Rant about the new maths GCSEs. Michael Gove you tosser.

[noblegiraffe]

I've got to write this because I've been fuming all day and I need to get it out or I'll never sleep.

So today was the final maths paper, the first round of teaching of the new GCSEs complete. What a total and utter nightmare the whole thing has turned out to be. The poor kids today looked like wrecks. Over 20 different exams spread over weeks has really taken its toll, thanks to all subjects being made linear. We had a revision class yesterday and they had nothing left to give, it was a really horrible ending to the course, trying to cajole them into squeezing in some last minute revision. Three papers for maths has meant it has been a real trial to keep the momentum going (not to mention the added expense of all the extra photocopying of 3 papers instead of 2). Next year it will be even worse as at least this year they still have the cushion of coursework in some subjects.

Due to the last minute scrapping of SAMs which meant the textbooks were out of date and useless even before they left the warehouse and school funding cuts which meant we couldn't afford to buy them even when updated, teachers have been scrabbling over the internet for resources to teach the new topics on the syllabus. The syllabus is unclear and teachers have been trying to find out what they actually have to teach from looking at the sample papers put out by the exam boards. Workload has been horrendous. One question on Edexcel Foundation caught lots by surprise because that style of question wasn't on any papers, and being an old A* topic, many schools hadn't taught it.

Some of the syllabus is just stupid. Memorising exact trig values on foundation? Really?

Before the most recent higher and foundation papers we had foundation (up to a D) intermediate (up to a B) and higher (up to an A) which were then replaced with foundation (up to a C) and higher (up to an A). Essentially what has happened is that we've gone back to the old system with an intermediate and higher paper, but got rid of foundation and are making all the weaker kids sit intermediate. There is nothing for them on the papers. Kids who would have got a G or F grade are having to sit 4.5 hours of papers where they can answer maybe 2-3 questions on each. What does that say to them? The first question on the first maths paper that they sat was (non calc) 2^4. The third was solve x/5 = 2 1/2. Those poor kids.

And the papers themselves? Awful. It used to be 'the examiners are looking to reward what you know, not trying to catch you out'. Well that seems to have passed Edexcel by. Questions which could have been fine had twists put into them for no reason other than to increase the chance of failure. Foundation kids for the first time have to solve simultaneous equations. But why put a question on which is going to trip them up and confuse them? Lots of fuss about trig being on Foundation so we dutifully taught it and spent lots of time on it because it's hard. It was on every sample paper they produced. It wasn't on the sodding real thing. What a waste of time.

My foundation class would have comfortably got Cs and be able to answer the majority of a paper without breaking a sweat. Now it's all very, very difficult and they hate it. We've had higher tier students lose all confidence, bomb out of the higher paper and be moved to foundation, capping their potential grade. Other higher students have decided that maths isn't for them and wont be taking A-level.

All this has served to do is to put kids off maths and make them think they can't do it.

And it's all very well saying 'the grade boundaries will be low, it will be fine, the same proportion will get a C as last year' etc etc. As a maths teacher who is interested in the maths education of the population, this is simply not good enough. You can't make kids better at maths by battering them over the head with stuff they can't do.

Standing ovation for noblegiraffe's OP.

My 15 year old is grey and dead skinned with revision and exam fatigue, and is dreading the final further maths and triple science papers next week.

It's awful isn't it, Teen, the kids look so ill and exhausted.

People who go 'oh all my exams were linear and it was fine' probably don't appreciate a) how many papers these kids sit and b) how much more pressure is put on them. Back in our day we were chucked out on study leave practically after Easter and our time was our own. These kids have been in school full time till very recently and in many schools are back in every day/weekend/over half term for lengthy revision sessions delivered by increasingly stressed teachers. It's unrelenting.

Noble maybe the schools are at fault. I went to the top school in the country in the 80's, and did both last year O levels and first year GCSE's (took some a year early). I did 8 subjects, most schools did less.
Post O level maths was unnecessary for anyone but maths and engineering students - irrelevant to the rest of the world.
Perhaps teachers and schools should focus on the children rather than the league tables?

Schools will stop caring about league tables when both parents and Ofsted stop caring about them.

One thing I've noticed this year is that this week is particularly intense with core subjects. I've never noticed in previous years or they've been more spread out.
Ours have English, maths, chemistry, RS, Physics plus history/geography and other options.

noble, normally I agree with everything you post, but can I nitpick here:
Ofqual had signed all the exam boards off. The textbooks were written and ready to go. Then exam boards started bickering between themselves about whether some SAMs were too easy and the 'easy' exam boards were stealing their custom. There were threats to sue. Then Ofqual stepped in, got some kids to sit all the SAMs and it was discovered that they were way too hard (except one) and the exam boards were told to rip them up and start again.

