Secondary schools to stop teaching GCSE early

[xuanve]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c680z89dk827o
Are there people like me who think the increasing disengagement in Year 7 to Year 9 is due to the lack of structured learning that GCSE program offers, rather than the other way round? My children become much more engaged when they can drop subjects that they have no interest in and focus on the ones they like best and will continue doing throughout secondary years.

I couldn't disagree more. My children became the young adults they are because they were exposed to such a breadth of experiences.

Children should have exposure to all the arts and sciences before choosing to specialise.

Schools need more FUNDING to make Yr8/9 better.
Teaching art, music, DT, dance, Food tech, vocational stuff etc is more expensive than history or geography.

Round here the schools that start gcses earlier getting better results/are higher in the league tables.

Many of them do English a year early and I guess they have found they get better grades by focusing on just that exam for a year?

My children don't go to those schools and do all their gcses across 2 years. I have always been glad they do more subjects for longer.

Mine was glad to drop subjects that didn’t interest her in Y9. She had two years of trying out all subjects then could decide the ones she wasn’t interested in taking further. They can still do clubs in and out of school on other interests but a three year run up to the GCSE gives better overall results - as is the case in our school.

I have just put in my preferences for DDs secondary school our top 2 choose GSCEs at the end of year 8 with the ability to change up to February half term in Year 9.

These schools do have the better results but our top school also offers more subjects at GSCE than any of our other preferences including 1 twice as big.
The other school that teaches GCSE from year 9 does have limited subjects throughout the school and as a result gets higher results. Without a large amount of funding changing to 2 year GCSEs is not going to give that school more than the 1 Drama studio, 1 music classroom and 1 art room it currently has for 900 pupils or the specialist teachers to teach these subjects or offer more than 1 language.
I can still see this school offering the same limited subjects but DD will have to do them for 3 years before dropping those she doesn't like. There will then be more pressure in year 10 and 11 to cover the content of the GCSEs and after school clubs will become additional study sessions rather than extra curricular activities.

The GCSE courses are designed to be completed over two years. Having taught them in schools I think that's more than fine, in my subject of MFL anyway. All my English colleagues were fine with a two-year KS4 as well. I think if you did it over three years, in some subjects (English springs to mind in fact) you would be so bored of ACC (or whatever) after three years. Doing three years of English KS3 means you can look at a wider range of texts such as those from other cultures too.

Yes in an extra year of MFL you could go into the grammar in more depth, do more work on the culture of the country; but tbh you could do that in year 9 anyway (and we did tbh). Often in GCSE years the focus (from the YP) is “will this get me a better grade” so not really a time for discussion of the fall of the Berlin wall tbh.

In my schools (and I am sure this is not unusual) the DC rotated round the creative subjects in KS3, a term of each, so if they were choosing options in Feb of year 8, it would have been more than possible for them to have completed just a term of study on (say) textiles or music – and that was last year. Based on that are they going to know that they don't want to continue it?

And it is IME the creative subjects that are suffering. More and more schools are offering a smaller number of GCSEs, and I do see why, but the effect, coupled with focus on STEM and the now gone Ebacc, is that many DC have perhaps only one or two choices and subjects like drama, textiles, food, PE, art, DT are getting sadly sidelined. At least let’s have the students taking those subjects for three years; three years of breadth and variety.

And yes, my DC were all relieved to give up (variously) PE/DT/food/art/drama/music (tho all thankfully took at least one of those) after year 9. But there's a time for that, just as there is a time (post 16) to drop other subjects you might dislike (English and maths and biology for example).

Key Stage 3 needs to be a selection of a variety of subjects so pupils get to try them out and see what they actually like and are good at.
That can't be done in 2 years.
I have friends who had children in a school that started GCSEs in Year 9. They had to pick from a selection of subjects in Year 8 that they had never even had a lesson in.
How on earth are you meant to know if a subject interests you if you've never even had one lesson?
You barely get to drop subjects anyway as there's so much requirements of compulsory subjects.
I would have loved to have dropped science for GCSE and had to opportunity to do more creative ones but science was (and still is) compulsory.

IMO the idea of breadth over depth works when non-core subjects are elective and pupils are allowed to jump from one to another between terms. The transition from primary to secondary is overwhelming and the number of subjects is one of the pressures for children to cope with, from getting the right equipment to going to the right room, remembering different instructions.

But how can a child pick an elective if they've never experienced that subject before?
You need to try before you commit.

