Calling all secondary English teachers...

[ATruthUniversallyAcknowledged]

... especially if you do AQA GCSE.

What do you think about all the recent changes to the specs? Are you entering pupils in November to avoid the removal of Speaking and Listening? Any great Schemes of Work to get pupils through the Unit 1 exam?

I'm having a total rethink following disappointing results this August and would love to bounce some ideas around.

Hello, good friend of mine..

We are entering every pupil for the Nov exams (scramble on coursework right now...) to try and get as many through as we can while the S&L still counts. Those that get their C (and achieve target, if it's higher than C) will then do Lit, the rest will keep plugging at Lang until the summer. Utterly dull, but needed, I think.

Hope you're ok!

Hello Mrs! How are you?

Thanks for that. We can't afford to enter all (or we can, but we can't afford potential resits) so we're just putting bottom set in then doing same as you - lit for those who pass, more lang or just English for those who don't.

Love to all at you know where x

If you do Nov entry though, do you need to cash in their controlled assessment? I thought they couldn't now resit the exam without doing new CA as well, is that not the case?

Also - how do schools doing dual entry find time to do two lots of CAs?

As I understand it, you have to cash in the controlled assessments in November, but could also - if necessary - carry over the controlled assessments to the June entry, but would have to pay for the whole re-entry (not just the exam bit)

We moved to IGCSE a couple of years ago. No controlled assessment - such a relief.

We are double entering for AQA (Nov entry) and iGCSE. I'm on Mat leave currently so not teaching it myself but I'm told its a case of teaching very prescriptively to the CA/coursework in the short time available.
I find it all very depressing. My school is below floor standards so desperately needs to improve results, but all this league tables bingo is really draining the joy from English, for us and the kids.