Massive decline in English A-level take-up thanks to Gove reforms

[noblegiraffe]

One for @piggywaspushed who warned of this.

Take-up of English A-levels has declined massively since 2016. There has also been a decrease in the take-up of Maths and Further Maths A-levels after years of steady increases (and the country cannot afford this).

Good job everyone. Well done.

Full figures here: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/803906/Provisional_entries_for_GCSE__AS_and_A_level_summer_2019_exam_series.pdf

I'm off to look that up for DS2 error. he loves history but also likes business. This may be his bag.

Glad to be of help!
I found it interesting for DD too, History is her back up choice.

I'm struggling with piggy's comments because of one of her earliest which appears to blame feminism for this change.

I'd like to hear more about that, because right now I'm struggling to get beyond that.

Dd has looked at that course but for anthropology!

I seem to remember DD vaguely looking at it and not being impressed... it sounds like a good idea in theory, in practice may depend on whether it can attract the necessary calibre of STEM students. I hope it does!

I was a bit shocked at what had happened to English Lit GCSE when my son did it this year compared to my studies many years ago. The Shakespeare was still there but the other texts were tedious anthologies of short stories and poems. Nothing to really get your teeth into and an utter pig to revise. The boys were playing frisbee with their texts after the last exam. My son knew one boy who wanted to do A level. Many at his school want to do further maths though.

MFL courses have always been 4 years and undervalued by employers. MLang where offered is 5 years if you do the year abroad! MEng is now common and stem has accepted this as being important far more readily.

As for entrepreneurs: they are born! They don’t learn this. However they are usually astute at employing excellent people who are brilliant in key roles. They do not do everything themselves. Also the days of the barrow boy made good are diminishing. Tim Martin, Charles Dunstone and plenty of others are well educated. What they spot is a gap in the market and get in on the bottom rung and do things differently. No degree will teach you that.

Interesting thread, we’re approaching A level decision making. DS good at English and got a 6 in the old SATs reading test, despite a diagnosis of dyslexia. He’d always enjoyed English until GCSE course started and really not keen, though thankfully is still reading I noticed now mocks over. I’ll be really interested to see his mock English result, he should in theory be able to get an 8 or 9 but very disillusioned and I can’t see that happening.

He’ll go the STEM route I think but poor teaching has put him off science and the T in STEM wasn’t a GCSE option as Computer Science was scrapped last minute. Luckily he is good at Maths so a change of school for 6th form means Maths, Further Maths, Computer Science then whatever he feels he can stomach for number 4. He has been really enjoying the current Maths syllabus which is great .

Does he have any idea what he wants to do after A levels, post? While physics might be the most obvious choice alongside those 3, if he wanted something different maybe economics or philosophy might not be incongruent. (Caveat, I know bugger all about what those A levels contain myself!)

Hard to get a lot out of him a lot of the time Errol However he did say he’d like to see how far he could get with Maths, he also said he likes the idea of computer science and I know he is very vaguely thinking about Law after his guitar teacher to,d him he would make a good lawyer.

As I have two drastically different DC I’ve been trying to stop the unspoken narrative of DD is the creative one, DS is the science one and have always said to him that with his GCSE options everything open to him and he could look at English Lit, History and Economics etc. He acknowledged that but I can’t see it’s likely . Teaching has been awful for physics and chemistry so I’ve been trying to say could he imagine doing one of them in a different school with a different teacher.

The good news is there is hope of a different chemistry and physics teacher next year, the physics one is so bad the really good one had to take them for a lesson and I am hoping they may get him next year which would be a game changer. He ended up having to do business for GCSE as couldn’t do Computer Science or German so I was thinking of suggesting he consider economics. He’ll be changing school at 6th form so hopefully new one will give him some advice which no doubt he will listen to more than me. Apologies, that’s a bit long.

I did poetry at o level. And the short story is really fascinating. I don't agree that it's a less interesting way to study.

I am really confused by a couple of the accounts of GCSE Eng and Lit . There are no short stories in the spec that I know of and PP mentions lit texts in Lang which hasn't been the case for years.

My class begged to do poetry today! To be fair that's because they didn't want to do a speech but in the context if this thread it was cute! I find students really responsive to poems. I do think it might be the incessant PEE paragraph way of teaching with lots of full annotating that some teachers practise or have adopted since 9 to 1.

cassian can you point me to which of my comments? I do not at all blame feminism. Making all girls think that in order to be 'as good as' male counterparts and be valid in the educational world they need to choose sciences certainly isn't feminism.

It must be partly cultural here as engineering is a much more popular choice for women in Sweden

It's definitely cultural, and therefore can be overcome, but that's been in progress for years. In computing, the current figures are around 25% employees are women. I'm in a particularly techy area and as the only woman, I am 4% of my department. So the balance varies.

Like many companies, my employer is working hard to try and encourage more women, but it's difficult when currently, only about 18% of computer science students are women.

