Ofqual wants my Y11 child to do extra gcse's this exam period?

[hahaRainbow]

Am I crazy - or does this look like extra stress for the kids when they already have enough to do:

(7500 students to be randomly selected to take extra 'bench marking' reference exams)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32248034

... apologies for not being more civic-minded but I don't want my dc to have to sit extra exams just because Ofqual needs some guinea pigs... and will it only be state school kids who are required to do this?

I saw that. If DD gets selected I want to know what they can do if we refuse.

It wouldn't be for this year's Y11 but the year group that are currently in Y9.

Let me get this straight, this has not happened yet, has it? Your DC has not been asked, there are no extenuating circumstances why you think this is unfair for your own DC.

Tbh a student, if they know the test will not impact their GCSE grade (and I don't see how it could), would not be seriously stressed by this, might not take it very seriously at all...

It is a proposal, as someone else said it will affect current year 9 students. Yes there are issues to do with it, but there is time to get it changed. At least it isn't like the outrageous grade boundary changes that happened with no consultation and many other changes over the past few years.

my child studies all the time and feels quite pressured about the whole exam thing (not from us I should say)... taking such an exam would take time away from studying and other activities...

and who is it for... it's for the exam boards -- all of which are money making enterprises who will not compensate any child for their time. What's more, I would just bet that it will only be state educated kids who are required to do this - the independents would never sign up.

the exam boards should do this properly... if Ofqual wants guinea pigs, they should ask kids to do this out of school time and in a non-pressured setting - but hey - I'm glad to hear that these 'reference' exams are not happening this year.

Your Yr11 child won't be - it's not starting until 2017, so the link says.

Surely it will just be like a 'mock' for them. By the end of March they would have finished the course and sitting an exam at that point could just help them decide where to focus any revision.

It's not going to 'take time away from studies' as taking what they can view as a practice paper is a very legitimate way of starting your revision for a subject.

I wouldn't have an issue with it.

It would have to be done by everyone, or randomly selected though, otherwise it wouldn't assess the exam as 'volunteers' would just be the pupils who could do the exam easily without being at all stressed at the thought - presumably the pupils who are going to 'walk' the exam anyway, not a fair range across all abilities.

It reads like a single extra Mock Exam, from pupil's POV, am I wrong??
Why would that be bad?
Hope you find a way to sort your kid's anxiety out, OP.

I was one of the cohort who took an O level english language exam a year early before sitting GCSE the correct year. It was a total non event, school didn't even tell us we were taking an exam till that morning.

I was happy after it as I got a C and so had no worries about the English GCSE as I already had an O level in hand if I were to flunk the GCSE. Got a B at GCSE .

Can't imagine it would be detrimental really. When they changed from O level to GCSE, didn't people sit both in some subjects the year before? A friend of mine told me his year did O level and GCSE chemistry the year before they swapped over. (Independent school, not state.) And my dd's grammar have been doing a double qualification maths GCSE pilot scheme.