GCSE qualifications to be scrapped?

[simonrockman]

There are two things going on here. How hard exams are and how fit for purpose they are for testing what the student has understood.

I don't think they need to be any harder, it's just down to the universities and employers to weight what a grade means.

I do think they need to be more comprehensive.

Simon

[Ten Ninety]

The move to a single exam board has almost universally welcomed. It is, of course, a nice illustration of the fact that market forces and educational standards don't always mix too well. Sadly, that fact has still not been recognised in its wider context, which means Gove's posturing fluff about O-Levels is yet another irrelevance in terms of raising real standards of education. Competition between schools - based on exam results - will inevitably drive them to find whatever shortcuts exist in his new qualifications in order to boost their league table positions. And these shortcuts will continue to have a detrimental effect on the real education of students.

Derek Smith said:

Your presuppose a quantifiable assessment of teachers.

A system of targets is what ruined police forces. If it wasn't measured it wasn't done. When those grading calls were looking for keywords, or rather trying to stop callers using them, the need of the caller was ignored.

Indeed. What almost everyone seems to have forgotten about the 'golden age' of education is the single most important difference between what happened then and what has happened for the last 25 years: Examination results in those days were used to measure the performance of students; now they are used to measure the performance of their teachers. If a student failed an O-Level back in the day, it was pretty much universally considered to be the result of their own ineptitude or sloth. Now, when a student fails a GCSE it is almost universally considered to be the result of having an inept or slothful teacher.

Of course there has been grade inflation. Of course GCSEs are too easy. But making them harder (rebranding them is irrelevant) is only part of the solution. The traits that our young people really need to succeed in the real world - things like resilience, independence and responsibility - will remain sadly lacking as long as they (and everyone else for that matter) are encouraged to blame their teachers for their own shortcomings.

[ninja-lewis]

R300will said:

So then put a limit on the number of re-sits allowed. If i hadn't been able to re-sit my AS level exams due to visiting my dad in hospital after being involved in a horrific cycle vs car incident and therefore being mentally screwed up by it i would have never got into uni to do my current course.

In Scotland, there are no opportunities to resit. You can only appeal the result, especially if you extenuating circumstances (as if your case), based on your previous classwork/prelim result. Otherwise you had to do the whole course all over again the following year.

Your university, like most others, probably only allows those who have failed to resit in the summer and when they do so results are capped at 40%. If a student has extenuating circumstances, these can be taken into account by the Board of Exaat miners who could change the result or allow you to take the resit as if it was your first attempt again.

The fundamental problem with resits at A Level is that you have students resitting modules just to gain a few more UMS points or taking three years so they push their grades up a big further. What they need to do is move to only one exam period a year, get rid of modules (you can still have multiple papers in one subject - e.g. close reading and essay writing in English) and force students to "cash in" their exams - while still making allowances for geniune extenuating circumstances. Those changes alone would probably make a big difference to number of A/A* grades awarded.

[Derek Smith]

Ten Ninety said:

Examination results in those days were used to measure the performance of students; now they are used to measure the performance of their teachers.

Do you know, that sums it all up. An excellent comment. So good I will use it and claim it as my own. It explains everything that is wrong with the current examinations.

Thanks for that.

[elster]

Derek Smith said:

Ten Ninety said:

Examination results in those days were used to measure the performance of students; now they are used to measure the performance of their teachers.

Do you know, that sums it all up. An excellent comment. So good I will use it and claim it as my own. It explains everything that is wrong with the current examinations.

Thanks for that.

I may use it, but will credit someone for telling me it. I'm not that rude.

[mikees]

I'm pretty sure we used to use a normal distribution which is part of the problem.

[dickymint]

It all went tits up when this was banned....................

[elster]

dickymint said:

It all went tits up when this was banned....................

Tweed hasn't been banned, just advised against due to bullying.

[dickymint]

elster said:

dickymint said:

It all went tits up when this was banned....................

Tweed hasn't been banned, just advised against due to bullying.

Have another