Brutal amount of GCSE papers

[maryrosa]

My daughter is half-way through about 25 GCSE papers and is exhausted. By comparison, her (only slightly) older brother and sister seemed to breeze through. It seems so unfair. Are there any secondary school teachers on here who can shed light on whether it's her (less able?) or have GCSEs got a lot more evil?

Secondary history aqa teacher here. They got rid of the coursework element a couple of years ago. Means that my students now need to know 4 distinct topics which cover vast time periods. They still do 2 exams, but the sheer amount of stuff they have to know has doubled.

They can't do modular spread out over 2yrs now and have most at end of the yr11

Less coursework now so they are tougher but I question how much students will still remember when it comes to application at jobs / A Levels, if they’re cramming. My employer has a huge problem with Asian grads (most of whom take degrees that are almost all exam based) not being able to remember how to apply the material they’ve learned at work.

They got rid of coursework, and they got rid of taking exams at the end of modules and being able to retake.

DD1 did GCSEs 4 years ago. She only had 1 English Lit and 1 English Lang exam (I think), because she had CAs. She only had 2 maths exams not 3. Her Drama was CAs plus one practical exam. No written exam. 60% of her 2 MFLs were CAs with only 1 exam each (well 2 but short and sequential).

It all adds up.

DD2 who is y9 will, by my calculation, have 20 exams, and that includes 2 GCSEs with some practical element. It's going to be tough.

otoh, y10 & y11 were a constant round of CAs, starting Oct y10. At least this way they get a chance to learn and consolidate skills and knowledge before they are tested in them.

My son has 20 exams plus he’s done the practical element of two (PE and drama). Still has two written exams in a both of those. He’s doing 9 GCSEs. My daughter will do 9 plus she’s required to do an extra thing - in her case a Gold Art Award. I think the exam format is ridiculous (A levels even more so) and they should adopt the American system (continue with wide range of courses with no major exams at the end).

Yes they are much more brutal than they used to be.

There are a) more exams.
B) a huge -in some subjects double- increase in content.
C) more pressure because resits/modular work/most coursework is now a thing of the past.
D) exam boards (I’m looking at you OCR) have stupid policies about ‘ensuring the exam is unpredictable’ which in reality means EAL and lower ability candidates are penalised because the wording of the papers is inconsistent and confusing.

🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️I wouldn’t be 16 again for all the tea in China. Poor kids.

Maths in particular has got a lot harder with about 20% more content that was added from A level. We struggle to get through all the content.

Not a teacher however I had this conversation with one of my daughters teachers yesterday who is spending more time supporting exhausted students and colleagues then before, they are all tired and stressed, her subject has increased, she felt it was taking away large aspects of the actual subject by raising the written part to 75%, this is for drama. The teacher is my daughter year tutor but she said the course work side now removed used to take a lot of the pressure away and it’s now a pretty miserable task.

*coursework in other subjects

My sons who are in their 20s now did linear IGSCEs and GCSEs when they were in year 11(?). They were always arduous and I lamented that the vast majority of the country too modular courses with terms of coursework and the opportunity to resit just the modules they did poorly in. It was horrendously difficult as the rest of the country is now discovering. I guess at least now it's a level playing field. Same with A levels. Mine had to do Pre-Us as it was deemed that a-levels were dumbed down. They did the whole linear 2 year courses that the new A-levels follow. Do I think it's too much? Yes. But I'm pleased it's more fair now. It was always so easy to get A*s if you could just resist modules as you went along. In linear courses you have to retake the whole thing and resit in the following year.

It's brutal, blame Gove and his ridiculous ideas

DD took her GCSEs in 2016, and had 18 exams. She already had 3 GCSEs under her belt, but if she had taken them all at the same time she would have taken 24 exams. They were all linear.

Teddybear is right about how Asians are educated. OH has worked in China and South Korea, and he says that while they can regurgitate what they have learned to pass an exam they can't apply that knowledge. He says that they can't think for themselves and don't know how to show any initiative or think outside of the box.

I agree it is a punishing amount of exams to sit (secondary English teacher) , however I absolutely rejoiced to see the end of coursework / controlled assessment. No way to make it fair in terms of differences in practice between schools re. how much support was given, not to mention input from parents / private tutors / the internet.

While I agree with the scrapping of coursework, I have issues with the amount of exams, amount of content and sheer amount that has to be committed to memory. Most of which is forgotten pretty immediately.
A return to some controlled assessment in most subjects would be a good compromise I think.

I agree with the scrapping of coursework but I think making the exams a memory test is pointless. There is no good reason, for example, why you shouldn't be able to take the texts into the exam with you for English lit. Admittedly I've done open book exams and you still have to be very familiar with the subject matter but you don't have to learn pointless quotes.

Ditto for formulae for science. You can look things up when you carry out tasks in the workplace.

It does mean that each exam is slightly less important though - you can maybe afford a 'not so good' paper. I did O levels years ago and most subjects really did rely on a single exam and no coursework.

Agree with pp re exams and memory test. Open book is much better for literature as learning quotations is pointless. Formula books should also be provided.
Sounds like a return to the 1980s and O levels. I think I had about 30 exams in total. Took two languages so had oral, dictation, essay paper etc and it soon adds up. Ds took igcse so no coursework except three pieces of writing for English language.

I think that there's a ridiculous amount of memorizing. Dd is doing English Lit today and has spent a silly amount of time and energy remembering quotes (20 poems and Inspector Calls today) . They should be given the poems imo and only have to remember the themes, language techniques etc

I feel sorry for kids now too. There is too
much pressure.

Sounds like when I did my O'levels/GCSE's in the 80s.

10 subjects, minimum 2 x 3 hour papers in each.

All final exams.

We survived and it teaches performances under pressure.

Imoen My O levels in 1982 didn't have 3hr papers. (I looked at mine recently). Are you sure you're not misremembering?

I'm not sure it teaches performance under pressure anyway. I think it tests performance under pressure. Which is fine for those that can, but isn't necessarily what GCSEs at 15/16 should be about.

Though I do think I am better prepared to help DD2 now than parents a few years younger than I am who did modular GCSEs. At least I had to learn how to manage multiple exams from a revision and stress management point of view.

I sat my GCSEs in 2003, and did twelve.

I might be misremembering, but I'm sure I sat far fewer exams than they seem to now - although they may have been longer. Plus I understand that they tend to take fewer now, as the syllabus is so much bigger.

I'm sure we were allowed to take our books for literature in too - which makes sense to me.

I did my exams in the early 90s and don't remember any longer than 2.5 hours but don't remember any as short as the 75 minutes that's my DD's shortest exam.

I stand corrected - they were 2 hour papers (3 hours at A-level)

My point still stands though - it was 20 exams minimum

I recall DS having 27 or 28 exam papers when he did his (11 subjects) a couple of years ago. He had nine in the final week which were way too many when he was really tired by then.