I have read the announcement but there are 3 points I don' quite understand:

• How binding is this guideline? Most secondary schools are academies, and quite independent. I can imagine quite a few headteachers thinking: sod the guidance, I'll continue to do what I want, the government can't force me
• How will Ofsted react? Academies care about their Ofsted ratings and getting a lower score if they start teaching GCSE subjects too early may well be the only thing convincing them to follow the guidelines
• I also heard about plans to simplify GCSEs / reduce the content. Is this just a meaningless headline or are there actual plans to do it?

@ParentOfOne GCSEs are due for a review and first exams of the newer specs will be in 2031. A review has already happened in my subject (MFL). I don't feel that the content in MFL has been reduced btw tho the exams have been made more accessible (and GBs for higher grades went up this summer, presumably in consequence).

@clary Thanks, I didn't know about the 2031 review. What do you mean by more accessible? Lower grade boundaries?

Well no. The opposite really. A grade 9 in AQA German GCSE was 88% this year and 85% last year.

But the boards have tried to make the exams more accessible. They have removed the questions in TL from the reading and listening papers so all are asked and answered in English. On the writing paper the questions again are in English not TL (tho that does mean there is no helpful TL vocab there; but you have more chance of crafting an answer if you understand the question). I also think the read-aloud task in the speaking is a relatively easy win (tho some teachers hate it).

Ours pick in march y9 but start science at start of y9. Maths i think probably from y7.

i would actually go the opposite way to the gov and allow taking gcses exams in y9/10/11 when the child is ready.
eg some could do a language in 1 year.
Personally think too much pressure in 1 year. And not all respond well to that.
im not sure it makes sense for some to retake in y12 but others cant take early.

Our school still enforce ebacc subjects which is an issue. And dont have the capacity for all kids to do the arts subjects they choose at gcse even though they actually only pick 2 gcses

Other nations somehow manage 15 and more subjects 🤷‍♀️ Our Polish friends' DC has just sat 10 exams over summer and thought nothing of it. The French and Germans do the same. And here in the UK everything is overwhelming.

Taking GCSE earlier is allowed and there are schools that do it as early as y9. Top universities don't like it though.

@clary Well no. The opposite really. A grade 9 in AQA German GCSE was 88% this year and 85% last year.

So easier exams but harsher grade boundaries? So it's not straightforward to tell if getting good grades has become harder, easier, or about the same?

@Ubertomusic
Taking GCSE earlier is allowed and there are schools that do it as early as y9. Top universities don't like it though.
yes, but the question is: how binding are these guidelines? Can academies simply ignore them and continue to start GCSE early?

10 exams.
That's way less than the average amount of GCSE exams because with GCSE there's more than one paper.
It's usually around 25 exams !

My kids start GCSE prep in year 9 and the school has rhebesr results in town. Is rhe government saying it is unfair to give kids an advantage by preparing children for examinations for as long as possible? Is this a backlash against schools who have realised that by having 3 years looking at quadratic equations etc in maths you are better prepared than having just 2?

Doesnt the GCSE content build on what they learnt in KS3? I understand the theory of dropping subjects gives extra time... but how can you "start" the gcse biology curriculum in Yr9 for before youve covered the Yr9 curriculum?

Saying that, DDs school does do An Inspector Calls in summsr of Yr9, then goes back to it in yr11 fkr English Lit.

Yeh so comparing this year and last for a grade 5 in German, this year was 56% and last year was 52%.

So the GBs were higher this year, but this was the first year of the new spec so I suppose it may change slightly. I mean getting a 9 should be the same level of difficulty really otherwise it’s really not fair on people who took the exam in previous years. So if the exam is assessed as being easier, it’s reasonable to raise the GBs.

I think the aim was to make it less scary – the questions are in English so a weaker candidate can at least understand what they are being asked. More accessible in that sense – so a student might look at it and think “well I can do a lot of that” rather than “that’s impossible for me”.

They did it at 14. They'll have much more at 16, not the usual nine GCSE.

The content is harder too. The level of GCSE maths for example is being studied around age 11, same as in top private schools in the UK, only free of charge 😁

My point was it's not 9 GCSEs = 9 exams.... it's 9 GCSEs can mean sitting 25 or more exams.

I know how it works 😁

They study more than 9 subjects and it's actually harder. Sitting two or three maths papers is still the same subject, and the knowledge and skills should be consolidated by the exam time so there should be no problem at all for a NT child to sit three, four or ten exam papers on the same subject.

What @clary is saying about MFL actually demonstrates how dumbed down GCSE are.

Genuine curiosity.....
Do they study all the different subjects at the same time or do they do a term of one, then switch to another the next term?
How many times a week do they have a lesson in each subject?