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

user this has to be the longest last post ever

It sounds like your dc have the same opportunities that mine has at specialist school, wow you are lucky.
Living in a deprived area we had nothing like you have. It's good to see that some areas are well supported in the Arts.
We had lots of freebies offered so I can't complain, but these came from friends and family/ community and private individuals not so much from our LA
I too have a degree but left school with nothing at all. In those days we didn't have functional skills you were just "thick"
I worked in industry until Thatcher closed it all, and went to uni way into my thirties after a career that surprisingly enough didn't need Maths.
So, you see you aren't on your own, life isn't fair, and we don't all get the same chances.
Our eldest grown up son, used to come home and teach himself with help from us. his teachers would have loved to have done their jobs but were too busy firefighting and finding a way out of the store room.
The school was unbelievably bad, but we didn't moan we became active in his education like many other parents.

Now, if anybody has any idea how I can gauge what support to give for Eng lang I will be eternally grateful.
There are no targets as yet, not even sure if she will be given any and have no idea what level she is currently, would guess at a level 2/3

@RomanyRoots
PM me what your child's current working level is, target is and I'll send you some advice and tips if you want.

Can I join our little English Lang help group.

Ds’s target based on CATS is Grade 6.

I don’t know what his current working level is but I’ve had 4 reports this academic year. (9) In October he was assessed as on track for a Grade 1 & in December, February & June as on track for Grade 2.

They didn’t do end of year exams as they hadn’t covered enough.

I totally understand Romany. If a child comes from a family that can afford private music or dance lessons (£15-25 per week is about the norm here for music lessons) & there are things like county orchestras, drama workshops, dance associate schemes available then really there is no need to go to vocational school.

In dance up til age 11 you can get away with 1 or two ballet classes a week - Dd had ballet tap & modern £6 per week each but one of her classmates had never danced before, she just did a workshop in her primary school where her potential was spotted.

But from the age of 12 onwards itvwouid have cost a fortune to pay what was needed to become serious never mind that most stuff involved travelling a long distance.

Romanyroots
Well done you, I did level 2 English and Maths, whilst Ds1 was doing A levels, we couldn't help him in anything.
If you have time look up Archbishop Sentamu academy in Hull.
It is a newish comprehensive, 1400 students in and out of SM's. But it is working with the Godber's, John and his partner Jane Thornton, to take Drama students and the like to the world.
They took a group to Barcelona last year, two students now have places at the renown School of Arts?

Like our school, it looks for ways of giving kids an escape.
The RSC scheme, is for any school. They are lovely.
Our school also builds electric/wind powered solar cars and with Land Rover annually rebuilds scrap Land rovers and sells them to fund the next one.

Also don't forget we have just had City of Culture.
Plus we have the freedom festival to celebrate William Wilberforce, annually. We had Kofi Annan speak last year, and visit local schools.
There is also a branch of the Northern Performing Arts School in the city and numerous dance groups.
We also have 2 theatres in the city and one in Beverley too.
Plus free art galleries and museums.
Hull Cc and ERYC hold annual children's literature festivals, where all local primaries attend, and meet authors and artists.
You don't need to go private. Just need nerves of steel.

How wonderful it must be to live somewhere with all those opportunities.

AlexanderHamilton
Sure thing. I'll PM you.

Piggywaspushed
I never go on university threads. I been totally shredded by the public school brigade. Think only 4 threads that are truly relevant to my families education experience on mumsnet.
One about Lord Adonis and shit schools started by noble.
One about shitty grades and going to university.
One about using the local Ofsted rate 4 school and
this one.
The rest are just full off highly educated teachers, parents of high achievers and parents of private schools and grammars.
Luckily where we live every one uses the local comprehensive.

AlexanderHamilton
I don't know where you live, but my local city is Hull (Kingston upon)
Believe me it's nowt to right home about. 45 years of decline after loss of cod wars.
City of Culture was a way to rebuild, we finally feel we have something to look forward to.
Only in last 5 years we topped the rough traveller guides list of cities to avoid in the world.
Also Lord Hesiltine want to abandon the city and never replace in the late 1980's.

Bless you, I think you are the only non - teaching poster left on MN who thinks teachers are highly educated

I have been to Hull quite a few times. I know it has its issues but would wager it has far more culture and opportunity (and funding , at present) than Great Yarmouth.

I live in a city that was traditionally reliant on two industries. One was mining, the other we used to be famous for but it’s all gone over to the Far East now.

We are sandwiched between two major cultural cities & if you are able to travel there that’s great.

All our schools are Academies now. Some are good schools, some pretty awful. It all depends which catchment you are in. We have a thriving local amateur drama scene but for actual training you have to pay. There are loads of dance schools & music teachers. But in schools it’s all about the league tables so kids are encouraged to give these activities up in favour of extra revision/booster classes.

Maisy

Thank you so much for the offer, but I really don't know atm, she's going into Y10 and hasn't been given any targets as yet.
I'm not sure that they do, I just asked her if she has ever heard it mentioned as she works with Y11- 13 and she hasn't.

