Why do some schools start GCSE in Year 9 others Year 10?

[pepsi]

Ive noticed that some schools choose their options in Year 8 to start in year 9 and others choose at end of year 9 to begin in Year 10 for GCSE's. Why is this and how does it work, children arent at secondary yet but just wondered.

GCSEs start in y10. The schools that do it in yr9 are trying to raise their results by getting 'easy'ones out of the way eg Btec PE so that they can take additional onesin y10/focus on 'harder' ones in yr10. That's just my opinion though, but some schools results do not hold up to close examination.

I can't speak for option subjects, but we get cracking on GCSE English halfway through year 9, since the demise of SATs (hurrah!).

It seems daft not to - you can get a LOT of coursework done'n'dusted in 4 months.

It's up to the school & how they interpret the National Curriculum. I suspect that it'll happen more & more as the glorious freedom of SATs no longer buggering up affecting English, Maths & Science filters through to influence other subjects, & the new (& at first glance more rigorous) 2010 syllabuses for GCSE come on board.

So do they still sit the actual test paper at the same time. If the GSCE is done in modules does that mean the actuall testing which acrues real grades starts earlier, or are they just studying earlier for a specific subject.

DS is year9 and started some of his core GCSEs. He is starting science very soon and has been doing ICT OCR since YR8. He is chosing the rest of his options at the moment.

raven: I thought that GCSEs were designed to be a test for 16 year olds. What is the logic in doing the coursework for these in Y9 i.e
a) two years too young / immature and
b) before they have covered the syllabus

I fail to see how testing Y9 on the KS3 syllabus (SATs) is seen as buggering up the kids but putting them in too early for tests on KS4 (GCSEs) is seen as a good thing. Please explain.

i think its because many of te GCSEs have a modular approach, so they are more of a continual assessment rather than a one off snapshot.

DD1 is starting some shortly, over the next 2 years, depending on results and abilities the students get directed into different courses, science diploma, double, triple, or separate biology, physics, chemistry, and also english, or english lit and lang separates.

The SATS buggered up the GCSE courses because they were pointless and arbitrary and had no bearing on GCSE choices or results. Notwasting months revising and doing them frees up time for the core subjects and more individual choice subjects.

and DD's school doesn't do resits so they have to start working now, rather than coasting along for a couple of years then cramming.

Ours choose options in Y10, but in those in very top group in Maths take their GCSE's a year early. Similarly those who have a foreign native language/bilingual are encouraged to take GCSE it early (Y9 or Y10) as that gets it out of way and gives them a sort of 'free' extra GCSE and option

GCSE work in English, Science and Maths now starting in summer term Y9 as SATS now no longer exist

Hello fembear.

As EccentricaSchuster has said, the SATs were arbitrary & pointless.

Even assuming they were marked by competent subject specialists, which was by no means guaranteed, the results were a fairly useless snapshot. A ridiculous proportion of year 9 was spent narrowly teaching to the test.

They've been replaced by APP, for which I am a passionate advocate - we teach a broad spectrum of relevant skills, the kids can see & understand their ongoing progress & their teacher is able to tailor his/her teaching to the individual/group by ongoing, intelligent & rigorous monitoring.

It's quite a bit more work than just training them to jump through a SATs hoop set to the 'appropriate' level (I'd got very good at that, depressingly) but it's of vastly more value to the students.

(Disclaimer: I can't speak for Maths & Science! I do have colleagues in these subjects who miss the SATs).

As for GCSE coursework & maturity, well, as it is now, it works like a 'high score'.

So you can spend the back half of year 9 getting Ds, say, for Speaking & Listening, Original Writing & Media - all skills-based, so not having 'covered the curriculum' is not an issue as it would be in, say, History or Food Technology.

As you say, they lack the maturity to get target grades at that age - usually, anyway - but when they submit subsequent assignments in year 10 & 11, those early attempts stand them in good stead, & your Ds are (hopefully) Bs...

Also, if you have a student who for whatever reason misses the 2nd Original Writing piece, for example, you can then dust off & improve their year 9 submission with them. I've done this a LOT with my current lower ability year 11 class - quite a few of them have collegiate courses &/or highly complicated personal lives, which impact massively on attendance.

