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

Romany - very similar situation here but my DD is about to go into year 11 and my view is the same too. She has poor working memory, an auditory processing issue and dyscalculia so English (recalling quotes from poems) and Maths in particular are not her strengths. I am constantly trying to pick her up confidence wise. I have told her to concentrate her efforts on her other subjects. She is predicted a level 2/3 at best in Maths and to be quite honest I would rather she got a 2 which would then qualify her for the functional skills paper rather than for her to get a 3 and have to keep resitting the Maths GCSE.

someone in Whitehall

It was Michael Gove. I believe that Mathematical Association had a hell of an argument with the DfE about tiering in maths because he wanted that gone too.

Don’t think sixth forms and colleges have to pay back funding if the kids don’t pass, they’re just shamed in league tables.

MICHAEL GOVE

MICHAEL GOVE

MICHAEL GOVE

Just making sure that civil servants
and Whitehall
and councils
and Head Teachers
do not get the blame for

Michael Gove
aided and abetted by Brexit Fraud Dominic Cummings
as it was ENTIRELY their idea
and ONLY their fault

unseen non fiction from a few centuries ago
And if there's one thing which is going to give our kids the edge in the 21st century jobs market it's being able to compare and contrast 3 aspects of a Victorian diary entry with a broadsheet newspaper article.

It was Gove.Ta1kinpeace But also at a time when gov deps like DFE are being run as fiefdoms with little input from 'experts' or now defunct LEAs. Also Pearson educational publishing is owned by Murdoch. Follow the money.

And here was me hoping for a vague comment as in 'not a sorting teacher but some idiot who doesn't have a clue' would spare the inevitable Gove rants taking over the OP's thread.
-But now we're here... sodding fucking cockwombling self-serving incompetent piece of shit that he is-

woman
now defunct LEAs
What makes you think LEAs are defunct
they still run over 2/3 of the schools in the country

What has Pearson got to do with Exam board fees ?

maisy
there is so much vitriol at the moment at unelected bureaucrats that when the name and the decision link up it is well worth tracking

Gosh, I had no idea, things have changed.
I just used to send my students down to inclusive learning and the lovely people there looked after them and they gained their level 2 maths and/or English.
I was offered a separate time to my students, but I wanted to show them that you can gain higher level qualifications if you leave school with nothing, so I studied alongside them.
I came out of college and cried like a baby when I scraped a pass.

Mine has just gone up to bed after telling me what she thinks she'll achieve, I think some are a bit optimistic but Maths and Science she is still expecting between a 2 and 4.
We have parents evening 1st day back after Oct half term, so I'll know better then.

She is predicted a 9, 6/7, and 2/4 in core subjects so far, so not very consistent

they still run over 2/3 of the schools in the country

Now pull the data for Primary schools
I stand by my statistics

Ta1kinpeace
I hadn't thought about it like that.
Yes. I don't want to do anything that accidently promotes 'unelected bureaucrats' rhetoric.

Just to clarify. Gove made decisions that screwed kids and schools over. Gove. Gove. Gove. Prick.

romany
Very different now.

Friends in FE will tell me tales of having (for example) 'the construction group' which is all the (mainly) lads who are on various placements and seem to view college days as an inconvenience because they much prefer placement. They don't mind the college vocational side of things but dislike anything classroom based. By all accounts most of them were nice enough lads and were never rude to the staff in a personal way, but a handful were all out hostile and unpleasant. They get 2 hours one afternoon a week. Depending on whether they were a bit disaffected vs quite unpleasant characters as people, they will sit on phones, talk over staff, lounge about, refuse to work, openly admit they can't be bothered. And then out of a group of say 35, you'll have 6 maybe who realise the will need their English for jobs and are really trying to do their best but lose out due to the others.

There's no behaviour system in the college. No support from leadership. No ability to remove students. They aren't allowed to send students out from resit groups either. One friend was told her job was on the line if they didn't get the pass. She asked for backup and was told to 'you're the expert just make it happen'.
I contemplated teaching English at FE when i started. Then I heard awful tales of resit teaching and changed my mind.

One friend went out to the company site which worked well so they had a group of 20 apprentices and they had their maths and English in the company building and the company made it very clear what was expected. That worked well.

Every single school in my area is an Academy, primaries included.

Maisy

That is pretty much the same tbh, but I think the majority of my level 2 students always seemed to be the ones who had slipped through the net, some adults as well as 16 - 18 and mostly female.
I didn't witness other groups very much, but similarly I heard of a group in motor mechanics who were like this, but they like my students were usually disruptive in most classes.
I loved my challenging classes far more than when I was moved to teach A level . They didn't want to be there either, but they could argue more intelligently and there calls in class were more refined.

I would love to go back again but round here I'd e expected to teach/ not just cover Maths and that wouldn't be fair to the students and certainly beyond me.

I agree wholeheartedly with what Cake has to say about children who have 'academic' potential .In particular those with SEN being effectively held below a glass ceiling . This being a misguided belief by some in the teaching professions (no understanding or limited knowledge of the potential or how to teach those that present with ASD symptoms) Therefore telling such pupils that level 2 or 3 is the limit of expectation.

