The DfE needs to stop the farce of compulsory Maths and English GCSE resits

[noblegiraffe]

Another year, another 124,560 students failing their GCSE maths resit and 99672 students failing their GCSE English resit.

Colleges have been saying for years that this government policy is a failure, that students are entered into cycle of resits and failures that does nothing to boost their confidence or enhance their qualifications.

If you get a 3 in maths or English GCSE you have to resit GCSE. If you get a 2 or below, you can take other qualifications like functional maths instead.

The government argues that GCSE is the key to opening doors and as many students as possible should be resitting to get that opportunity. But wouldn’t a qualification that they are actually likely to pass be better?

The resit pass rate for English dropped from 35.5% to 33.1% this year and for maths dropped from 37% to 22.7%. This is not an improving picture!

www.tes.com/news/gcse-results-english-and-maths-pass-rates-drops

Are their actual intakes (as opposed to their apparent catchments) similar? [It's hard data to find accurately, the only real indication is the analysis within their GCSE results on the DfE Compare Schools system]

Or is it the case that because 3 is 'the best', all motivated / involved parents work hard to get their children into that one, leaving school 1 only for those who have no alternative and those who don't have many who really care?

Are any of them faith schools or schools with any hurdles at all to get into them - e.g. specific primary school feeders? (Again, anything at all that requires any additional 'effort' or has any focus other than geographical will tend to skew the intake towards, at minimum, those with less chaotic lives)

Maisy,

You should stop distorting and facifying what I said. Your post at 08:15:48 is your own bollocks and projections. You clearly don't understand and misrepresent the letter and the meaning of what I was saying. This personal aggressiveness in unwarranted. Your defensiveness is apparent though.

Stick to the facts, like GCSE pass statistics.

6 years ago when I was applying to schools for dd they were all pretty similar.

Schools 1 & 2 are located in the same town both located on council estates but school 1 also had a nice new housing estate in its catchment (thats where I live). Both schools had previously been bog standard comps with School 1 having the slightly better reputation but they were both academised around the same time and turned into C of E schools. (they were previously non faith) However as both are undersubscribed church attendance was not a criteria.

Shortly after academisation School 1 failed OFSTED, the head immediately went on sick leave and they were without a head for approx 2 years. They were banned from taking NQT's but this was later changed to maths NQT's only. They recently celebrated going into Requires Improvement rather than the bottom category but their Academy Trust were banned from opening any more schools and have now had all their schools taken off them.

School 2 seemed to bumble along as satisfactory, parents sent their kids there becasue they had to, but at that time School 4 (the one in the next county) still had places so those who were interested intheir kids education and could affiord the bus fare, went there. Over the years though school 4 became more and more over subscribed (ds didn't get a place). Schoolo 2 appeared to develop more links with the church and became very "spiritual" - put me off completely. They are still very under subscribed.

Meanwhile School 3 had just come out of Special Measures. It serves a catchement area of tradionally low expectations and always suffered from a nearby Catholic School with Specialist Performing Arts status. It became an Academy and started to improve (my neice joined at this point). It was undersubscribed but year on year results started to improve, it got better Progress 8 figures than the desirable schools across the city and last year, for the first time it had to turn down 35 pupils.

The difficulty is with schools that once schools have even slightly differing reputations, these become self-fulfilling - and it can take a generation to change them (my DC's primary school was considered 'less good' than other local options because of its particular role before a whole-town re-organisation of schools over 20 years previously).

If 10% of educated, involved parents, or those who care about education, each year choose school 3 over school 1 because of an initially small difference in results / Ofsted, then over time, school 3's results improve (and more involved parents apply there), and school 1's results go down further.

To improve from its current low point, school 1 has to (with all the disadvantages of current intake and issues) produce notgood enough results that parents who would have chosen schools 2 or 3 choose school 1. However, those parents ALSO have to swim against the tide of 'Why schoose there? Everyone says it's terrible', and so however hard school 1 tries, it is always swimming against the tide...

Apologies for X post.

Cakes, as I have dealt in statistics, could you comment?

cakes we agree that the GCSE statistics show that some children don’t get 9-4 in their maths and English. We also agree that children who are below the expected standard at the end of primary are statistically unlikely to meet the expected standard at the end of secondary school.

The problem is that you think that this is because teachers of those kids just don’t bother teaching them anything. You don’t consider why there might be any correlation between outcomes at KS2 and outcomes at GCSE beyond your ‘sticking them in a cupboard to rot’ hypothesis.

