The IGCSE Unfairness from Gove

[LuluJakey1]

For years, Tories have hailed the IGCSEs that public schools do, as much harder than the GCSEs that state schools do. They held them up as evidence of the academic rigour and high standards of public schools.

Now that state schools have been allowed to do them and they count in school league tables, what has emerged is that lots of schools are opting for them because actually, they are much less onerous, have less content, are very predictable and said schools are doing extremely well with them, as well as if not better than many public schools.

My friend mole at the DFE tells me that, surprise , surprise, Mr Gove will reverse his decsision of a couple of years ago and announce, in the near future, that IGCSE English and IGCSE Maths will no longer be allowed to count in state school league tables from summer 2016.

However, public schools, which are not restricted, will still be able to take them and count them in their results.

Who says the Tories are not elitist and don't favour the already privileged!

[nooka]

I took the last year of O levels and my dh took the first year of GCSEs levels. We were in the same year at university and I can't say that he appeared to be disadvantaged in any way. If coursework was such a dreadful thing wouldn't there have been a drop in A levels results that year?

We emigrated to Canada a few years ago and my children are lucky to be in a highly regarded education system that has very little reliance on exams, instead the children have to maintain very high, very consistent grade point averages to get into the best universities. Exams are not the be all and end all, just a test of a particular set of skills (which for for O levels was basically cramming).

[TheWordFactory]

nook it's possible that in those early stages, pupils and teachers approached coursework as it was supposed to be approached.

However, soon after GCSEs bedded in, schools began to milk both coursework and the ability to resit bitesized modules ad infinitum to bump up grades. Thus began the devaluing of our exam system at 16.

It became widealy accepted that many pupils cheated on their coursework so that was eventually scrapped. It became widely accepted that a GCSE obtained through taking and resitting modules was not remotely equivalent to a GCSE passed in one sitting, so they were scrapped.

It is now pretty widely accepted that CAs are a pile of pants and they're being scrapped.

[TheWordFactory]

This is one of the reasons that IGCSEs currently have more currency; they generally don't have coursework, they don't have modules, they don't have CAs...

[HercShipwright]

I'm not sure that all IGCSEs have more 'currency' you know..

[JennyCalendar]

We do CIE IGCSE English Lang and Lit. I am so cross about this, but hope that they can get a revised IGCSE out in time (I'm taking part in some consultancy on this).

Middle - You are a little incorrect about the coursework percentage for English language. There are various options. We do Written coursework (3 pieces) for 40%, speaking exam for 20% and final exam for 40%. There are also options for lit, but we have gone for the 100% exam route.

[JennyCalendar]

Just to add, we are incredibly strict about no cheating on coursework or excessive help in my school.

[nooka]

But exams also get gamed. When I sat my A levels our best teacher made us sit seven or eight past papers under exam conditions and tutored us extensively on how to analyse papers, which questions to pick, what answers they were looking for etc. Really valuable exam skills which I have taken with me to every exam I have subsequently sat. But fundamentally aimed to get us the best possible grades, to me this was an example of great teaching (was the only exam I really did well in too - I was a high performer, but otherwise flunked my A levels).