I just got shouted at tbh, she reckoned that she was aiming for a 9 in core subjects. I told her to be realistic as we were looking at her available time for study and extra study iyswim.
I'm helping as organisation isn't her strong point and whilst she gets help with this at school I just wanted to get her thinking and on the right wave length.
Apparently, i'm saying she's rubbish at Maths, and a failure.
It goes to show that we need to be so careful what we say and how we do this. Anybody who knows me knows the complete opposite and i'll campaign for the lower achievers, always have.
i just didn't want her to put in all her time and effort at something she won't excel in and so she wasn't too disappointed when she finds out she won't get a 9.
There are 3 foundation Maths students so she said they were all doing the higher paper. Not sure I believe this as the groups are set.
Only 30 in the year so 2 groups I think, there has been until now anyway.

User

I can sympathise, honestly.
we have been extremely lucky with one of our dc, in the fact that she will have a chance to excel in something.
However, I was being honest when I said the academic education will be no better than an average state school. It's the music education parents pay for.
The smaller classes are an advantage and of course little disruption, but it does exist, just in a different way.
They usually get really good results as there are some academically gifted and bright children, it seems to go with the musical talent in many cases.
Please don't think that everyone is better off than yourselves, I know this isn't easy on Mnet, sometimes it seems like a parallel universe to me as well.
I think it's wonderful what they have done to Hull and I hope it continues to build and thrive.
We have a similar thing here with 2 towns 8 miles apart, in the same borough. One gets all the money and investment, the other is still cobbled streets, high unemployment, degeneration, doom and gloom. It really isn't fair, even down to the sponsorship and investment in rugby League, my families favourite sport

The threads about private schools, London schools, grammars, university etc aren’t relevant to me either, so I start threads about things which interest me. Like whether compulsory GCSE resits should be binned. But here we are, a thread full of Hull.

Don’t worry about Great Yarmouth, Piggy, that guy Barry from Michaela has sorted it all out.

Piggy

Are you near Yarmouth? We used to live near Bungay in Suffolk, a long time ago now
Our eldest two were born down there so going back 20 odd years now.
Is your nn from Lord of the flies? It's one of the books that got my dd into reading and she came top of the class for some work she did on another book. But she is so patchy and will get between 25/30% in end of year tests.

sorry noble
Mouth is zipped.
Please let's talk about how to get schools to scrap resits for those that won't pass.
Thank you for starting these threads, I guess we all get carried away and wander off. I can see where some of the kids get it from now.

Hah it’s ok Romany, this just isn’t my first thread filled with user going on about Hull. Think he must work for the tourist board.

Yes romany nn is from LOTF. Poor old Piggy.

I am not near Yarmouth but it's in my TV area ( I am in an 'underachieving authority' though). The poor old coastal towns are massively losing out of all funding unless they are also alleged Northern Powerhouses (excluded from many government focus areas yet hugely impoverished in pockets and very culturally and geographically isolated). It'll be too late and then the government will notice. But then, as noble says, Barry is there excluding everyone so all will be well.

noblegiraffe whereas I had deja vu hearing about Lincoln university. I swear there were some threads that kept coming back to someone going on about Lincoln

Bearing that in mind, it is certainly time to look at what employers actually want when they say they want GCSE grade c/4+ and whether GCSE meets this. Functional skills probably meets this requirement. Rather than complaining that not allowing pupils to resit GCSE prices them out of the market place and that they should do this regardless of the probable outcome, the marketplace should look at GCSE and adjust their requirements.

I can’t agree more with the bit in bold. Thank you Noble.

But there shouldn’t be two tier system, there should be one qualification, surely. The point of equal opportunity is to have qualifications of the same value.

What the effect of the difference between having Functional skills and having GCSEs will be? Functional would become a certificate of not being good enough, isn’t it?

If for example people with certain hidden disabilities would tend to go for Functional skills, it could become a flag for employers that this otherwise highly qualified applicant might have a disability, with resulting discrimination. The implications are profound.

Noble,
noblegiraffe Fri 31-Aug-18 10:40:11
GCSEs being ‘designed’ to fail 30%. They weren’t designed to do anything of the sort. Back when they first came in in 1993, the A-C pass rate for English was 57.3% and for maths was 46.3%. They were designed to measure students and see if they met a particular standard.

You are making very important points in this post about the sequence of reforms, I won’t quote, I don’t disagree with most and don’t mean to bicker, but I think it is important.

One just can’t separate the specific impact of the design from the % of students that can pass it. The standard does not exist in abstract, it includes the hidden or apparent, the deliberate or perverse effect of the test format, the test structure, the skills it is taxing (e.g. ticking boxes at speed) and the skills judged relevant to the standard (e.g. Engl Lang vs Literature), and the marking method.

If you adjust the grade boundaries in the bell curve, you are measuring ranking, not strictly the standard. MaisyPops Fri 31-Aug-18 08:22:48
… Not all students will get over the 4 threshold. That's how the grading is designed (an increase in grades for one school is a dip somewhere else). I don't agree with it but that it the system.

The historic legacy of the standard and the design also has direct effect on the % who pass.
Why was the A-C pass rate for English 57.3% and for maths 46.3%. and not 95%? (excluding those with IQ