New maths GCSE exams declared too difficult by Ofqual

[noblegiraffe]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32831905

So Ofqual have finished their investigation into the new GCSE maths sample material and concluded what any maths teacher could have told you all along: they were too hard. So now the exam boards will have to change them and send out new sample assessment materials.

The BBC news report says that schools will be starting teaching this GCSE in September, but the truth is that most schools have already started teaching them to Y9 as the extra content means that we needed to start as soon as possible.

What a fuck up. There is no way that the new GCSEs could have effectively been introduced so quickly, I suspect this will not be the last fiasco.

Shame on the government for working to a political timescale and not to one for the actual educational benefit of children.

thank goodness ofqual came to a sane conclusion, but absolutely agree, what a fuck up.

Total fuck up. Can we assume that given teachers are going to be teaching without really knowing what students are being assessed against, something monumentally daft is going to have to happen with the grade boundaries in order to get the results to look 'right'?

How long is it going to take ofqual to pass something that looks about right?

What's scary is that this investigation only came about because the other exam boards were pissed off at AQA stealing all their custom with their easier sample materials. It was only then that anyone thought that getting kids to sit a pilot of the exams was a good idea before introducing them.

If it wasn't for that, it's possible that the kids would be sitting the type of exams that Ofqual have now deemed too hard, something which was obvious from the start.

Does anyone know how it's going with the new English exams?

wow

I think this is one of the issues maths has always had, tiggy. Getting the balance between a qualification that demonstrates competence in maths skills and stretchesthose that want to carry on to a level. The current one doesn't stretch the most able so there's a huge gap between GCSE and AS but this went so far the other way it would have been very demoralising for those at the lower end.

Would there not still be the option of the ... foundation paper, I think it's called? The one where the max grade they can get is a C, but it's for those who just need a pass not a high mark.

The foundation paper is harder too. They've added a lot of content from the old higher paper so now the content is more like the old intermediate paper where the highest you could get was a B, except they want more unstructured problem solving so the questions will be harder as well.

Get the politicians OUT of education
lets have a nice bundle of technocrats in there
PLEASE

Ignoring the rushed change, why is this the government's fault as opposed to problems with the exam boards?

In essence why did one exam board apparently manage to deliver a suitable difficulty level and others make it too difficult? If they're experts then how the bleep do we arrive at this: "the papers were so hard that the grade A boundary would have to have been set at below 50%"

[Oh, it wasn't suitable -> too easy]

So how do you find 4000 people to meaningfully take an exam whose syllabus hasn't been taught to them? "People taught syllabus X found exam for syllabus Y difficult?" That's quite a surprise, isn't it?

I think they adjusted for that, and that wasn't the only way they compared the difficulty of all the papers.

Pique you might have a point. Gove has to take some of the blame for trying to rush through changes, but you do have to ask how Ofqual let this happen in the first place. Surely it should have been part of the initial validation process. What else they there for otherwise?

I guess they didn't examine them on the parts of the syllabus that are new. So they could give them an 'old' pythagoras question and a 'new' pythagoras question and see who gets the old one right and the new one wrong.

The problem isn't the content, it's the style of questions.

I have a teen in current year 9 and another current Yr 11! Will be interesting to see the difference in the next 2 years.

I have no faith these changes will go smoothly. I was the one of the first to sit GCSE when it changed from O's and CSE. I recall having to bin almost a years worth of History and Biology coursework and doing 2 years worth of coursework from the June of Year 10.

Even as a stroppy and pretty self centred 15yo I can recall the look and tone of despondence in my poor History teachers face and voice as she told us!

Yes, it's worth remembering that Ofqual accredited all these courses, which included the sample assessment material. There was a mad rush at the end with the accrediting because none of the exam boards passed accreditation first time. One wonders whether Ofqual saw the approaching deadline by which they'd have to push back the qualification by a year (thus missing the general election deadline) and just thought 'fuck it, these will do'.

They are now opening another consultation into the assessment objectives to close mid June. This is clearly too late for first teaching in September, yet they are refusing to admit that the qualification needs to go back a year.

I was just reading a blog that pointed out that pushing maths and English back a year would be the blindingly obvious solution. They clearly aren't ready, and the Y9 cohort that would sit them will be messed around by having a mix of grades and numbers which employers and colleges aren't ready for anyway. Why not do the best thing by current Y9 and stick with the old courses?

I think this saga is very unfair on the teachers and the current Y9.

I am wondering if it is possible to write one exam that gives credit for a sound grasp of basic skills and also differentiates between the very able and extremely able?

But don't you have Further Maths GCSE to stretch those that are mathematicians?
This is very worrying- as someone upthread said- they start teaching this from September!

My school (along with many others) started teaching it in January.

I was the one of the first to sit GCSE when it changed from O's and CSE. I recall having to bin almost a years worth of History and Biology coursework and doing 2 years worth of coursework from the June of Year 10.

Then your school were incompetent careless. There was about ten years' piloting of what became GCSE. You presumably took GCSE in the first year in 1988. However, I took the pilot 16+, which was the prototype of the GCSE, in History and Chemistry (and possibly other things, I forget) in 1981, and was awarded an O Level and a CSE off the same paper. So if they were surprised by the arrival of the GCSE it's hard to escape the conclusion they were not looking out of the window.

January? To Y9 you mean?

But don't you have Further Maths GCSE to stretch those that are mathematicians?

Very few schools offer it. Am I right in thinking that noblegiraffe was involved in the abandoned "linked pair" pilot?

Yes, to Y9.

The new GCSE has so much extra content that we had to start teaching it as soon as possible to try to fit it all in.

Gove suggested an extra hour of maths be timetabled each week to account for it, but didn't explain where that hour could be found.

or where the extra teachers would come from.