TV advert to explain new 9-1 GCSE doesn't mention new pass grade.

[noblegiraffe]

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/ofqual-ramps-publicity-amid-confusion-over-numerical-gcse-grades

Ofqual has been forced to launch TV and Facebook ads explaining the new GCSE grades after a survey showed that most people didn't know know anything about them, including 84% of HR professionals.

However, in a bizarre decision, the advert mentions that the proportion of kids getting a 4 and above will be the same as that who previously got a C or above but doesn't explain that the 5 will be the new good pass grade.

Why are they covering this up? Are they going to backtrack? Trying to avert panic?

Why are teachers around the country telling kids that 5 is the new pass and in future this is what employers will be looking for, when the government are not using this presumably expensive one-off opportunity to tell employers this?

Whoknows - it is the current year 10s that will be the first cohort to have to get level 5s. By the time your year 8 does GCSEs Maths and English will be in their 4th year and the other subjects in their 3 rd year.

Phil League tables will use the 5 from this year, for the English and Maths headline figure, and for the Ebacc.

whoknows Current Y9 (not Y10) are projected to be the first year to need a 5 not to have to resit. The government currently says:

"The government intends to align the 16 to 19 maths and English funding condition with the new GCSE good pass in maths and English. A phased approach will be taken. For students studying in academic years 2017 to 2018 and 2018 to 2019 the funding condition will be based on the new GCSE grade 4. Beyond this, we intend to revise the funding condition to reflect the new GCSE good pass (grade 5). The specific date from which this will take effect will be confirmed closer to the time."

www.gov.uk/guidance/16-to-19-funding-maths-and-english-condition-of-funding#qualifications-equivalent

And the totally, utterly frustrating thing about all this is that the only reason that these changes were rushed through so quickly, creating such a mess, was because there was a General Election in 2015. Gove wanted everything to be rushed through because if Labour won, he wanted things to be so far gone that they couldn't roll back the changes. Nothing to do with the good of the kids.

Fucking politicians.

Grade 4's will count as passes in this year's league tables

They won't!

It's entirely possible, tiggy that the school got it wrong. A poll was run on twitter recently asking this exact question and a worrying amount of respondents were wrong.

November poll: 54% incorrect
justmaths.co.uk/2016/11/05/oi-listen-up-accountability-measures/

January poll: 38% incorrect
justmaths.co.uk/2017/01/18/three-rings/

Thanks for the explanations. It's still very worrying and confusing though.

It is true the new 9-1s are harder than legacy GCSEs. However, when I compare them to IGCSEs or O Levels (they still exist), 9-1s are still easier. Though I think EngLang 9-1 is very challenging.

It's hard to compare legacy GCSEs with new ones as we haven't seen a proper paper yet. We've had some from the exam boards that vary from v easy to OMG what the hell were you thinking. Science is a huge mess and maths is awful. I'm v glad some of you find it all so easy - maybe you could all become Maths teachers as we are crying out for them (I'm science but teach maths too as we can't get any). Iteration and inverse functions used to be C3 (still are this year) and I teach Year 11 set 3 in a comp - this set would have been targeted A/Bs. They are struggling to understand concepts that are abstract at best. Tonight's homework was find fgfgh(x) for f(x) =2x+1, g(x) -1 = 4x+h & h(x)=4f-h. I am so looking forward to marking it as last time one of the kids just drew a sad face and another said I was bonkers . These kids are 15, don't really like maths and will give it up as soon as they can. We teach as much of the complete syllabus as we can to give students the best chance to answer all questions - they are getting good at pulling the maths out of the very wordy, v long questions, but this is like making me do something creative (I'm useless). I have sweets ready for tomorrow's lesson

mums

I've had to teach my Foundation set (C grade kids) how to remember the exact trig values for things like cos 30. It felt like a complete waste of time.

Oh noble I know that feeling !! Trying to explain this has caused me grey hairs - last year for the equivalent set I didn't have to touch trig. Now sin & cos graphs are causing much pain - I've gone for cos has an 0 so starts at 0 and sin has an I so starts at 1. And lots of colour coding.

And I do indeed have a large 🍷.

Excellent post Tiggy - you hit the nail on the head with your 'changing goalposts' comment.

Tiggy that is so true. As teachers we used to know what we taught and the expected level that could bring. Coursework has long gone in my subjects (CAUs still exist but they are not coursework !). Linear exams have been around for a while and that's all fine - I knew what I needed to teach from year 7-11 to get the results. But for the current 10s & 11s I was suddenly expected to shoehorn in a load more content with no extra time to teach it. So I'm doing the old GCSE syllabus plus several bits of the old AS in 2 years. It's stupid, I'll thought out and totally unfair to the kids. I also own a year 10 so it makes me angry as a parent too. Oh and they've cut our funding during all this too. How to destroy the morale of the teachers still prepared to do the job. Grrrrr

What's also worth mentioning is that this isn't teacher being scared of change, or a bit of extra work. I've been teaching 11 years and in that time I've taught an unbelievable number of variations of maths GCSE.
I've taught :
GCSE with coursework and without
GCSE with three tiers and with two tiers
GCSE with modules and resits and totally linear
I've even taught a maths GCSE with a multiple choice paper.

These changes all had their own challenges; moving to two tiers in particular was difficult, but it wasn't the total chaotic balls-up that this has been.

Fuck politicians indeed.

I've got a Year 11 here who is demoralised and cynical.

I work in Primary. My heart goes out to all you Secondary Teachers. It really does

Ballsing stuff up really has been a trademark of the DfE under the Tory government.

I'm struggling to think of one policy they've tried to put into place that hasn't ended in total chaos with U-turns and cock ups everywhere. It's literally everything from early years upwards and is stuff that should have been obvious to everybody.

Well if they actually asked the people who do the job how to implement stuff it might help. Rather than politicians who have never done a real days work and certainly next stood in front of 32 teenagers trying to understand the concept of periodicity. Gove is a total twat who deserves to be offered up to year 11 to rip apart. Sorry, it's been a pants day.

My DS sat the KS1 SATs test that then had to be scrapped because they'd accidentally put it on the internet

KS2 SATs were also a fiasco.

U-turn on compulsory SATs resits in Y7.

Compulsory Ebacc - they've not published the consultation results, I think it's a year overdue so that's probably something they hope people will forget about.

New A-levels - total confusion about whether to take 3 or 4. Total confusion about whether to sit AS or not. Watch the A-level maths take-up rate plummet next year...

New GCSE - balls-up after balls-up. Exam papers scrapped, textbooks pulped, kids in tears, confusion about the grades and boundaries. Even Ofqual aren't confident enough about the pass grade to put it in their advert.

And don't get me started on fucking grammar schools.

The KS2 fiasco could fill a whole thread by itself.

Presumably your DS will be in the cohort they haven't quite figured out how they're going to work out a progress score for. Which I assume is the next cock up looming on the primary horizon.

and for you all.

I can't figure out why the KS1 SATs scaled score is out of 115 but the KS2 scaled score is out of 120 so you can't even compare them directly

And I completely forgot about the scrapping of levels without replacement. That one's starting to bite. I had to fill out some reports today giving predicted GCSE grades to Y7s. I felt bad for the parents who would take it as in any way meaningful.

So many cock-ups.

Hadn't noticed that. Since the test score isn't used for much might not matter. Unless they retrospectively decide to use the test score to calculate progress.

If the test score isn't going to be used then a) why do the test? And b) progress from what?