GCSE results 'worst results in decades '

[Tel12]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/apr/24/pupils-in-england-facing-worst-exam-results-in-decades-after-covid-closures-says-study?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
This article highlights the predictions of declining grades in GCSEs this year and for years following, impacting on lifelong prospects. I'm not surprised by the results, just reflects on my own experience. It's really concerning.

You are definitely right about the social interactions of this cohort of Y11s. My DS who is Y11 says it wasn’t until Y9 that he had a single friend at secondary school. He was just starting to make friends in Y7 when they were sent home for COVID’s first lock down. Then in Y8 the school changed all the classes so they no longer mixed with kids outside these classes and he was put in a class with nobody he knew. And there was another lockdown. He was often going to school crying in the first 2 years and spent lots of time crying during the lockdowns. He was super happy at primary it was a massive change. He really struggled academically too and I swear he learnt nothing in the first 2 years of secondary. He’s got friends now, he’s really happy and he’s come along dramatically academically too. But I can’t help thinking how he would have been doing if it wasn’t for all the COVID disruptions.

English Lit is SO unimaginative. DH (2 x English degrees, works as a writer) despairs every time yet another cohort is given Of Mice And Men and An Inspector Calls. Yes they are well written and multi-faceted but so unrelatable for today's 15 year olds.

We'll all have our own specific lists/ideas, but there are so many good novels around embracing themes which are much more relevant to our teenagers' lives today. English Lit GCSE should be geared primarily to engage the kids and allow them to enjoy reading rather than see it as some sort of punishment!

The grade boundaries aren't going back - it's the distribution of grades.

We had the 2019 grade distribution last year. The exams aren't harder, they're the same difficulty. It's the marks you need to get a grade that change.

My DS19 took his A levels last year. His year had their GCSEs cancelled just before the January mocks in 2021 then in late 2022 they were told that grade boundaries were returning to normal in 2023 for their A levels. All these last minute decisions ands changes were disruptive for an already battered cohort.
I remember picking up DS after his last A level exam. The relief on his face was obvious and I asked how he was feeling. He said that he was happy that he’d managed to complete all his exams without them being cancelled.
I hadn’t really considered that it would have been a concern last year, but as he explained, his years greatest fear was that they would put all the hard work in again ( as they did to catch up during yr11 after lockdowns) for the rug to be pulled from under them again.

I don’t think people really understood how much anxiety was down to the unpredictable future of their exams. Not only did they have the usual exam nerves, but these were the first external exams they had taken and no amount of reassurance could convince them that they wouldn’t be cancelled.

DS attended an academically selective school where entry to 6th form had become more competitive in his year (school had planned this ) so on paper his year were on course deliver the best results to date. They did, but as a year compared themselves to the previous two years where grade estimation and inflation had taken place. There was a very subdued reaction from most of them. Fortunately grade deflation meant that despite very few achieving predicted grades most were accepted by their first choice unis/colleges.

Whatever happens this year, it is still going to cause anxiety and a feeling of failure. The disruption has had long term effects on current teenagers due to excessive screen time, boredom, lack of social interaction, the list goes on.

Failing to achieve their potential can be directly attributed to the pandemic but I don’t think there is a single cause, it is far more complex than just lockdowns.

I agree with screen addiction, it’s a constant battle in my house and something I feel guilty about. I think many children find it hard to concentrate in lessons and exams, and I think screens have contributed to that. But during the lockdowns all their learning was online! So we kind of forced them into relying on screens even more.

I think I am strict with my 15 year old compared to some families, no screens in the bedroom, phone handed in after dinner etc but I still feel they have too much. We’ve removed the games consoles now prior to the exams but it’s very hard when much of the homework and revision is online, we find DS gaming on his laptop when he is supposed to be revising. I know it’s not just me, other parents are struggling too.

It’s like having a plate of chocolate and carrot sticks in front of you and saying ‘only eat the carrots’ - why revise when they can look at their phones or play computer games? Their brains are just not developed enough to resist the temptation.

