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!

Yeah I probably agree - Employers just use GCSE's as a screen for competitive jobs i.e. CV in the bin or not!

Do they give you real tangible work place skills? Perhaps going through exam revision itself, but the knowledge is fungible - that's what the internet is for!!!

Social skills and resourcefulness are much more important!

Employers just use GCSE's as a screen for competitive jobs

I don't think many care about GCSEs at all. Most of the jobs with GCSE entry are fairly low skilled so they only want Maths/English.

Jobs that have higher skills employers want A levels/degree etc and often ignore GCSEs.

I was recently told by our careers service that one or two of the graduate training scheme's don't even have a space to list them in the application process anymore.

Not all kids are in a position where they can obtain high level qualifications so for them the GCSE's are very important to put them on the road for jobs and apprenticeships.

My DS, summer born and a year ahead, is taking 12 GCSEs this summer and isn't finding it a problem at all. He's bored tbh, now that the first front loaded couple of weeks are out of the way. His elder siblings took all their GCSEs as linear and I don't remember any particular stress. The fact that he's not fazed doesn't mean that he's done well of course :) He's certainly stopped revising because he's only got a couple of maths papers left and he says you can't revise for maths, so he's not. Also, half-term comes in the middle, so they have a whole week without exams, which is quite civilized really.

In general terms, I find boys much less stressy with exams than girls.

Employers just use GCSE's as a screen for competitive jobs

It does question why we have them at all? If all students are staying onto 18 will GCSE's become redundant? Other European countries don't have equivalent exams at age 16 and just rely on the exams taken at 18.

Just asking - don't actually think any government would dare get rid of them altogether.

It is true GCSEs are only a passport to the next level, whether A levels or Apprenticeships. DD needs minimum of 43 points and As in several subjects to take her A Level choices. Half term not a holiday but the only time available to study for the 11 exams the following 2 weeks. The current system will only suit those with the stamina to sit an exam ( or two ) every day and with little need to revise.
I am not sure this would be a fair method of measuring a YPs academic achievements.

My DS only had 4 exams after the half term and had the whole week off after sitting 17 exams before. I can honestly say he was not stressed the whole time only bored of revising towards the end.

Leaving aside how employers use GCSEs, GCSEs are often extremely important for university entrance decisions.

It's surely very good to test stamina and the ability to juggle a reasonable to significant workload over a number of areas? And it's not a case of only those who have 'little need' to revise doing well, it's a case of managing workload.

Most DC could afford to take at least half of half term off I'd have thought, and it did afford 10 days with no exams, which is a break in itself.

"often extremely important" ? Please elaborate.
I can see how GCSE results affect A-level choices.
Very few university courses care beyond a minimum of passes (5).

Tbh lljkk the list is long, but broadly speaking a number of the unis in the top and second tier require a certain minimum number of A before an application is considered more fully, and some (Oxford for medicine for example) use a very specific formula which includes percentage of A at GCSE to determine who will be asked to interview. Obviously not all DC fancy that sort of university or career, but for those who do, GCSEs can be crucial. Meeting the stated minimum for a course is not in any way the same as gaining the offer of a place and university degrees vary hugely in their value in terms of employment later on, as well as in their intrinsic worth. I'm not at all sure I'd advise my DC to spend £27k on fees alone for a degree where entrants averaged 5 grade Cs at GCSE. There must be better ways to spend the money as well as the time.

Can you please list the Unis who are "top" tier & which are "second tier"? Is it only the Uni which matters or also the course? How many places are affected by these requirements?

lljkk I think a good rule of thumb is that the more selective a university/course, the more important the GCSE grades.

If a university doesn't have pressure on its places, then it will send out offers of whatever A levels it requires, regardless, and some applicants will get them, others won't. That's the selection process.

However, at establishments with high levels of competition for places, the process is stricter. It has to be as there are too many applicants who are likely to achieve the entry grades.

Looking at GCSEs is one way to assess how the 17 year old applicant has done so far and thus one measure. It's considered a reasonable reflection of ability/stamina/organisation yadd yadda. Si it's one of the filters.

I would also say, that with the demise of AS in their current guise, GCSEs may take on even more importance.

For a student with middling GCSEs but predicted good A levels, it's often worth applying post A levels...