I do think STEM is important - we're facing a massive skills shortage, certainly in IT. But I agree with a post upthread that suggests we don't provide for those who don't know what they want to do at 14 or 16. I was an all-rounder, and part of me still resents only being allowed to take 3 subjects at A-level. A broader curriculum would have suited me better, like IB or similar.

Radio 4's Analysis programme last night was talking about universities and apprenticeships and that we don't cater well for those who don't know what they want to do at 16 or 18.

I believe STEM and the arts are important. I have degrees in history and computer science. Yes, we need people with technical understanding, scientific understanding - but we also need the analytical skills, writing skills, language skills. I am good at my job because I cross that divide. Women in tech roles have often come by more circuitous routes, rather than straight from GCSE, A-level and degree in computing. This often makes better employees because they have a broader outlook and wider experience to draw on. There's no point being the best coder in the world if you have no creativity. It's creativity which leads to new ideas, in the sciences as much as the arts. We should focus on arts and sciences. We need them both. (CP Snow's lecture on the Two Cultures was 1959. This is not a new discussion.)

Whether things can be improved currently, I don't know. Educational change often seems to be more about surface changes to suit current politics than real reform, and I can't see that there's even much room for that with current political focuses.

There is a problem with Maths, FM and Computer Science for A levels though. We are not allowing that DS to develop writing or analytical skills when reading reports or complex texts. Many stem people have to do this. They even have to write coherent reports! Where is the training for this? A narrow choice of A levels with no communication element is often what leads to a narrow field of work. Somehow this needs to change. Many see FM as less than a full A level so should these students do some form of communication skills to keep those brain cells working?

OMG, I’m so sorry if I offended anyone by saying that some degrees are “hobby” degrees. I meant it in the context of one of DD’s friends who is doing a degree in something she is passionate about, but will not necessarily enable her to find a job in her field very easily. Also, two of her cousins, and another friend did degrees in fields that haven’t enabled either of them to find jobs in their field or related fields, and which haven’t qualified them to do anything else. Really sorry @Piggywaspushed

Perhaps I should have rephrased “well paid career” and called it ”a job” instead.

I should say that near where I live is dominated by engineering and technology type jobs. A lot of blue chip manufacturing companies are setting up nearby, so engineering is massive round here.

For the record DD took two science subjects, and one humanities subject that involved an almost dissertation length research project. Many of the essay exam questions started with “discuss” so I hope it will have furnished her with the right skills for university.

piggy your comment on page 1, at 20.55 on 7/7:

What has made a huge difference is the drop off in able girls who are told (pretty directly) that able girls should do science. Because feminism.

Yes, think I just explained that above. The because feminism is a sarcastic comment aimed at people's appropriation of feminism as a half baked argument for recruitment to the A Level sciences. Of course ,w e need more women in STEM. We need more skilled people in STEM , full stop. But we also need more women in top law; at the top of the Arts , in political spheres, on our screens, unobjectified, and so on.

Girls are not fully absorbing or understanding the arguments but think they gain some sort of validity and equality by choosing science which they cannot gain in other ways.

Probably still not explaining well.

But I, with my English degree and my job as a teacher do not have less worth or value.

Can I also add that English etc do not just facilitate writing, critical and analytical skills , fabulously useful as they are? They also allow students to gain knowledge of other worlds, older worlds, other cultures and a longer view of their own cultural development and history : at their best, they develop rounded, knowledge rich young people. I know this can also be gained through reading for pleasure but probably not in quite the same way, unless one really is an auto didact.

I learnt nearly all the stuff - useless or otherwise- that I know from the study of literature.

We need more English teachers. DD's school has always had trouble recruiting and retaining English teachers. One cohort had about 6 teachers over one year.

I think we are all either arguing ourselves back to the provision of AS, or advocating an more European (or even Scottish!) approach.

The argument for A Levels was always depth over breadth, viewing breadth over depth as less erudite.

Not sure how deep many A Levels really are.

I think we need more girls to choose STEM but only if they are a) capable and b) interested. Doing STEM when your heart is really in English History & French (which was the standard combination at my boarding school 40 years ago) is nearly pointless.

I think this thread relates well to the other thread running on EPQ v DofE, where the basis of the discussion seems to be which is more useful to getting into uni, rather than what might interest the young person, or be more enjoyable, relaxing, build soft skills etc.

Indeed tapas. This is the time bomb. There is an increasing shortage or real English specialists in teaching. We have really struggled this year.

As for entrepreneurs: they are born! They don’t learn this.
True, but providing a safe space where you can take risks, and fail, or have a great idea and learn how to develop it and “sell” it to an investor (teacher/fellow students) are going to be quite new to most students. And will be great life learning skills that translate across many business and professional areas.
For my DD a career, perhaps (probably) self employed, that combined her acting skills with her love of history could be exactly the sort of new service offering that innovation skills will help her to develop.

I do think there are loads of entrepreneurs in the arts. It's the selling and people skills.