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Due to the last minute scrapping of SAMs which meant the textbooks were out of date and useless even before they left the warehouse and school funding cuts which meant we couldn't afford to buy them even when updated, teachers have been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.

So, user, what do you propose that children who can do a little maths - and of course have had to do it up to the end of Y11 - should take / do to record their level of attainment in maths for future record?

Because for future education / employment, those first 3 groups are radically different, so being able to have qualifications - even if not called GCSEs - that differentiate between them is vital.

"A grade below a C is not worth anything"

That is not actually true. Or it hasn't been in the past. For some children simply having evidence of taking an exam is important.

user, past papers have been done by the score for subjects still on the old system. For English and maths the past papers don't exist. If the teachers in those subjects have been giving them made up practice papers and suggesting that is the same thing they are either wilfully misleading the students and parents or chief examiners. Or perhaps psychic.

user1495025590

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

I think it shows great faith in teachers on your behalf that you think the 'past papers' the school are the genuine article when no such article exists. What the teachers on the thread are telling you is we didn't know what exact form the exams would take because no one knew.

If we are not going to cater for a significant proportion of students what should we do with them? Not much call for them to go up chimneys or work down mines any more, mores the pity eh?

A grade below a C (in other words a Level 1 qualification) may well be useless for YOUR kids user, but for many many kids that Level 1 qualification will act as a stepping stone to something else, functional skills, an apprenticeship, a vocational qualification.

Or do you suggest we simply write off 40% of 16 year olds and consign them to the scrap heap as not worth bothering with.

And as I say with tedious frequency-at schools like ours with a very high %age of low and middle ability kids,
expecting a higher standard of literacy to access GCSE Maths is an utter disaster. Often they can do the actual maths but their comprehension isn't high enough to understand the question. But who cares about the bottom 60% just so long as the high achievers can get their 9s....

We need to get away from this 'everyone must pass mentality' A grade below a C is not worth anything

Focussing on the old GCSEs, children did still fail them. They did need to know a little in order to get a grade.
With that in mind, why do you care if the paper that differentiates between a D and a C also differentiates between an F and a G? What exactly is so bad about a question paper which does that, given that it can then be useful for future employers/course providers/etc?

user1495025590 when did your children take their GCSEs? Last year was stressful enough for us, but this year stress levels are through the roof

“By the time they went off on study leave (a couple of weeks before the first exam)”

Schools don’t usually start study leave early any more. DD had “study leave” only for the last week of her exams.

“they had done all the practice papers at school (or for homework) and worked through structured and extensive revision materials .”

I think you need to accept that it is very different these days. Can I suggest you stop being so smug and have a little more empathy please. I don’t believe your child had access to lots of practice papers because even the teachers don’t know exactly how the exam will pan out. Let’s wait for the results

If you thought I was letting Ofqual off the hook, that wasn't the intention.
That's all right then

No way should exams ever be put in front of kids that haven't been properly piloted.
Couldn't agree more. And seeing a generation of kids be used as a political point-scoring exercise is just horrendous. I will loathe Gove forever for the immeasurable stress he has caused for pretty much every single person working in/around secondary maths education, all so that he can put a generation of kids off Maths completely.

"But who cares about the bottom 60% just so long as the high achievers can get their 9s...."

You could argue that, for GCSE - likely to be the final set of school qualifications for many of the lower attainers - being able to accurately measure and report results below a C / 4 or 5 is actually much more important than being able to differentiate between higher and lower A* (ie 8 vs 9).

For e.g. an apprenticeship provider, with the 16 or 17 year old working for 4 days and attending college for 1,knowing whether a 16 year old is working at a D / 3 [and thus may relatively easily be brought up to a level of general mathematical competence required for the majority of jobs] or a G / 1 [where this will take very significantly more effort and may well be impossible to achieve in an appropriate timeframe] is very useful indeed.

For a sixth form, knowing a 16 year old has an A is quite sufficient to know whether they can continue on to A-levels. Being able to differentiate between shades of A is not.

I agree that the curriculum needed revising at the top end, to bridge the gap between GCSE and A-level. But this did not need to be at the expense of the entire lower 50%+ - and also many of the more able, whose confidence has been badly affected.

The 3-part model of foundation, intermediate and higher sounded SO much more sensible. Especially if the foundation genuinely did study 'real everyday maths'. I have Maths & further Maths A-levels, but have not used anything above functional maths, with a few statistics, in my everyday life.

