English literature GCSE poetry: closed or open book?

[TheFirstOfHerName]

DS1 is in Y10, studying for English literature GCSE (AQA) which will be taken in June 2016. One of the sections is a comparative poetry thing, using a cluster of poems from an Anthology.

DS1 and I had assumed that he would have access to a clean/unannotated copy of the poems during the exam, but I read something in the paper today saying that this is being changed to a closed book paper, meaning that he would have to learn the poems well enough to quote from any of them from memory.

The article said this comes into effect this September, but I don't know whether they mean GCSE courses starting this September (exams in June 2017) or exams from this September. I can't link to the article but it was in the Sunday Times.

Article here but partly behind paywall

Ds was given copies of the poems last year.

When they say new English lit GCSE, I assume they mean the new GCSE which is first being taught in Sept 2015.

They can't change the one that is being currently taught because they promised no more mid-course changes to assessment as part of the workload challenge.

This was the case when I did O Levels. No books in exams, apart from log tables in Maths.

It depends which pathway his school have chosen. If he does it as a controlled assessment then he will be allowed a clean copy. However, if it's part of the final exam then the poetry is unseen - so much harder !
I've one in year 10 too and her exams are very different to her sibling 3 years older.

It will be an exam. There will also be a controlled assessment, but it will be comparing two plays.

I don't think it's fair to change the assessment process once the course has already started. They did this with the English language students who took their GCSEs in 2014 (speaking and listening).

TheFirst your son's poetry exam will be open book, with a clean, unannotated copy of the AQA anthology provided. (I'm an English teacher, and I teach AQA GCSE.) Mr Gove may well have changed it to closed book for the new spec (current Y9) but I'm focusing on my Y11s before I start looking at that too closely. At the moment, only A2 is closed book and my UVI are bricking it

TBH, having the text is a bit of a red herring, because kids sit there perusing it in a leisurely fashion, taking ages to find quotes. It's far better if they have tried to learn some quotes and therefore can maintain their train of thought. Hope that helps.

Oh, and mumneedswine was slightly in error. The first question in the exam is on the 'cluster' they have studied, and they have to compare two of the poems. The second question is an 'unseen' poem, which is designed to test their skills rather than simply regurgitating information they have learned.

Thank you!

He is a hardworking student (got A* in his English Language CA) and writes a good interpretive essay, but finds it difficult to rote-learn things. He will hopefully learn the texts fairly thoroughly, but not having to memorise chunks of them word-for-word will take some of the pressure off.

DS2 (Y8) has a phenomenal memory and weaker inference skills (AS) so the closed book exam might suit him better.