GCSE exams

[chart53]

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!

I agree that the playing field will be much fairer with linear exams for all - my DC is bitter about the fact that his peers at different schools did many of their exams while in Year 9 or 10.

I don't think that children who take GCSEs early are necessarily at an advantage MissScatterbrain. In my daughter's case having to take Spanish in year 9 was a definite disadvantage; as was taking Art and Product Design, both coursework intensive courses obviously, as one year courses in year 10.

I did tell DC that its probably a case of swings and roundabouts...

Molio and Word Whether or not you believe me is up to you, I don't care either way. But just to explain where my data comes from.

After the firm and insurance offers are made, universities can get access to all the course application data, so for everyone that applied to us, we can see where students have opted to place their firm and insurance offers. We identify our main competitors from this data and so look for trends in who they are accepting and rejecting. This is not data in the public domain (and therefore privileged).

We also obviously find out when the A level results what grades universities are going down to. The first indication is where we are the insurance place. As firm institutions make their decisions on dropped grades, applications either come or don't come to us as insurance. Some institutions have always marketed themselves as not entering Clearing, and sometimes to do this, they are making bigger compromises in lowering grades for their firms.

Secondly, clearing itself is very different now. It used to only for people with missed grades to find places, but now there is lots of movement even from people who made their firm offer and don't technically qualify for adjustment. So, for example, if you applied to Manchester and didn't get an offer originally, but you now have the A level grades, applicants will see if they can get a place, even if they have a confirmed place at the firm.

So through Adjustment, general moving around and Clearing, we get a much broader sense of where institutions are pitching their acceptance. It is through monitoring what is going on, we learn what other institutions are doing.

I don't think I have said anywhere that all top institutions accept 5 Cs. What I have said is that a range of grades at GCSE is much more common than all As. Also that GCSE grades are not a the make or break selection criteria that some people were claiming they were.

We're talking about modular exams HP, rather than exams taken early - although splitting say eleven GCSEs into different sittings does clearly make life easier than taking them all in one hit. Linear exams all taken in one sitting should be the litmus test.

creamteas thanks for that but I think you may quite regularly make the mistake that no-one else has 'inside info' about admissions. Loads of people do. And the top unis do not take people with crappy GCSEs in the absence of serious mitigation. GSCE grades matter hugely for the vast majority of those aspiring to a top uni, even if they don't much matter for your course at your uni.

Getting rid of modular exams has done a huge disservice to lots of students who are not good at holding lots of information but may be excellent in an employment situation
now they will not get grades that represent their true ability

my accountancy exams were the last time I had to memorise legislation clause numbers - now I am paid to know where to look

GCSEs had become more applicable to the world of work but have reverted back to the 1950's
(admittedly to the benefit of my children)

it is not about the value to modular over linear .. it is fine to have liner exams ... continually retaking modular is not much fun either. It is about who are we running an education system for... YP or ambitious politicians and league tables.. It is whether the current system is fit for purpose .. from anyone`s point of view. Are we trying to inform and develop YP or set up a battlefield where only the fittest survive. I agreed with creamteas universities are looking for more than just GCSEs results, partially because GCSEs are so flawed they are poor indicate of future success.

chart53 in your original post you seemed to be criticizing the move to linear, claiming the number of exams taken in the summer season on the linear model is 'borderline insane'. And that your other DC's experience, on the modular model, was bad enough, but (by inference) at least not 'borderline insane'.

The thing is that there are vast numbers of kids out there who are not particularly stressed, who've quite enjoyed their two year course unencumbered with the irritation of sporadic bite sized exams and re-sits and who might well think your description of their last few weeks as 'borderline insane' was actually almost 'borderline insane' itself, so little resemblance does it bear to their reality.

creamteas may be an authority for his or her uni whose name he or she quite reasonably doesn't want to disclose, but it's fairly clear to anyone with much knowledge of HE that what he or she says about admissions, and what unis are looking for in applicants, is particular to his or her area and uni, but not a general truth.