Science is just as inaccessible to the Cs and below next year. The SAM for year 10s was demoralising with lots of great kids getting 10/40 due to the ridiculous mark scheme. Poor kids now think they are rubbish at science. So this week I got them to sit last years C/P/B 1 papers (as we've finished those parts of syllabus). An amazingly they got the results I predicted. So who knows for next year - not trialling exams is criminal and the stress for the kids is hideous. I have a year 12 too who did mostly linear exams but the pressure is not comparable. I hate Gove

If the teachers in those subjects have been giving them made up practice papers and suggesting that is the same thing they are either wilfully misleading the students and parents or chief examiners. Or perhaps psychic.

I dunno.But DD and her friends I spoke to felt that the real exam questions were in keeping with practice questions she had done.I believe their were specimen papers so perhaps guess the sc

Our school also seemed to come up with a range of practise papers which echoed the main papers well - do not know from what source - DD had no problem with the Edexcel higher exams themselves. "Nailed it" was her response to both. She felt the only "surprise" was the final question of paper 1 - not likely to affect the marks too much.

both? all 3 - forgot the paper 1 non-calculator! doh..

I think we have Michael Gove on this thread. If you recall, his original proposals were for a return to a two tier system, where the brightest kids got qualifications, and the weakest got a bit of paper saying 'well they turned up to school at least'.

Saying that on the one hand that it's really important to be able to distinguish between the best pupils at 16, to really get into the detail of what they can and can't do, and on the other hand that no one cares what the less able can do because it's quite frankly worthless is pretty offensive. There is a big difference in achievement between a grade D and a grade G, and it does make a difference in terms of next steps. Also, a grade G represents a level of achievement; in maths 3.5% of kids didn't make it last year.

Why was the system changed from O levels and CSEs in the first place? We have changed one 2 tier system for another as that there is a GCSE foundation paper and a GCSE higher paper.

I do find the received Mumsnet wisdom (obviously with honourable exceptions!) that high ability children are more important than low or middle ability ones deeply depressing. Differentiation at the top grade is nice, but does not matter. Dufferentiation at the middle and lower grades is potentially life changing.

Iam, but the grades for both are a continuum - so a 5 is a 5 is a 5, whereas a 1 at CSE was NOT a C at O-level, whatever anyone said.

I maybe missing the point, but I think the problem with England is that children's future is almost decided at age of 16, by the single exam.

I know this thread has moved on quite a bit but I don't remember having any study leave when I did exams. I am old so did O-levels. I seems to remember my DM being bemused by the fact that me and my friends on a Friday were wailing that we would never see each other again as it was our last official day at school and them promptly saw each other the following week when we started sitting our exams! We also probably had 20 papers over a period of 4 weeks.

I also don't remember teachers struggling with the fact that they didn't know what marks children would need to get a particular grade. Is the pressure nowadays down to league tables and the way teachers are assessed?

I completely agree with those saying at 16+ exams differentiation at the bottom is far more important than for those at the top end (who will be going on to A levels almost certainly).

As an employer there's a vast difference between GCSE grade C (can assume employee will be able to do a task requiring basic numeracy without further explanation), grade D/E (need go through the task two or three times and perhaps provide a crib sheet as a reminder in case they have a moment) and grade F or below (someone else can weigh the post and set out the sheet with average weights per size band ).

Its very much the same as knowing whether someone can reliably remember their alphabet or not - I can employ them either way, but if they don't I won't ask them to shelve 200 boxes labelled with alphabetic codes!

I also don't remember teachers struggling with the fact that they didn't know what marks children would need to get a particular grade. I went to a grammar many years ago - no teacher cared what you'd get in an exam - they delivered the course, some very badly and if you didn't get it or didn't work hard enough, it was tough shit. No extra classes for anyone who struggled, no booster sessions.....quite mind-blowing really - how little they cared.

It was just a whole different world back when I did O levels in the 80s. No predicted or target grades, as pp says no revision sessions etc etc. You went to class, did your homework, and got what you got at the end of the process. (And that was when 16+ exams were far more relevant, as the majority left after 5th form.)

Different world. My DB's history teacher, who taught the wrong O-level history syllabus for 2 years (and thus all pupils taking O-level failed), just wouldn't have survived in today's environment....