Are they stil allowed to take the texts into the English GSCE exam?

[Titsywoo]

DD is in year 7 and apparently they are starting to study Romeo and Juliet now as it is a GCSE text and they don't get to take it into the exam so they need to learn it by heart .

Surely she has this wrong?

Pepper actually no I am not. No open books exams for many years in the U.K. Not in the state system anyway. I have been teaching in the uk for the last twenty years. WJEC and AQA.

Last years students had books, I remember handing out clean copies.

I did mine 1995 and we had notes in ours

OCR, AQA and CIE have all had texts in the exams in my teaching career (qualified 2002).

Aqa definitely had open book exams last year as I was teaching it! They've never had closed book exams in the ten years I've been teaching

I don't know of any closed book exams prior to this actually.

I can't see the problem, really. If you're in the exam having to look up stuff in the book you are supposed to have studied then you've left it a bit late!

I appreciate that learning things off by heart is hard - my memory for such things has always been thoroughly useless - but what I ^do remember from O and A Levels was that you weren't required to regurgitate whole passages, just the odd line or two to support a point.

And learning a few quotations from a book is no different from learning the order of reactivity of elements or irregular verbs or dates in history - they're all just feats of memory.

Dd is doing R&J. She began studying it in September (year 10)

I had 100% coursework English GCSE & open bookn(no annotations) for A Level.

Nothing to be taken in, my DD has had to memorise two books, one Shakespeare and 15 poems. Year ten, entire cohort entered early for an exam with a new spec...unsurprisingly most of the year failed the mock. It's a joke.

DD1 had open book-clean copy AQA English Lit in 2015.

The expectation of answers will be different between closed and open book exams surely? DD had to do 'close reference to the text' or something, whereas I had to support with a few well chosen quotes but otherwise general references.

(I had to write about the happiness of different marriages in Pride & Prejudice.)

Sorry pieceofpurplesky but you are completely wrong. I've been teaching the AQA lit spec for years. Last year was the final cohort to sit an open text lit exam, as all the other teachers on this thread will confirm. Why are you claiming to be a teacher when you don't even know this basic fact?

I think WJEC had closed book but AQA has definitely been open book.

Another one wondering where these closed book exams have been! Always open book, although moved to clean copies within my career (since 2003). This year's y11 are the first cohort to be closed book.

My children have sat AQA (2012, 2015 and 2016) all open book (clean copy).

Pepper I am not claiming to be a teacher I am a teacher. Have taught WJEC for 15 years and has been closed book. Prior to that was AQA. It was closed book. If I have made an assumption about AQA being the same I apologise but please do not insinuate I am not a teacher - search my user name if you are so inclined.

I have just read your thread again pepper. So rude - and you look a fool as you are also wrong. Check your facts.

I invigilated English gcses up to 2015 and we definitely gave out copies of English texts and a poetry anthology. Think there was Of Mice and Men, An Inspector Calls and a couple of others

purple you said this "No open books exams for many years in the U.K." Which isn't true. Think that's what Pepper is getting at - you were asserting something that, in the case of aqa for some time, has not been the case.

Not digging or anything but you were very clear about something that isn't actually true.

As many people have said purple, what you said about Aqa is just not true.

fruity I was answering a PP who asked if I taught in England as there were no closed book exams. Clearly there were and still are. Pepper was incredibly rude to say 'why are you claiming to be a teacher when you don't know the basic facts' - when pepper also did not know the basic facts.

Doctor read my post about having taught AQA when it was closed book and how WJEC has been for a long time.
This is why there should be one exam board!

It was closed at one point just as we were once allowed annotated texts. Maybe there was rudeness but you did make that statement! You didn't say it was 15 years ago.

One board would be useful but so would tiered papers and a grading system people understand!

I made a statement responding to a PP saying that there were no closed books in the U.K. And that I clearly didn't teach there. Which I do. They made a statement which was wrong - and I responded with one that was wrong based on my prior knowledge of AQA years earlier. But was correct in respect that we have had closed book exams in the U.K. for many years via WJEC. It seems like two years ago I taught AQA however it is much longer - you know how years blur in teaching!

AQA, OCR and EDEXEL had open text exams up until last year Purple. You claiming that there have been "they haven't taken in books for years" makes you look pretty foolish actually.

"No open book exams in the UK for years.....not in the state system anyway..."

Now who's the fool? it's not my problem if you don't like being told you're wrong.