I think about my own GCSEs and A Levels, and I simply didn’t have the same distractions. No idea how I would have done in my exams if I had internet, mobiles, social media, gaming… I revised but then I often didn’t have much else to do!

Following with interest as a mum of a y11. Totally agree on the missed opportunities for arts, cookery etc - the curriculum is narrow enough as it is but they really.missed out on some of the practical subjects. Including in science actually.

Modern langs too- my ds is studying a language that he started in y7. He is bright but really has very little grasp of the basics which I find shocking. I'm a linguist by profession (not the same language) and find it difficult to understand how that rudimentary knowledge of verbs and other basics seems to have passed him.by. He seems to have got through the oral by learning several pages from memory - sophisticated phrases that he would have no clue how to construct independently. He hasn't given much away but I'm guessing the follow up questions will have been a challenge.

Well, all I can say is I hope for all their sakes that the grade boundaries are kind to them!

ETA god yes 100% on the screen addiction. Nightmare and more difficult to police with every passing year.

I think a huge factor is the shit show that is teacher recruitment and retention and the workload and stress levels of existing teachers. Shortages are having a huge impact in many ways-

• some subjects simply cannot get specialists especially in Science and Maths
• many teachers are teaching subjects they are not specialists in
• vast majority of teachers want to leave
• workload is increasing
• teacher quality is impacted as schools literally need a body now
• teachers are stressed and overloaded and no one is listening
• effort that could be put inti actual teaching is being redirected into collating evidence and constant preparation for Ofsted.

Education is in ruins thanks to this government and we simply cannot keep losing teachers at this rate because we have a government too stubborn to reform Ofsted or admit they have got things very wrong. They've led the demonisation and belittling of teachers for years and now we are where we are. Morale at an all time low and teachers leaving in their droves.

Oh and because of the shortages, you have other staff trying to cover and increasing their workload further meaning they then end up more stressed, more overworked and then many more leaving too. You'd be crazy to think that teachers stressed out and overwhelmed with work can do their best job actually teaching the children under such conditions.

@AgnesWickfield
Yes my y7 seems to be learning words or phrases not so much verbs. So didnt understand when to use
Me with encantar, gustar, etc.
Lots of big tests but few small vocab tests.

As well as the impact of Covid the pupils at my DDs school have had RAAC to contend with too! 70% of the school is closed.

We had to home school for the whole of the autumn term and it's been a shambles trying to teach in portacabins since January - with no access to any resources.

My heart breaks for them all. They don't stand a chance in getting good grades. We're not the only school badly impacted. The government couldn't give a shit. It's not even in the news any more. And yet there are 1,000s of pupils across the UK struggling to catch up on all the teaching they've missed.

We've had covid lockdown and now RAAC lockdown. Which has been worse as everyone else is carrying on as normal.

@JustGotToKeepOnKeepingOn how awful! I admit I'd forgotten about RAAC. Poor kids ❤️

I agree!
When I did GCSE History it was 20th Century and covered 1930s Germany and the USSR, and the Cold War.
It was pretty grim at times, but fascinating. We went all the way up to the collapse of the Berlin Wall which some of us could remember!

See, last year the government and the exam boards decided to change the grade boundaries so kids got a grade or two lower than if they would have got it they sat the exam the previous year. Where as Scotland and Wales didn't do this so their kids got better grades than the kids in England.

So that probably means the government is going to do that again this year so kids grades go down even more even thought they are working as hard as the kids did two years previously. So it's nothing about the kids attainment and whether they are doing well or not, it's about the government wanting it to appear a certain way. Only the kids that suffer.

I think this year schools would have been super harsh with predicted grades because last year the government/exam boards changed the goal post and dropped kids grades up to 2 grades. So schools are probably preparing for this to happen again.

@thing47,

Why are ‘Of Mice and men’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’ more unsuitable for today’s 15 year olds than the books I studied 40 years ago were for me (‘Twelfth Night’, ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’ and ‘Brave New World’-I only really enjoyed the last one).