Well said talkinpeace... Education needs to be for everyone and applicable to the needs of society..

Society needs lots of people contributing with lots of different skills. So educating all kids in the same way to the same level regardless of individual talent makes absolutely no sense.

Dear Molio ..I am not really talking about whether one system is better than another... and it is good to hear that not all YP are stressed by endless exams. Nevertheless..if the whole GCSE course had been reviewed with sensible exam timetable I am sure I would not be complaining .. Unfortunately it appears to me the change from modular to linear was not done to improve education but was a clumsy knee jerk reaction to complaints about grade inflation. I would have been quite happy for my DD to sit 14 linear exams this summer.. time to revise between each exam.. not be overloaded with exam stress would also been good... but with 24 exams in one go that was getting a bit hard to achieve. If the Government want to reform something do it properly. We all want to have an education system which benefits everyone. Then it is up to YP if they take advantage of the opportunities, especially given what you say about universities . Although, thankfully, in my experience,this has not been the case.

Molio you are so right.. if we have a one size fits all approach to education a wealth of talent is lost..

I completely agree that different children, need different types of education and different types of assessment.

I'm sure most people would agree.

However, where the problems have arisen is in the assertion that they have equivalence.

The clumsy knee jerk reaction to grade inflation came with the marking in summer 2012. These are not knee jerk reforms - they've been a long while coming. The system where some schools took exams covering small parts of a syllabus and then had the chance to re-take again and again was not properly testing and having two different systems running at the same time while purporting to give the same end qualification was just nonsense. At my DCs' school the tests have always been taken all in one go at the end of the two year syllabus. They each take 11 or 12 subjects and there have always been around 24 exams. This is not new. It's only new to those used to the modular system. Over those years of course there will always have been a small proportion who get stressed, but the stress is to do with the child itself, or parental pressure, it's not caused by the nature or number of different exams. It's also worth saying that only a couple of exams are as much as 2 hours long, most are shorter.

As far as uni goes, then obviously if your experience is of a creamteas type uni or course (for want of a better description) then you might well think that GCSEs don't matter. But at a lot of the most competitive unis they do, there's no escaping the fact.

Cross post. Quite. There's no need to pretend equivalence, except for political reasons and the distinct nervousness in recognising through the education system that different kids are good at different stuff.

I agree completely Molio. IMO the re-sitting was just getting out of hand - I know students who were made to sit exams they had got an A* in again in order to get 100%! Meanwhile DS just got one shot with 25 exams in one go. With a move towards the linear system, this type of discrepancy will be removed. To a degree I agree that fewer exams would be better, but in all honesty I think DS coped better with the shorter exams than the longer one. He recently sat a two and a half hour long A2 which he really struggled to keep concentratin though.

I think creamteas is getting a rough deal here! I completely agree with her that at many institutions (top and bottom!) you will get in with a range of GCSEs. Especially when looking back a few years ago when students were made to sit 12/13 subjects with such little specialisation it's not unreasonable to expect students not to be good at everything. So for someone applying to read economics at the LSE it should be irrelevant whether or not they got an A in GCSE biology - students are human after all!

I'm not intending that creamteas should get a rough deal, but when a poster says s/he is an admissions tutor and therefore knows stuff other people don't, but is incorrect in what s/he says, then s/he's going to get challenged (by me anyway :)). Because otherwise people reading get duff info. If you look at specific courses at specific unis you'll find that there is absolutely no 'range', or at least a very narrow one (somewhere between 8 and 12 A*). The fact that a PPEist at the LSE got a poor grade in D&T at GCSE might not scupper his application, but an across the board middling performance would.

If you look at specific courses at specific unis you'll find that there is absolutely no 'range', or at least a very narrow one (somewhere between 8 and 12 A)

Actually the vast majority of university websites only mention one of two GCSEs that they want specific grades in and rarely ask for A*s.

