Goodbye to the GCSE

*Pakistani
Only an idiot would refer to himself otherwise.

Wow I really feel for the generations to come. Sure GCSEs weren't the hardest exams in the world but completely scrapping the system and bringing in something which will favour a certain group in the student population, trebling tuition fees, cutting back EMA, allowing people who have no knowledge of the education system to start running schools... just wow.

I would like to see Mr Gove sit the GCSE english course and see how well he does. I'm sure everyone over 40 is "excellent" in Point Evidence Analysis and writing so furiously that you get paper burn on the side of your hand.

The last results issued in 2010 showed the UK fell from 17th to 25th for reading, 24th to 28th for maths and 14th to 16th in science.

Having one exam at the end of the course as opposed to several modules could either improve grades, as students will have an understanding of the whole course as opposed to sections of it, or could make grades worse given there'll be more to remember in the space of one exam. Either way, it's still probably going to result in more tweaking of grade boundaries, making it harder to compare year-on-year results...

What is the first bolded point referring to? And as for the second, that's been happening for ages

Private school educated students.

Does it? Well, any more than it always has, anyway. Aren't they just going to put all the exams at the end of the year with probably some changes to the syllabus, so the only advantage private schoolers have is the better teaching which they've had all along and is (sort of) taken into account by universities anyway?

Yes and no. Currently everyone does the same GCSEs exams either higher or foundation, but there is still hope for state educated students to get top marks good grades etc, even if they're not geniuses, they can still get decent grades and have a hope of going to decent university.

The new plan is to have two tiers of exams, one like you mentioned at the end of the two year three hour exams. Everyone else deemed 'stupid' has to sit and easier exam.

You can kind of see who this will benefit.

How does that help them? We already stream in state schools so having two syllabi to teach different classes wouldn't be difficult, unless a state school was particularly small and didn't have enough kids able to do the hard exam. Actually, it might even help if schools were obliged to do classes for the hard exam as well if they had the students, and received extra funding for doing so. The exam system proposed doesn't itself have unsurmountable problems, and we all know that the current system is making it more and more difficult to differentiate between students which does need to be fixed, and the sooner the better.

No you're right and I agree that there do need to be changes to the way GCSEs are examined, but not the way this government is proposing.

Say for students who do the lower tier exam, what position will that leave them in for A-Levels? Obviously if the govt. are thinking of more rigorous testing for the higher tier, those students will be better off, but how will the lower tier students cope? Would they even be allowed to sit A-Level exams? What about applying to universities? Would unis like Oxbridge accept students with the lower tier exams? We'd essentially be writing someone off at an early age before they'd even entered adult life and I don't think it's particularly fair.

Dear Michael Gove, please do a GCSE set to the current standard before making it harder. I'm sure then you will be able to understand what it's like having to write a paragraph about electricity conduction just for 2 marks.

Yes and no. Currently everyone does the same GCSEs exams either higher or foundation, but there is still hope for state educated students to get top marks good grades etc, even if they're not geniuses, they can still get decent grades and have a hope of going to decent university.

The new plan is to have two tiers of exams, one like you mentioned at the end of the two year three hour exams. Everyone else deemed 'stupid' has to sit and easier exam.

You can kind of see who this will benefit.

I actually cannot believe a moderator deleted my comment about Indian and Chinese students smashing every other race in every exam. I merely stated a known fact, it's not offensive to anyone.

So what will this mean for people that already have GCSE's? Nothing?

You do know that English has become far easier in the last few years?
Source.

So yes, he could easily sit the exam and do well.



Don't confuse this change with making results better. If anything we can guarantee that results will crash horribly as this is an attempt to bring up the level of education to a world class standard (see source above), thus everyone who has had an easy ride with the recent GCSEs will be in for a shock when the exams become far harder.
Also the point of this is to have one exam board so grade boundaries will be very easy to adjust in order to compensate for exams that are too easy or hard, yet the quality of the exams will remain high.

However my concern is that most teachers currently working in schools will not be of a high enough calibre to teach these courses as many are not fit to teach the current GCSEs.