The modern syllabus also includes ‘more relevant’ books like Pigeon English (not everyone’s taste but definitely chosen for the age group).

If there is a problem with English, it is how tightly the literature analysis is controlled, with everything seen through the lens if ‘isms’ (feminism, racism, colonialism).

You pretty much have to give the accepted analysis if you want to do well.

@Newbutoldfather I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with them per se, but they are exactly the same texts I studied 25 years ago. Is there really nothing else they could learn?

On the other hand, I think the curriculum being stale, irrelevant and boring is not new. What seems different to me is how many parents have a poor attitude to education which sets up an antagonistic relationship with the school, the lack of availability of qualified teachers and their stress levels and the insane amount of screen time all children have by default (include my own in this).

Ooh is Pigeon English now on the syllabus? I LOVED that book!

*If there is a problem with English, it is how tightly the literature analysis is controlled, with everything seen through the lens if ‘isms’ (feminism, racism, colonialism).

You pretty much have to give the accepted analysis if you want to do well.*

Really?

Do people not understand how they work GCSE/A levels and the boundaries?

So they take the cohort and let's say 5% get grade 9.
They get the results and give the top 5% grade 9.

They adjust the grade boundary to make that work.
So it it's a hard paper then maybe the grade boundary is 85/100.
If it's an easy paper then the grade boundary might be 95/100.
If the year has a hard paper and they as a whole are working lower due to covid, then the grade boundary might be 75/100.

Whatever is needed to give the amount they have decided in advance gives approximately 5% the top grade.
Then they work down from that.

Obviously when you have the numbers it isn't possible to do an exact 5% so they'll look at maybe 90/100 gives 4.92% a grade 9, but 89/100 gives 5.45% a grade 9, and they have to decide which way to go.

There are some pupils that will benefit. For example if you found vectors really easy, but lots of people find it hard, and there are lots of vector questions, then you will get relative to others, a better mark so might find yourself rather than being in the top 6% which is normal for you, you've moved to top 4% so go up a grade.
If you hated the poetry on the syllabus but most people thought those were easy questions, then you may go the other way and drop a few percentage pointe, which could be enough to go down a grade.

If this cohort does do worse than other cohorts then it will be not to do with the whole year experience of covid. It may effect some schools, or some pupils more, but as a whole, it won't effect results as they will manipulate the boundaries to give similar results.

Don't start giving the pupils reason to panic/give up before they've started, on scaremongering which isn't true.

This just isn’t true

I think the PP is right though? Grade boundaries are manipulated so the results are similar year on year. There was a difference in covid times but last year in England results returned to 2019 levels so I can't understand how results will be the worst in decades. For example in 2017 the grade boundaries for exdecel foundation maths were much lower than following years... the paper was harder (as ascertained by my DS this week!)

Grade boundaries being manipulated so only a certain amount pass is another issue but not the point of this thread!

DD is year 11 and for me the 2 biggest issues were that she didn’t have any time to make friends when she started at secondary. So she picked up random friends of friends from the Xbox for her first 2 years. It’s only now that she is getting a proper friendship group and the difference in her is amazing. Wanting to work rather than it being seen as lame.

Also Dh and I were working throughout the lockdowns (albeit at home) so she was completely left to her own devices. I’m still bitter about that! All the homeschooling and lockdown projects that we couldn’t do

I thought this was what happened too, so a difficult paper / question isn't a disaster as long as it's seen as difficult by rest of cohort. In any case, the results won't be the high covid levels, but I can’t imagine that politically the government will want a significant drop.

Schools set tons of homework and the vast majority to be done or, accessed via screens, schools are hugely reliant on apps and technology. That changed in the four school years between my two daughters, one who started secondary school in 2020 and one in 2016. DD1 mostly did homework in exercise books and handed it in for marking by teachers. DD2 nearly all via apps, and marked by the app or by themselves in class. Funnily enough, the volume of homework increased massively since teachers are not marking it themselves...

If this cohort are addicted to screens, schools have hardly helped matters.