That "bickering" was the exam boards doing Ofqual's work for them. No way should the boards have been the ones comparing notes afterwards and realising that actually Ofqual had accredited three vastly different specs. It's exactly what Ofqual is meant to prevent from happening.

I blame Gove ultimately, of course, because he came up with this shit, ignored the experts he "consulted" and then made it all happen at breakneck pace so no one would have time to undo it. It's literally like deliberate sabotage.

For those protesting against easy questions: can I ask, how would you like examiners to be able to differentiate between:
Someone who turned up and wrote nothing
Someone who can do the tiniest tiny bit of maths
Someone who can do a little bit more than that
...all the way up to someone who is fantastic at it?
Same goes for any subject. This is what exam papers are supposed to help examiners do. Now if you don't care about the low end of the ability range then fine () but if you do, then that's what those questions are for.

Michael Gove fucking well SHOULD care about the low ability kids, because he does not understand what "average" means and thinks it's possible for all schools to be "above average"

Yes, to the relentless pressure.

26 exams, in addition to the various coursework and practicals already undertaken. Revision sessions in school at Easter and half term (all credit to the staff ).

And pressure? Round here you cannot get a place in a school sixth form to do any sciences, maths or English without an A or 7/8.

I.e top grades in every A level subject, not just one grade A.

No way should the boards have been the ones comparing notes afterwards and realising that actually Ofqual had accredited three vastly different specs.

If you thought I was letting Ofqual off the hook, that wasn't the intention. That the SAMs were signed off and then turned out to be so terrible that everything had to be ripped up and started again, taking another 6 months shows what a mess the process was. What's worse is that when the exam boards were arguing that one board was too easy, when put in front of actual kids it turned out that all but one paper was too hard. We already know that you can't gauge the difficulty of a paper without kids sitting it, that's why grade boundaries are set after the exam. But no one thought to give these brand new papers to kids, and if it wasn't for the exam boards scrapping, we'd have been stuck with the ridiculous papers. I don't know if you saw the original SAMs but they were totally horrifying, I don't understand how the experts couldn't see that the kids would just fail them.
Gove wanted to rush everything through before the 2015 GE and the timelines were so insane that nothing could be piloted but it's just like everyone went 'fuck it, that will do'.
The new papers were then tested for the first time in the November mock. The results for that were appalling. The report from Edexcel is pleading with schools to switch kids from higher to foundation.
No way should exams ever be put in front of kids that haven't been properly piloted. It's a recipe for disaster - as we have seen so far.

I did the bulk of my GCSEs in 1992. I have 9 in total - maths was done a year early, geology in lower 6th so I only had 7 to do in one go. Of those Eng lit was 100% course work and RE was 50% so I only sat exams in 5.5 subject and only had one (maximum two) exams for the other subjects. We were also chucked out of school at Easter & had exams spread over weeks and weeks.

Dd has done 11 subjects (9 GCSEs, a BTEC and a AS level) - all have at least two, many have three, exams and they were all crammed into 4 weeks. Very little study leave. She is absolutely drained and exhausted, it has been miserable. Not even remotely comparable to my experience of GCSEs.

DD is easily as good at maths as me - I did well at maths A level & went on to do STEM at university - but she has absolutely zero confidence in her ability now.

This isn't the end of it either for these kids. A-level has also been reformed, with maths for first teaching in September. The specifications have only just all been signed off so now we're left with another mad rush to learn all the new stuff and set up schemes of work. Next year for AS and then A-level we're going to have exactly the same issues about lack of resources, no grade boundaries and so on. Other subjects are already battling with this.

I am so thankful that DD took her GCSEs last year. However the current year 12s are also guinea pigs for A level reforms. The spec for geography has completely changed, and the spec for biology has, so looking at past papers isn't very helpful.

I am old enough to have taken O levels back in the day, and our curriculum didn't allow for more than 8 subjects to be taken in one go. We didn't have as many exams, but they were longer. Each exam was 2.5 hours long, and all the A level exams were 3 hours.

DD was stressed enough doing AS levels, and I feel for everyone - students, teachers and parents going through the exam mill right now.

Actually a third of A levels are being trialled by current year 13s including Biology....