If I had kept DS at his Comp 2 years (A)He would have taken his GCSEs one year to early for his potential to have been achieved. (B) Would have achieved at the 'designated' level 1-3 (F-Ds) . This being the glass ceiling imposed on certain pupils through 'ignorance' of not adapting teaching practice to such students.

Instead by moving DS to a private school and giving him another year he has achieved at level 6 and 5s in English Science Maths respectively !

DS had stayed at his Comp 2 years ago....

Most kids would do better in their GCSEs if they had another year to study them, not just kids with SEN. A kid who got a B this year could get an A next year. Is that capping their potential or just how the system works?

Education should be giving the right skills for nearly all children of average ability. The snobbery about 'drawing a line' and failing 35% is outdated legacy.

If 1-3 were a real pass, what does it allow to do that one cannot do with functional skills or Level 1, or without any GCSE pass at all?

If 1-3 were a pass, why employers require at least 4?

Clearly a line is drawn arbitrarily by design at 35%, and it discriminated against perfectly smart children with SEN who have specific difficulties and whose needs are not met timely.

The system discriminates against perfectly smart children with needs that are not met properly until too late. By the time my daughter started secondary, her faith was sealed. Because of the bloody flightpath. She has 99%-tile cognitive scores, she is smart enough, but failed, failed by the system that does not give a dam in their snobbery about 'drawing a line'. This is social engineering based on outdated ideology.

On MN where every self respecting member has children in top selective public schools and at Oxbridge, it is easy to agree that the 35% are undeserving 'not whatsit enough'.

It should be easy to agree than to pay higher taxes to keep the 35% and their future children on unemployment benefits. To pay for depression, social services, prisons. But you can feel warm inside that you are part of the top 65%.

If grade 4 is deemed the target , then yes pupils should be allowed an extra year to attain that level ! . The teachers though at DSs previous school didn't really think he was even capable of attaining at level 2 or F -G grades . I think they just had an obligation to put target grades on paper.

Incidentally his Primary school and a 'bad' educational psychologist believed DSs IQ to be around 75-80 based on their flawed assessments.

His current Private school estimate DSs IQ to be between 115-125 ! . This is probably equal to both his sisters . These being DD1 with her A* AA at A level / RG Uni and 'lazy' DD2 going in to year 11 @ Grammar school.

Bloody hell thats some chip on your shoulder, cake

By the way, the 9-4 rate for maths and English is about 70%. It wasn’t drawn there because of anything to do with IQ or any of the stuff you’ve been spouting, but because that’s where grade inflation ended up before Ofqual stepped up with its emphasis on comparable outcomes in 2012 and stopped it increasing further.

Employers ask for a C because it’s shorthand for literate and numerate, then moan that it doesn’t do what it says on the tin.

If grade 4 is deemed the target , then yes pupils should be allowed an extra year to attain that level

And if they are given an extra year and over a hundred thousand of them still fail, then maybe an extra year wasn’t the right solution for the vast majority?

The modern economy, especially one looking to the future of AI, will require more people in human professions like teachers, more nurses, more Psychotherapists, more SEN specialists at all levels to really help to develop those SEN children. It will also need more technicians with good judgement, ethics, skills and adaptability to operate all this technology. What is the point of running children into dead ends at 16 in the 21 century?

Besides, everyone can learn high school maths and English. It is not complicated, it just needs to be taught properly and respect the learning style. Some very intelligent people are visual-spatial and introverted learners .

Noble, I would expect you to be familiar with Daniel Willigham's views on learning styles and that that everyone can learn maths?
www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html

Is it true that some people just can't learn maths?

Oh dear god are you trying to school me in how to teach maths?

And you know that that link for learning styles is debunking the evidence for them, right? Willingham doesn’t think you should teach pupils according to any ‘preferred learning style’ because Willingham is not an idiot.

Besides, everyone can learn high school maths and English. It is not complicated, it just needs to be taught properly and respect the learning style.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that is all.

Maisy is right. Also - lots of student don't care and see it as our job to get them to pass, they see themselves as passive in the process.

The problem with Functional Skills is that some kids are being dragged through the assessment upwards of 3 times, it's awful and certainly doesn't set them up to face their GCSE with confidence

Studying English and maths up to GCSE 4 is a condition of funding for vocational courses.

Those days are gone. It was based on the class society where those 35% were supposed to be manual labour. Universities were for the rich and manual jobs were plentiful and reasonably paid.
It was also the time where people with disabilities and SEN were outcasts in asylums

What I am trying to get over is those that didn’t get O Level Maths/English didn’t necessarily get consigned to learning a trade or doing manual labour.
A lot went to university got professional qualifications and went on to be MDs or directors of National and International companies. It was passing the 11+ that made the difference.

I know someone who has an IQ of 140. Is a member of Mensa and failed English Language and English Literature with a U.

With Maths and logic their IQ is through the roof but ask them to do a piece of GCSE comprehension and they are stumped.

They know what the piece is about just not able to convey it to other people yet they are brilliant and have no issue reading and understanding legal and financial reports or writing about them.

Ds did a test a few days ago.

He scored 100% on use of vocabulary but 0 on comprehension. He couldn’t answer one question it totally stumped him.

What we are getting now is mediocre

Those that are brilliant mathematicians or wordsmiths but are crap at the other are never going to find out how far they could go because the barrier is put up at reception.