For example for biochemisty Imperial only say they want Grade B in Maths, English, Chemistry, Biology (or Combined Sciences) and UCL ask for English Language and Mathematics at grade C.

But really cream teas in reality how many UCL students do you think have only 5 gcses at grade C? The vast majority of applicants will have at least 8 with predominantly a and a* grades.

Similarly for imperial how many applicants will have B grade chemistry? Again the vast majority will have A or A (particularly as an A+ at A level Chem, which is what Imperial wants, is hard for even those with A at gcse).

As I have already stated, I am not claiming that lots of people with 5Cs at GCSE go to top unis, I am trying to show that the claims made above that top universities only want people with over 8 As are not true.

Clearly people applying for Chemistry are likely have an A at GCSE in Chemistry. After all, if they found it difficult they probably wouldn't be taking it for A level.

But they don't necessarily need 8 As to be considered and a C in history or RE is very unlikely to be a major barrier to applying for Chemistry or Maths.

Whilst I 'know' on MN almost every child gets a sweep of As and A* at GCSE, and a B is seen as an unmitigated failure, but this is really not representative of GCSE results nationally.

Most year 11 pupils come out with a range of grades and a few Cs at GCSE is not likely to be a barrier to even top unis unless they are in the area chosen for the degree.

You're not completely accurately re-typing what I and a few other posters have said creamteas. For my part I said some courses at some unis have a very narrow range, somewhere between 8 and 12 A. Not 8 and 12 As, that's very different. For example if you go to the Oxford Pre-Clinical page on the university website you'll see data provided for those offered places for entry in 2014. It shows precisely what range of GCSE grades offerees have. The info isn't privileged. Birmingham med school likewise has a very narrow range of As. You'll find certain Oxford colleges with a similarly narrow range across all subjects, even despite their extra tools (aptitude tests and interviews) used for admissions. The list could go on.

I get what you say about plenty of unis not being this strict, and agree that plenty of kids don't get straight A*/A, but the fact remains that GCSEs are used as a tool in admissions at a lot of unis and to dismiss them as not mattering is somewhat naïve. The bottom line is that there's no point in generalising about uni admissions, because it's complex and varied, as it should be and as one would expect.

The other thing I would say Molio is that there is a lot of disagreement over whether or not GCSEs are actually a good indicator. You quote Oxford as having a narrow range, but Cambridge disregard GCSEs in favour of having 90%+ at AS level. Obviously if you're capable of getting such AS level results you're likely to have done well at GCSE so it is hard to 'prove' they don't take GCSEs into consideration to the extent Oxford do, but it is worth considering a split of opinions over the use of GCSEs particularly given the view that boys (in general!) underachieve at GCSE.

friendface it's pretty well known that Cambridge looks at ASs and Oxford at GCSEs so anyone can take a side if they wish. I think I said earlier that those who get only 5 GCSEs at grade C aren't overwhelmingly likely to get 93% on their best three ASs and that exceptional circumstances apart, there tends to be a fairly coherent trajectory. My point is not that GCSEs are the be all and end all but that for one admissions tutor to say his or her uni doesn't rate them doesn't mean they aren't rated elsewhere, by possibly more competitive unis. Lots of students are sufficiently well informed and canny enough to work out where their best chance lies: are their GCSEs better than their ASs? Is it the other way round? Do they think they'd do well in an aptitude test? Would they be safer with an almost guaranteed interview? Bottom line for me would be: don't diss GCSEs. You don't know how things might turn out later.

Both, I think people can get a little over-hyped about the UMS and GCSE argument. Ultimately at Oxford & Cambridge the tutor is going to pick the person in front of them at interview. The rest gets you there and might tip you one way or the other, but given how easy it is to game AS & A levels these days, the tutors have to to judge somehow (everyone has great grades, and helped save the ponies, and did work experience with X local MP/ lawyer /Doctor) so they will see how academically robust the student is in a sadly very short period of time or through their own admissions tests.