It is my understanding that many of the more competitive courses at some Russell Group Universities will be looking at GCSE grades. Medicine, veterinary science and dentistry were quoted, I am not sure about other courses though. I was also told that Oxbridge, Imperial and UCL look at GCSEs.

llijkk - league table of UK universities

I think an applicant who has only 5 x C grade GCSEs and is applying to an RG or (former) 94 group institution and is predicted A and B grades in relevant subjects would need to address their GCSE grades in their personal statement. If the lack of quality and quantity GCSEs was as a result of long term illness, caring responsibilities, world travel, school moves every six months etc etc then that would give some context and might well be regarded as fine (as long as the A Level predictions were reasonable).

But a sixth former applying to Imperial for example, with 5 C grade GCSEs, having been at an average comprehensive with no external factors wouldn't get a look in as the evidence shows a lack of application to study, and possibly ability. In such a case the student would be far better off as PP says in applying once they have their A Level grades.

lljkk my version of top tier and second tier may not be identical to others, so it's probably of little value for me to 'list'. I don't really want to get into a quarrel about how fourth rate Oxford Cambridge, UCL, Imperial etc are either. Of course the course matters as well as the uni . My point was a) that GCSEs are a critical factor for many competitive courses at the most competitive unis (and as Word says, likely to be increasingly so) and b) uni is an expensive business, so three years accruing that debt may well not be worth it unless you get onto a course where the teaching and content means that the degree obtained is of some real value.

About 500,000 people start on FT undergrad courses each year.

I'd like to know, for how many of those people, they needed > 5 GCSE passes to get onto the course. Who has concrete evidence?

I'll wager it mattered in less than 10% of places (max. 50,000). On the basis of 7800 spaces in medical schools, ~12k undergrads in each yr at Oxbridge + UCL combined (including their med students), and then fudging those numbers to including some other desirable Unis.

Does anyone believe that at least 400,000 new undergraduates are every year wasting their money and you would advise them not to? What should they do instead? and do you vote UKIP because that is their attitude, too.

Yes I think a great many undergraduates are probably wasting their money and I wouldn't want my DC to waste theirs. That certainly doesn't have to mean I vote UKIP, what a strange deduction to make! After all, it's not exactly a minority view.....

It's UKIP policy, to bring back grammar schools, revive full university grants & dramatically reduce the number of university places. It's the kind of world they want.

Well in theory I agree with all of those things. But I disagree strongly with almost everything else UKIP says and does, so my vote isn't going to go there, nor has it ever :)

lljkk

tertiary education is a lucrative industry and many service providers offer a poor value service to the under qualified and under informed.

It's has become a way to part people who have no need of a degree and no aptitude for study from their cash.

And the poeple who are most being sucked into these establishments are from the least well off families. They're being ripped off IMVHO!

If 400,000 of 700,000 each year's school leavers (well, of 500,000 who go to university at all) start university which aren't competitive/top tier etc., then actually that's pretty strong evidence it is precisely and exactly a minority view to think that it's a waste of money -- at least among those for whom the decision truly matters.

I guess I was naive to think that most MN posters would at least be open-minded about the value of going to university. I wish I had a mind reader & understood the huge biases that underpin most things most people say.

DD is sitting her 3rd history paper today. She says she has science, german and various other papers coming up. She's in Y10, and has just spent the last 2 weeks on work experience, so not much opportunity to revise for this paper today or the other two she took last week. Who organised that? I am confused by the whole GCSE thing tbh. Some subjects are 2quals, some are half, it all seems to be very confused.

Lljkk, it isnt that people have to go top tier or do traditional academic subjects. It is that some institutions are simply badly run; some subjects in some institutions are badly taught; some subjects in institutions from top to bottom tier are teaching courses that might be popular, but which will not lead to the jobs students hope for because of enormous oversupply compared to jobs available, or misleading marketing of courses.

It isn't about academic snobbery, it is about the best path for individual students and about giving them full information which seems lacking.

For example, look at the umber of courses with 'forensic Science in the title. One low ranked university has five of these courses. Then look at this extract from the website of the Chartered institute of Forensic Scientists:

'This has led to a vast number of forensic themed courses on offer to the budding forensic student. A large majority of these courses have minimal and in some situations, inappropriate levels of forensic science content e.g. a failing pure-based course that has had a few law and crime scene modules thrown in with the label of “forensic - ?” put on top of it. To an uninformed parent or student this can be extremely misleading and give false hope in finding jobs at the other end of a course.'

And there are worse instances than this to be found where course structure, teaching and financial management are poor.