exam boards - obviously in consultation with the government, but final call is theirs.

What mechanisms (if any) exist to monitor, and if necessary censure or sanction, exam boards if they are setting exams of excessive duration?

Ofqual are suppose to oversee and moderate Exam Boards, ( this years exams were signed off by Ofqual). It is likely YP will study fewer subjects, as with Olevel, which is sure to impact the Arts, as schools focus on the English Baccalaureate

Non of the exams are too long, in fact I think the one hour additional science ones are too short, DD1 was loosing the will to live revising the same short section over and over again.

The problem is they are such a muddle. 1hr for this, 2hrs for that. 1.5 hrs and 1.75 hours for others. 2 papers for this, four papers for that. And the exam season spreading over six weeks for some poor DCs.

I much preferred one three hour paper per exam. Even when we got two a day, because you knew exactly where you stood. You knew you had to have done your revision before the exam season started.

We didn't have three days off in the middle or have RE at the beginning and the end.

A one hour exam, and all the associated traveling time and mental stress is just as tiring as a three hour one, but there's more day left in which you feel you ought to revise.

I absolutely agree with you OP. Another ex O level student here who sat long papers and they were over with in a couple of weeks. We also only did 8 subjects.

My elder child sat all hers in year 11. Three of the science papers were sat in the January which helped (no longer allowed) and there were controlled assessments in English and History and ISAs in Science.

My younger child sat two in year 9, and three in year 10. When she goes into year 11 in September she will do another 7. I think she would have benefitted from the additional maturity of sitting them all in year 11, plus doing a two year GCSE rather than a one year course in all her options. I think Gove is trying to abolish early entry. Which system is the more stressful I don't know.

I also agree with some posters up thread that GCSEs are a lot more difficult than the old O levels but a lot better taught.

9 O levels = 9 exams

DD1's 9 GCSEs = sitting in an exam hall 19x times. There isn't even an exam for art FFS

(Plus CAs, music, art and Drama practicals.)

I (bizarrely) still have my original O-level exam timetable!

I did 9 O-levels. Orals (and aural tests) for languages stretched from 1 May to 22 May on 4 different days (2 days for each language). May was also when practical exams were done.

For my exam board, actual exams started on 1 June and ended on 25 June.

Eng. Lang. was 2 papers (1½ hrs and 1 hr 45 mins)
Eng Lit. was 1 paper (3 hrs)
Maths was 2 papers (2½ hrs and 2½ hrs)
Sciences were 2 papers (1½ hrs and 2 hrs)
Languages were 1 paper (3 hrs)
Geography was 2 papers (2½ hrs and 2½ hrs)
History was 1 paper (2½ hrs)
R.E. was 2 papers (1 hr 40 mins and 2 hrs)

I can't believe I sat through a 3 hour French paper or did 5 flippin' hours of Geography!!!

Were O Level exams really 3 hours long? I sat a variety of boards in 1982 (God) and my memory is that they were 90 minutes in the main. It was A Levels that were 3 hours long wasn't it?

There certainly wasn't the amount of papers the DC sit now though (although I'm sure there were 3 papers in Maths-Paper 3 which included calculus and the longer questions was my idea of hell)

Cross-posted Raidne! So some of them were 3 hours long. Can't believe you still have your exam timetable!

Not sure if it is a factor for GCSE, but at my university we rarely set 3 hour papers anymore because of students with disabilities.

We have had students that were entitled to 1.5 times extra time plus rest breaks. So a three hour exam could end up being 5 long.

When I did my O levels, far fewer disabled people took exams, and I don't think any allowance for reasonable adjustment was made.

I think the amount of content in the exams is roughly the same as when I did O levels. At least for the sciences, I wouldn't know about the other subjects.

There has obviously been new content added particularly in Biology but content I remember learning for Chem O level is now A level content.

I'm looking forward to them sorting out the linear exams properly as the situation at the moment is insane. Why couldn't he have just made the change all in one go.

Everybody in my comprehensive did 9/10 O levels or gcse's as standard and I remember sciences being much more in depth than they are now.
French written work was done without any of this pre written nonsense and definitely no 30 words.Fact there has been studies on this and it has been proven that O levels were much more rigorous and the fact we had to go down to the local library to try and retrieve any information on top of study rather than easily looking it up on the internet contributed to the stress that was put on to kids of this time.

Also, no easter revision courses but I do remember a few revision guides. We just learnt our notes that we had made in class.

Strangely, I'm glad I did O levels and would have hated the modular system, but I'm a tad lazy and I'm really good at cramming information so i think the old suited me.

The modular/ coursework type GCSE's seems to have favoured girls so now this is all changing do you think the boy's results will improve again. If so, what does it say about the validity of GCSE's exams?

I can't figure out why anyone cares so much whether O-levels or GCSEs were/are tougher. Or how compares to whatever new exam they are going to invent.

I don't agree. The depth is so thin. Look at Maths. GCsE's are pretty lightweight in comparison to A-level. My teachers used to make us do O-Level papers to practise A-Level - and that was in 2001...

lljkk I think employers care otherwise how do they judge applicants. It would be nice to think say a C grade is fairly consistent over the years, although it clearly hasn't been and recently not even consistent in subsequent years. I look at my sprinkling of 8 A's and B's from O level days which was considered pretty good at the time, but compared to today, its pretty average.
I know there are a number of variables including kids working harder but how do you judge if there is no consistency.

I wonder if that statement reflects an old-fashioned model of education stopping at 16 & launch into the workplace with no further training, which hasn't existed for a long time. Job applicants don't only have GCSEs vs. O-levels to compare but also yrs of other experiences & further ed or training or even cover letter quality. Not to mention references. The qualifications could only ever be roughly comparable, not perfect. Esp. when you consider different schools ppl come from.

Will need to have some kind of way for employers to compare GCSEs to whatever succeeds them, but again that's going to only be tricky for a few yrs & then everything will be relative, again.

Extra time does indeed wreak havoc. DD often fetches up finishing mocks in lunch hour and her longest afternoon exam made her miss the school bus.