GCSEs to end

[rhinochopig]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19620075

What do people think of this. Essential the rumour is continuous assessment to be dropped in favour of a final exam.

Whilst I welcome the shake-up of the system, to replace continuous assessment with a final exam is bonkers. That's not how life works and clearly benefits some kids and is a huge disadvantage for others. My wife is great example of this. She has an almost photographic memory, which meant she could rote learn essays for a selection of questions based on past papers. She got A grades for everything and freely admits she didn't understand a lot of the subject matter.

[rhinochopig]

Timmy35 said:

rhinochopig said:

That's not how life works

Really? I've found quite the opposite, very often a one off pass or fail is exactly how life works. As for fairness, having 'involved' middle class parents to 'help' with coursework has if anything exacerbated the disadvantage faced by kids from less academic homes.

Not in my experience other than job interviews. As Heretic says life is generally full of projects with the end result being you fail or succeed. I do agree about the middle class parent 'helping' though. But then the middle class parent can also afford to send their kids off for a study school just prior to the exams as my wife benefited from so the advantage remains.

For someone like me who is mildly dyslexic and from a very working class background the ability to be continuously assessed was a godsend. In one a-level my course work was marked as an A grade (without any parental help whatsoever) whereas my exam transcript was marked at E; not because I didn't understand the subject matter but because I struggled to articulate what I wanted to say due to the dyslexia (and ste school)

My gripe with final exams - as they used to be - is that they generally test a child's ability to store information and not their understanding.

[rhinochopig]

fido said:

rhinochopig said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19620075
Whilst I welcome the shake-up of the system, to replace continuous assessment with a final exam is bonkers. That's not how life works and clearly benefits some kids and is a huge disadvantage for others. My wife is great example of this. She has an almost photographic memory, which meant she could rote learn essays for a selection of questions based on past papers. She got A grades for everything and freely admits she didn't understand a lot of the subject matter.

Agree, with the sentiment about 'rote learning' - i'm good at that sh8t as well. But the problem with coursework is that it has shown to be open to abuse [copying and teacher/parental assistance), not to mention the multiple retakes so that it's an incremental process akin to 'rote learning'. It's good that they now acknowledge that the GCSE system (lest not forget introduced by the Kenneth Baker under the Tories) is flawed and i think either a return to an O-Level system or the 'original' GCSE format would be an improvement.

I do agree that the current system needs a shake-up and it is open to abuse, but my worry is the political tendency to knee-jerk scrap something in its entirety rather than carefully assess what works and what doesn't and keep the bits that work.

Assessing several years of learning in a single three hour exam is as bad as the current system for multiple reasons. Psychologist have said for years that the maximum time someone can concentrate fully for is less than one hour. It was one of ironies of degree level psychology, that you may be asked that as a question during your three hour exam.

[rhinochopig]

turbobloke said:

It's hardly that.

What's happened is that there is now hard-nosed investment in elite programmes using lottery funding. If there is a sport with athletes carrying a realistic chance of a medal, they get funding. If not, they don't - as such, funded elite sports programmes deserve the credit.

We need something broadly similar for the most able pupils in schools, in terms of provision suited to those who will benefit from it. If as a country we can hang on to their talent, which we desperately need to do in order to remain competitive, we can look forward to international successes as per the Olympics.

The same principle applies to other pupils, in terms of appropriate courses for horses which are also appropriately funded.

What we don't need is a one-size-doesn't-fit-all GCSE approach which doesn't serve the most able pupils. These (again, if we can keep them here) will be the source of future jobs and your/our pensions.

But it is partly that. The quality of teaching and the resources that schools have compared to the 70s and 80s is orders of magnitude better. In my day education mostly consisted of turn to page x and copy the next x pages.