So it's not 'putting them in for tests'. Doesn't work like that.

It's all changing for 2010 (current year 9) - coursework is being replaced with 'controlled assessment', which is a sort of halfway house between coursework & exams. We're currently discussing whether we'd like to move to a 3 year course - makes good sense to me, but apparently timetabling would be a nightmare unless the whole school adopts it (as in the OP).

I still don't get it. You sat that SATs were "a fairly useless snapshot" but you could say that of any exam. On that basis, shall we get rid of GCSE and GCE too?

"A ridiculous proportion of year 9 was spent narrowly teaching to the test" The same is said of Y6. The kids hate it. The parents hate it. So why do teachers do it? Answer: to make themselves look good in performance tables. You spout all this theory about "spectrum of relevant skills and ongoing progress" but when you are held to account (by SATs), you suddenly revert to "teaching to the test". Do you have faith in your methods or not?

I don't agree with this concept of 'beating your high score', starting with a D grade and hoping to improve it to a B. Where is the logic in that? Why not ask three year olds to do the first draft of their Dissertation while you are at it.
What does it do to a child's confidence if their first grade at a piece of GCSE work is a fail. Why not give a Y9 student a chance to score well in a Y9 test, not fail at a Y11 test.

ds has chosen his options for year 9 now he is in year 8.D

o know he will be sitting his maths, science , English and georgraohy and Rs year early in year 10 but he is academic so for him it works .Not sure what he will fill year 11 with though as it will potentially leave him with empty timetable

this picking gcses early happened at a local school when a different school was brought in to close it .We havent heard of any pupils who went through it who thought it was of any benefit to them !!!The school probably didnt need as many teachers though from what we heard in year 11 they tried to improve some grades and were offered the chance to do a public services course regardless of whether public services interested them

ok was not sure if they then if got the pass enough started on the As/A level option.

public services would so not appeal to ds he has had his mind set on his chosen carer since he was 11 and has been pretty much single minded about options to refelect that

Hadn't seen your reply fembear - so belated response, sorry.

The year 9 SAT, IMO & that of most English teachers I know, was a poor exam. At its best, you'd be assessing students on an extremely narrow range of evidence, whereas at GCSE you're genuinely looking at a substantial body of work completed over 2 years.

Any experienced teacher (myself included) got awfully good at spotting the 'tricks' you had to teach students to optimise their level.

None of them had much to do with functional skills (ie. actually using your own language, as a young adult, on a day to day basis), or GCSE English, or literature, or, well, anything but getting one's target grade on an English SAT.

& THEN they'd be sent off to be marked. Then re-marked, because (she says diplomatically) the calibre of markers was never high, & became ever more appalling.

Obviously, if it happened to be appalling in the student's favour, we'd bank that one!

By the time we'd finished, we'd have kids with the all-important level 5 whom we knew to be all but illiterate. & who would then be expected to get grade C at GCSE, poor sods.

I'm not saying all this because I fear being held to account btw - my SATs results were always good. The year before they were abolished, to universal rejoicing, my group got the best results in the school's history.

Am I particularly proud of that? Nope. The Head was on my back & I jumped those poor kids through hoops all year. It was miserable.

Why did we teach to the test? Because we didn't have faith in our teaching? No, because if we didn't, the kids didn't jump that hoop quite so neatly, the school didn't do as well in the league tables, the Head threw his toys out of the pram, we didn't get our performance related pay increases -& so one narrow & unreliable test KO'd a full year of vital education.

I'm not spouting theory. I've been in the classroom, full time, for 10 years. I wouldn't still be doing it if I didn't think I was genuinely doing a good job. In my professional opinion, my year 9 students are being far better taught now that they no longer have SATs.

GCSE isn't perfect by any means, & it never will be. I'm a bit sceptical about universal exams anyway. But it's a far better measure than the SATs.

To answer your point about 'high score' coursework, IME children rather like being told that their current effort is an E but they could make it a C if they did x,y & z. They like the clarity & the challenge.

If you think about a 2 year GCSE course, based perhaps on 40% coursework & 60% terminal exam, leaving coursework to year 11 is never going to be practical. When are we to cover the exam work?

We do the coursework early so that it can be re-visited, if necessary, in year 11 - but the main thrust in that year has to be the exams.