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?

I had 20 odd GCSE papers. I remember doing 3 in a day at one point and having to be kept in a separate room because two clashed. It was relentless and a memory test at the end of the day

I did o levels and had to remember quotes, formulae etcI am quick at applying what I know to things though so being good at exams doesn't necessarily mean you cant apply knowledge. Back in my day though only 20 % passed o levels and the too 10 % got As then the next 10% Bs etc. Still very stressful but even though it was a period of high unemployment I don't remember getting as stressed as youngsters today.

In O level days there were more 'unskilled' jobs available so qualifications mattered less. These days you need to have your Maths & English for so many things, including apprenticeships, and more jobs require degrees than in the past.

So I think they matter more now.

There is also more openness on mark schemes which leads to more teaching to the exam.

I think the CAs had to go due to widespread assistance.
But I'm not at all convinced it was necessary to put in so much extra content.
I'm also sad that the reforms seem to have led to fewer vocation options being available to the less academic.
I also feel that functional skills in maths & English should be offered to those not expected to pass the GCSEs. You can write and understand English perfectly well enough for work without being able to do the esoteric things required for Eng Lang GCSE.

TeddyBear45 & Tapas forTwo your theories on Asian education is just wrong. Tech industries and creative fields like animation,fashion and cosmetics are being led and/or filled by Asians. Ditto engineering and computer Science. If they were all so incapable of thinking outside the box, they wouldn't be doing so brilliantly.

My "theory" is based on OH's experience in China and South Korea. He has worked in India as well, and this is not his experience there.

His background is engineering BTW.

On the university Facebook page there have been many discussions about students from some Asian countries being accused of plagiarism because all they have done is regurgitate facts that they have read. Being asked to form an opinion was something they didn't know how to do.

That's where my "theories" come from.

I think a good option to reduce the arguably not very useful memory burden of eng lit is to have greater unseen prose and unseen poetry elements. This really challenges students to think for themselves and apply skills , rather than regurgitating points they have been coached on.
Also , the exam boards do specify that with closed book exams they don't expect exact and certainly not lengthy quotations. They get an excerpt go work with as part of the question, so as long as they explore relevant quotes from that passage, their marks for exploring the rest of the text can come entirely from detailed references, which do not actually have to be quotations.

I don't remember my 20yo having many, if any days with 2 GCSE exams- there were a lot of days with no exams.

My 16yo has exams every day, and because he gets extra time some exams are 3hours 8 mins long. And then he misses the school bus.

He's worn out. He's no longer giving his all to exams he thinks he doesn't need. I suppose this sorts the wheat from the chaff. But, yes it's tough this year - it's certainly a lot tougher than when I took GCSEs 30years ago.

I think Asian education is, up to a certain age, exactly as Tapas describes. There is a lot of rote learning - not just for topics which lend themselves to rote learning like times tables, but also whole texts that need to be memorised. That does not negate the fact there are many, many creative and brilliant Asians.
What do I base my opinion on? I have lived in China for over 10 years, have been to Chinese schools and talk to Chinese parents.

I think teentimestwo is right.

O level days were before my time (2003 when I took gcses) however there was nowhere near the stress there seems to be now, from what I recall. I think the expectations for revision where a lot lower too - we would be studying syllabus up until around Easter, then off for study leave. Maybe a couple of revision lessons in each suject before breaking up. It seems very full on revision from Feb half term at the latest, sometimes after Christmas, now.

BUT when I was sitting them, a lot of vocational schemes would have their own maths or English assessments for candidates who didn't have a grade C or above. Minimum gcse requirements to get on were 5 Es.

Even for A levels, at both our school sixth form and college you would be fine with Cs in your A level subject at GCSE (In terms of getting in - whether you'd cope with the actual A level is perhaps a bit different).

I'm sure we all know people who left school with a handful or no GCSEs and have gone on to have a successful career, starting at the bottom and working their way up. I just don't know if this generation's teens will get the chance to do that when just about every job now wants C in maths and English.

So it's a lot of pressure for a sixteen year old, who isn't, at sixteen, particularly academic.

I think there's a few things here from my observation.

Typically they take more GCSEs now. I took 10, and was the only one in my school that did 10. Most did 8 or 9 and a few did 7. At dc's school they'll all do at least 10-12.

But the exams seem shorter to me. Most of my GCSEs were 2 to 2.5 hours, and most, I think were 2.5 hours. Now a lot seem to be 90 minutes.
Ditto A-levels, all mine were 3 hours with 2 exams. Now dd still has 6 hours of exams per subjects but it's split into 3 exams of 2 hours each, or even 6 of 90 minute exams.

So that adds up to more exams but not more exam time.

Yes it is awful, yes it is stressful, but no, it is not new. Look back over the last three years of Mumsnet and you will find this thread in each of them.

Ds2 had 27 papers for about 11 subjects. It is brutal!

@Villanellesproudmum: I'm pretty sure that the written exam for drama GCSE is worth 40% not 75%.

I've been reflecting on my O levels too. I don't have any of the old papers, but I share the view that we had fewer exams, but they were longer. Languages were an exception. I did two language O levels and I do remember that they each had 5 separate exams, though one was an oral rather than a written one. So that was 10 exams just for 2 subjects.

We did do fewer subjects though. No reason anyone needs to do 12 or 13 GCSEs in my view, and I think makes sense that many schools are reducing the number to something more sensible now that the GSCEs are harder.

I think 8/9 is more than enough for most.

Drama written exam at my school is 60%

Can't see what the fuss is about. I recall doing about 20 O level papers mostly in the range 2-2.5 hours in 1975. My son has a similar number but some much shorter papers. Paper 2 triple science papers in the next two weeks are all only 75m.

I just looked online for some originals of old papers. I found

1940 O level maths: 3H
1968 O level maths: 2.5H
1967 O level Eng lit: 2.5H
1967 O level Physics: 2.5H

I really do not think words like "brutal" are remotely relevant to the current situation. I can't stand Gove or a lot of what he did, especially the frigging EBacc, but the GCSEs had become a joke. The new exams and courses now have some substance and my son's school seems to be switching from iGCSEs to the 9-1 GCSEs. I'm glad that at GCSE most of the coursework and modular assessment has gone.

The one thing I would concede is that the timetabling could be a lot better. Two big ones in one day is hard at this age. The one day I did have concerns for my son was when he had a main MFL paper in the morning and physics 1 in the afternoon. The remaining ones are a bit spread out. It did not do any good me telling him that my Uni exams were four 3H papers over two days.