Will new GCSE's bring a halt to Social Mobility?

[BlueBelle123]

This is something that I have been pondering - if the new grade 9 becomes the entry requirement for the top universities and competitive courses and if the vast majority are awarded to private school pupils then pupils at the local comp. are going to find it almost impossible to access these places. A lot of Ifs I know but it does make you think - or am I talking complete rubbish, love to hear what you think?

How lycées select depends on the area you live in. Some towns have a catchment lycée and whether you end up in a lycée général (academic) or a lycée professionnel or lycée technique depends on which bac you and your collège have decided is the right path for you, but you won't get to choose a particular establishment. Other towns (like Paris) have complicated admissions systems that take school grades, widening participation criteria, sibling policies etc into account and you may or may not get allocated your first, second, third, fourth etc choice.

There is currently a big push to make state lycées in Paris very mixed, academically, so hardship/widening participation criteria have an important weighting.

Of course, there are many private lycées and some of those are highly academically selective.

Some DC who are admitted to a lycéegénéral in Seconde (year 11, which is a general, not a specialized, year) are not allowed to continue into Première/Terminale (i.e. an academic bac, which is a two year course). So you need to bear in mind that admission to a lycée général is not necessarily as selective as all that as you do have to prove yourself once you are there in order to remain there.

Thank you bobo, the brevet had completely escaped my notice, although a vague memory swims back courtesy of DS's French GCSE coursework material. How is the brevet graded?

The brevet is 50% based on average marks during the school year (hence a fair degree of variability from school to school) and 50% on four obligatory externally assessed exams in Maths, French, History-Geography and one MFL (usually English) and two optional externally assessed exams. But it's all about to change - lots of reforms underway!

School marks/reports are very important in France. Not only are they used by lycées as part of their selection procedure, they are used by prépas as a major element of their selection procedure. Bac marks are unimportant (you just need to pass).

There is something intrinsically more fair about basing judgement on two years' worth of school reports than the one-day snapshot that examination grades provide.

Prepas? New word for me? a translation svp!

There is something intrinsically more fair about basing judgement on two years' worth of school reports

Assuming that the teachers are models of probity, of course. There's endless research work that shows that sex, race and class all have an effect on teachers' perception of the same standard of work, and the jumping off point for the GCSE reforms we're discussing here was that teachers were, shall we say, influenced when marking continuous assessment work. One-off exams are a problem, but the alternatives assume that continuous assessment and subjective reports are done fairly.

Prépa = classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles = two years of intensive cramming before taking the competitive examinations for grandes écoles (the most prestigious sort of French HE)

"There's endless research work that shows that sex, race and class all have an effect on teachers' perception of the same standard of work."

Teachers - indeed schools - are bound by strict codes of conduct enshrined in la charte de la laïcité à l'école. There is lots of unfairness in the French school system but I'm not sure that discrimination on grounds of sex, race and class is rife.

There is lots of unfairness in the French school system but I'm not sure that discrimination on grounds of sex, race and class is rife.

It doesn't have to be conscious.

No, I know it doesn't, but French schools are great upholders of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité and Laïcité - those fundamental Republican values are everywhere.

The unfairness in the French system is much more bound up with the fact that parental background/education is such a strong determinant of school success. The school system is a culture of its own making, difficult to grasp for the uninitiated.

Is there, anywhere, a marking or evaluation method that is completely impervious to discrimination of any description? Have never heard of one, and have always placed it next to sightings of unicorns in central London.

I think that's why it's good, in any system, to have combinations of assessment over the years - multiple small filters rather than a few really high-stakes ones.

I could be swayed. If nothing else, eliminating the do or die selection points might encourage consistent effort, but there probably is no such thing as a really blind testing regime that could be both fair and rigorous. So much of education is about preparing young people for the society they will grow up in, its culture and mores.

Course work was added into GCSEs to allow even kids without retentive memories to pass them.
Then the course work was gamed by the retentive kids
so it was abolished

Modules were added in and removed for the same reasons

so the GCSEs are back where they were 20 years ago

• great for kids with retentive memories
• rubbish for the rest

which is a bit daft considering the vast majority of jobs as against careers do not need extensive retentive memory

"So much of education is about preparing young people for the society they will grow up in, its culture and mores."

I agree very strongly with this, and think it is a point that is not made often enough.

Thank you for your kind words bobo! Not many people seem to regard education as even partly socialisation; there is a widely held view that it is all about encouraging individuals to stand out rather than helping them find a niche which is both congenial and valuable over a life.

Possibly I am more aware of the socialisation factor because, in my family, so many of us have grown up in part outside the UK. My DD is 10 and I work quite hard at educating her such that she will be able to hold her own in both French and English society - and hopefully anywhere else she chooses. It's so much more than ensuring she speaks English as well as French. I regularly stick her on holiday courses when I am staying with family in England to ensure she knows how to behave with properly English DC.

I think that's amazingly sensible. An international, long-term ex-pat family of my acquaintance found their children (having attended Latino, American, German, Arabian and Asian international schools) refusing to attend a Cambridge comprehensive school because they disliked British teenagers' attitudes. The kids, now in their 20s, are at home anywhere in the world, and have friends of every race and religion, but they are least comfortable among the English. Though they live here at the moment for professional reasons, they will move overseas, whenever and wherever the spirit and opportunities arise.

TBH it's not easy to cope with a deeply monocultural society if you are used to multicultural society. I regularly tear my hair out at small minded attitudes here in Paris and do the same in England. But, as you say, learning to socialise is vital and understanding the variants and where people are coming from is an increasingly valuable skill.

International schools form a different society than those of the countries in which they are based. Unfortunately they are full of DCs who never truly feel rooted anywhere unless parents make a real effort to form proper attachments for their DCs to one particular country.

It's not "unfortunate" not to "feel rooted", though. It's quite liberating . There are different ways of being in this world!

There is something intrinsically more fair about basing judgement on two years' worth of school reports than the one-day snapshot that examination grades provide.

I must strongly disagree.An objective measure is everything.

Bobochic, the Scottish system has changed to a smaller number of exams at 15/16, between 5 and 7 in most schools. It is not popular with middle-class parents (neither are some of the other changes to the exam system) but is at least partially designed to increase attainment by the disadvantaged. Of course we have more flexibility in the last two years of high school because we don't do A-levels so not comparing like with like.

Bobo perhaps you are more suited to a Camus 'Etranger' perspective. Many others are not and never feel properly part of any society and therefore detached. That is like going through the motions of socialisation for a country rather than being socialised. Anyway an interesting debate but off topic