With the reformation of A Levels and GCSEs, do you not find it unfair to those students that are sitting half and half? For example, I'm currently sitting two reformed A Level subjects (one of which includes content my teachers haven't covered since their university years quite a while ago!) and one unreformed subject. This means that while there are plenty of resources for the latter subject, there's very little in the way of the former subjects, especially with the addition of new content that's not normally seen until taken as a degree. This also enables students to be gaining higher grades in the unreformed subjects than the reformed subjects, impacting their choices for university, whereas if on the old specification, they would be achieving the grades they want for their dream university. I completely understand that the A Levels do need reformed but having an A* in the old spec is easier than getting a B in the new spec as there is so much more content, especially as you are being tested on two years worth of content rather than one which, in my eyes, is seen as quite unfair!
Also, with the plans for grammar schools, how would you ensure that people that deserve to get into grammar schools will get in? There's plenty of people that might have an off day on the day of the exam, if that were to happen, would there be an allowance of places for those who should deserve a place and missed the cut of they were to get a reference and hand in some evidence and as classwork to prove that they could do well?
Why are teachers paid by results? If a class were to underperform during an exam due to a bad paper or a disturbance would this not have an impact on pay? Teachers dedicate so much time and go out of their way to help students, especially those willing to come back after school or during free periods to ask for extra help, should pay then not be based on a standardised rate as all it is influencing is how many past papers teachers give you and how much they focus on exam technique rather than content or expanding knowledge because they know they aren't going to get the pay they deserve if their classes don't do well.
How are you going to go about standardising PSHCE in order to make it more inclusive to teenagers, including sufficient sex ed, aimed at all sexualities, not just those students that identify as heterosexual with the slight mention of gay sex generally added as an afterthought? Also, would this include information about looking after your mental health as so many students seem to have some sort of mental health issue for any number of reasons, if that support was offered, do you think that this would make a bigger difference and reduce the stigma around mental health?
Why are reforming A Levels to be linear when do many universities have modular exams? A Levels are meant to be a stepping stone to university, yet all they teach us is how to remember absurd amounts of knowledge and not actually apply that knowledge to real life situations. Currently, many exams are just memory tests rather than applications of knowledge from the course, which does not test a student's understanding of the content but rather their ability to remember information and write it down. Modular exams means that only a specific section of content needs to be known rather than the full course, and I'm all honesty, trying to remember two years worth of content is quite a difficult feat and not at all something that most A Level students need to be dealing with, especially under the stress of trying to perform their very best in order to get into their firm choice university.