So how does that explain that 6 years ago School 1 had a much better reputation than School 3. Both went into Special Measures, School 3 came out quickly, School 1 didn't?

(You don't have to answer, I'm sure if there was an easty answer then the school wouldn't be in this mess)

Its the middle and high previous attainers who don't make progress oddly enough. How can this be?

School 1 looks like the 2 years without a head + incompetent academy chain (who may well have siphoned off money for 'central funding' and also imposed swingeing cost cutting of things like support staff, who make a difference) has been the issue.

@cantkeepaway you say what I think far more eloquently particularly re statistics and expected grades.

Cakes is off on one again.

Mixed ability does not work in Maths for any end. The top, middle and bottom follow entirely different schemes of work. Why would I teach a lower set child the sine rule when they wouldn't be examined on it?

And would probably become very dispirited that they didn't understand it.

If children are required to keep resitting GCSE English and Maths why not allow children to progress with their long term goals, A Levels, professional training, City and Guilds etc whilst doing the resits.

As it stands only a few places offer this.

If one college is able to offer Level 2 with English and Maths lessons as an extra why can't other colleges do the same. Especially as last year they were doing exactly that

As ever noble you've put that better than me. I really should know better than trying to engage with the likes of cakes as I find such pointless assertions and factually inaccurate claims utterly infuriating.

cantkeepawayforever
I would agree. It sounds like one school had an incompetent MAT running it with systemic issues. Combine that with a lack of head and the school has lacked any strategic direction for a few years.
I remember being without a head for a month or so (the head disappeared with no announcement following a damning ofsted which was obvious to everyone). Much as the first head was awful and largely unavailable, no grip on the school etc, it did feel very unsettled for a while. Then a strong head arrived and things started to improve.

Oliversmumsarmy
All do in my area.
If you're just missing one of maths/English then as long as your otjer grades are good then you can do level 3 and resit one.
If you're missing both or your grades aren't as good then you can do a level 2 course and resit.

I've not seen anywhere in my area that doesn't offer level 2 courses plus resit. Having said that I'm no expert in FE funding but anecdotally I've heard it's a bit more precarious than school funding at the moment (which is saying something).

I have quoted in a previous post about the other 2 colleges that do the particular Level 2 course ds is doing.

He wouldn't get into a Level 1 course in either.

Whilst I was waiting for ds to register there were quite a few boys and girls coming in with their parents who had failed one or both exams and were registering with the college because they had been turned away from one of the other colleges.

Talked to some of the parents who thought it wouldn't be a huge deal because it isn't exactly a profession that uses a lot of English. They thought they could do a evening class to fulfill the requirements.

How odd.
I have no idea then. Unless there was an obvious English or maths requirement for the course then I'm not sure why.
The only thing I can think is that because the funding of FE resits is such a mess that they're writing their requirements to make sure that they only get resitters who are likely to pass (at the moment post 16 providers have to repay the government the funding for every child who doesn't get their 4 in resit... and yet the pass rate is what it is still.)

What you need to do maisy is to stop facifying. It really doesn't help your cause.

at the moment post 16 providers have to repay the government the funding for every child who doesn't get their 4 in resit

I did not know this. Words fail.

No they don’t. They lose funding if the students aren’t enrolled on approved resit qualifications.

That's a different picture to what I was told. At my friends college they were given the impression from their leadership that the reason the college had a massive repayment bill was because not enough students got their resit.
An interesting spin to give to staff.

Going off topic a bit here, but not worth a new thread.

In Maths we can say ask if you don't understand, do lots of examples etc.
Where do we start with somebody who is good at Eng lit, but not very good at Eng lang.
I want to help but don't know where to start and will have hardly any input when dd goes back to school on sunday.

WTF! That’s outrageous. They don’t even need to complete the course, they just have to study it for a qualifying period.

I wish I knew how to help improve English Lang.

Which makes a mockery of saying you have to keep doing English or Maths till you pass.

noblegiraffe
It's bloody outrageous!
Especially when you consider that when they've asked repeatedly for support with challenging resit cohorts (in light of this pressure) they've just been told to make it happen.
No behaviour system, no removing students from resit lessons so others can learn, no mobile phone policy that is supported.

I shall pass your post on.

AlexanderHamilton
It depends on what the studebt struggles with. It's not a great qualification. I like parts of it but the exam is a lot.

What is the bit about the International Christian Certificate exemping you from doing Maths and English.