Iam, that's my memory of O-levels as well - that most were 1x 2.5 hour paper, rather than lots of shorter papers.

Maths had 2 papers (did in Y10, along with French, which had a live oral with an examiner and a dictation test as well as comprehension / writing), as did Further Maths (in Year 11). Also did the single paper of English language in the November sitting of Y11.

So I ended up with 12 O-level (or A/O level) qualification, but for the majority I had 2.5 hours of examinations, each in a single sitting. DS's total hours are not totally dissimilar to this in most subjects - maybe 3 hours not 2.5 - but he has many more papers on many more days.

Noble, do you happen to know yet if the newly signed off A level specs are wildly different from the old ones? DS is set on doing A level maths starting in September and I'm wondering what he's letting himself in for.

All I can say is I'm very, very glad that we live in Wales . . . I don't think from the reports of the first results from the new qualifications that things are sorted here either, but at least it seems a bit less of a car-crash.

DramaQueenofHighCs the maths GCSE has been split in two here, with one qualification in 'numeracy', the other 'maths', I guess the aim is something like your 'functional maths'?

Just came on here to say I agree with the OP. The edexcel higher GCSE maths exams have totally destroyed my DD's confidence. I cant quite work it out - she is in fact very good at maths, works really really hard, predicted 8's, top set. By the time she finished the last paper this week she was in tears - we are genuinely concerned she might not even manage a 6. She is rethinking her A - level maths choice (school requires a 7) and her confidence is on the floor.

She says the frustrating thing is that she could do the maths but somehow the way the questions were presented threw her completely. She then started to panic as time was running out and so she couldn't think clearly.

She is so much better at maths than her older sister and there will be no justice if they end up with similarly regarded grades as a result of these changes - I doubt whether future employers or universities will think a "6" under the new system is any better than someone a year earlier who got a B.

I would suggest that all these stressed out kiuds must have very pushy parents and /or weak teachers..ihave had 3 DC (so far) through GCSEs and none have been 'ill and stressed' By the time they went off on study leave (a couple of weeks before the first exam) they had done all the practice papers at school (or for homework) and worked through structured and extensive revision materials .
Back to the G/F grade GCSE passes .What is the point of having a qualification that says you can do maths at the level of a 7 year old?

user, have you had a year 11 through GCSEs THIS YEAR?

From families with several children who had a Year 11 taking GCSEs this year, this year has been a wholly different ball-game.

There ARE no past papers for Maths this year. Or English language, or English Lit.

Next year there will be no valid past papers for any subject except the 3 subjects from this year, where there will be 1 past paper to look at.

Very different from 'done all practice papers', which was possible in the past but simply isn't under the new spec.

user, regarding G/F - If the old G was a level 3, that was the old expected level for end Y4, so 9 year old, to be pedantic.

However, it is still different from 'totally innumerate' - I have known Y6 children with significant SEN working at P5-6 at the end of Y6, so still below the level expected of a year 1 child, so knowing that a child is working well above this level is still useful for whoever employs / trains those teenagers next. Level 3 in old levels is definitely 'functionally numerate' - written addition, subtraction, money problems etc. Probably most maths you do in everyday life would fit within old level 3.

No, it's not a 'GCSE pass', but in the past it gave genuine information about what someone COULD do, as a foundation for the next step.

user, have you had a year 11 through GCSEs THIS YEAR

Yes a DD in Y11 (16 today!!) ! She has done loads of practice papers.I think the school have written them or got them from revision books

For those protesting against easy questions: can I ask, how would you like examiners to be able to differentiate between:
Someone who turned up and wrote nothing
Someone who can do the tiniest tiny bit of maths
Someone who can do a little bit more than that
...all the way up to someone who is fantastic at it?

I don't think they should cater for the first 3 groups at all.Unless you are reasonably competent in maths you do not get a GCSE. We need to get away from this 'everyone must pass mentality' A grade below a C is not worth anything

I don't know whether it was your experience, but of the umpteen practice papers DS did for his exam, none realistically represented the actual Maths exams, except the Edexcel mock. Several commercially-published sample papers contained material that wasn't meant to be in the syllabus, one set was pitched at the old SAM level (they were terrifying). Their huge variability actually made DS more nervous rather than feeling better prepared.

Our experience is that it is the uncertainty that is stressful, not having pushy parents or poor teachers. kKnowing that nobody knows what the new exam will be like, and knowing that panicked changes were being made up to (and in the case of English, during) the exam, was deeply unsettling.