Foundation/Higher Tiers GCSE

[Hello1290]

My DD will be choosing her options this year. As far as I know for science and maths there are foundation/higher tiers at GCSE level. Are there any other subjects were which offer this split ?

Modern foreign languages, so French, German etc.

You don't tend to get to choose which tier you are entered for. The school generally decides (often quite late for borderline cases).

Yes just Maths, sciences & modern foreign languages.

Thanks - DD isn't academic so I wanted to get an idea of which subjects offer the tiers as I thought they might be options to think about but as maths and science are compulsory there's no choice there!

Although we don't get a choice realistically I think DD will be looking at foundation level. She doesn't do languages as she has extra literacy and numeracy classes instead.

Does anyone have any experience of health and social care Btec or just Btecs in general. I really think DD would struggle to organize herself with course work.

Ds is doing a Btec in Dance but he’s only just started the course. He has asd & his organisational skills are appalling so we will see but he is enjoying it.

Nothing wrong with doing foundation level, you can still get a 5 which us a good graide.

IME teachers will support students with the work for a BTEC (harder to do this directly with exams) so that might suit yr DD if she struggles with an exam scenario.

The school I taught at did BTEC animal care (we had rabbits and chickens and goats!) and that saw some great results.

Your DD sounds like my DD2 who is in y9. Our school have stopped BTECs after teacher left, otherwise I would be getting DD2 to do one.

DD1 did a Level 3 BTEC at college.

The advantage of doing one at GCSE level is
a) you get the hang of how they work ready for doing one at college
b) much less (/ no?) revision come the end of y11 (which is why I would have liked for DD2 to do one)

Our school seemed very good at facilitating / chasing kids on the coursework and having stuff out of the way so you can concentrate revision on other subjects seems ideal for our less academic DC.

My only concern about ds doing the btec is that it will be extra work not less. He has chosen to take btec dance instead of doing non examined PE so will be doing 9 other GCSE's on top and although he is predicted to do very well in maths and music and good to average in science in English he is very low ability and will struggle to pass.

For info, it doesn't say on the final certificates whether you took higher or foundation, a grade 4 is just a grade 4.

Just FYI I'm not sure if it is the case still but a couple of years ago when the A-C was still in place it was actually much harder to achieve a C using a foundation paper. Because it was the highest grade you had to get nearly all of the marks. Whereas in the higher you needed a much smaller margin to get the C and generally answering the beginning 'easy' questions was enough. Check with your SENco if this is still the case.
BTEC definately has its pros and cons.

it was actually much harder to achieve a C using a foundation paper

This is very interesting. Would be interesting to hear from Noble on this.
Are there any statistics on this?

(Maths). Under the new grading you can go up to a 5 on the foundation paper and down to a 3 on the higher paper. To get a 4 on the higher paper you have 'only' needed ~18% (and ~50-60% on foundation?). Schools are still learning which candidates to put in for which tier under the new system.

Some kids make 'simple' mistakes, some kids get put off by a paper where they can only access 1/5th of the questions.

Hopefully for our y9s choosing options now things will be a bit clearer in 2 years when tier decisions need to be made for them.

Note that you can't mix and match tiers for science any more. It has to be all foundation or all higher. No saying I'm ace at Physics but rubbish at Biology any more.

*it was actually much harder to achieve a C using a foundation paper

This is very interesting. Would be interesting to hear from Noble on this.
Are there any statistics on this?*

Any statistic on this would be rendered useless since the change to GCSE grading.

From being on several threads last year (dd took her GCSE's in May) and hearing teachers talk it appears that borderline 4/5 candidates are far better off taking Foundation than Higher. In fact in Science the exam boards had to introduce a new 3/3 Grade for double science Higher Paper because too many schools had entered borderline candidates for Higher & the students would have completeely failed with a U else.

Although the percentage to get a Grade 4/5 is much lower on Higher than Foundation the majority of the content would be inaccessible to those lower Grade students.

We really ummed and ahhed about which students to put in for higher and foundation MFL because of this "easier to get a 5 on the H" thing... I am not sure, yy you need a lower mark, but the questions are soooo much harder.

In F German or French it is really possible to get 100% on the writing tasks, certainly the first one. Unless you are very resilient, it's tough to go into an exam (eg maths) knowing you cannot access the majority of the questions. I know I would hate that.

I'm not sure about MFL, maybe it's different but I know it was a lifesaver for my extremely dyselxic DS in their maths and english. The school did practise on both and he always did much better on higher, albeit only completing 1/3 of the paper.

That's great Malmontar, but if he did a third of the paper that suggests a high 5/low 6 for maths at least. The debate is more about those on the border of 4/5.

English isn't tiered any more BTW - are you talking about a few years ago?

This was when they still had A-C’s so a good few years back. I’m not sure how the new system works hence why I suggested talking to the senco. He didn’t get a 1/3 of the paper correct. This is all he attempted.

Oh ok I get you. I would say someone who attempted a third of the new higher MFL paper (and presumably got less that a, third accurate) would NOT get a 5. Don't know about maths so much tho.

On maths Higher AQA this year to get a 5 you needed to get almost 40% correct.

You needed 32% for a 5 in aqa higher gcse this year.

For borderline grade 4/5 kids we keep them on higher if they can access enough of the content. It does need a lot fewer marks to get a 4 on higher. The problem is that for a lot of students they find all the questions hard and there aren't any easy ones to build their confidence.

Oops I read the wrong number on the table & got 38% rather than 32.

Good job I didn’t take the exam.

The old ‘it’s easier to get a pass on higher than foundation’ argument was contentious even on the old GCSE. Yes the grade boundaries are lower, but the questions were harder. It probably suited bright students who had been poorly taught maths earlier in their school career who could be trained to jump through hoops for higher, but weren’t solid enough on the basics to get a high percentage at foundation.

My school, back in the old days used to enter borderline candidates for higher, but resit candidates for Foundation OCR. The grade boundary for a C on OCR was only about 56% (it was harder than Edexcel), but it got rid of the worry that kids could lose out simply by making silly mistakes. We did pretty well with that.

With the new GCSE, definitely there’s a shift to Foundation, the higher tier paper is just too inaccessible for weaker students and they are more likely to crash and burn than get lucky on the day. You can’t train them in the same way that was possible for the old GCSE, the questions actually require understanding.