Tag Archives: GCSE

Ofqual changes to GCSE examinations – implications for SEN children

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I received an email from an exam board today which said:

Ofqual have announced changes to GCSE qualifications which will be of interest to schools registered with WJEC in England and in Wales.

Changes in England

Ofqual, regulator for qualifications in England, announced that they will introduce changes to GCSEs for candidates starting two-year courses in September 2012.

 For awards in summer 2014 onwards, linear assessment will be compulsory for candidates in England. They will sit all their examinations at the end of their GCSE course, rather than having the possibility of taking them at different stages during the course as they do at present.

Further details of the changes are available on the Ofqual site here

Once again politics and Westminster teacher bashing takes precedent over the opinions and advice given by the teaching professionals who actually work with our children.  Apparently our exams are too easy and we have to do something to make sure they aren’t.  Of course these changes have far-reaching implications for our students, big ones for some.

My children are low attainers as you might expect (they attend a special school).   About half do entry level qualifications and the rest work at GCSE level.  There are children like mine in every mainstream school across the country – they aren’t that unusual.  These are children that have to be reminded what they did last week (sometimes they forget what they did earlier in the day).  These students will now have to remember what they learned up to two years ago.  Whilst it is possible to build in revision sessions (after all how can students with low literacy levels reasonably revise at home?), it isn’t possible to revise everything in sufficient depth for the students to do themselves justice.  I struggled getting enough revision in when we did modular exams.

So what is the answer?  Not only are the exams being made harder but at the same time pressure is put on schools to achieve better and better results.  The only conceivable way my students can achieve a GCSE-equivalent qualification that reflects their ability is to do a vocational qualification like BTEC where the assessment is portfolio based (although even this is being changed – more about BTEC changes here).

Of course none of these changes are pupil centred or put the student first.  Mr Gove hasn’t considered how my students will feel if I enter them for a qualification they are doomed to fail.   After the media and political attention drawn to the disaffected youth following the recent riots I thought the Government might have started to change its approach.

For now I’ll be plodding along following BTEC science with my students and trying to convince them as we go that they aren’t failures and that they have a place in society.  Let’s hope I am right!

Our policy U-turn over BTEC Science

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Having sat down and looked at many specifications we had selected a course to run with our students next year, and I pity other schools like mine (with a high percentage of SEN students) who are having to make a similar decision.

Readers of my blog may have picked up on my dislike of the BTEC qualification, although my gripe has mainly been with the way the qualification is run and the prices charged by Edexcel.  I had decided to drop BTEC because it doesn’t really suit students who are poor attenders or those with poor literacy skills.

We were to move away from BTEC and instead offer OCR entry level with OCR Gateway GCSE science alongside to challenge our more able students.  I was pleased with the match between the two courses and I was even starting to look forward to September.  However a game changing decision was announced by Mr Gove in June (on Sunday morning breakfast television, hardly the arena for important political decisions but then Mr Gove isn’t known for his consideration of teachers).  Modular GCSEs were being phased out with all examinations being placed at the end of the course.

This is a game changer for a special school with 100% statemented students.  Many of my students can’t tell you what we did last lesson and expecting them to remember work from two years ago is just too difficult, even with frequent revision sessions.  As a consequence we have made the decision to revert back to BTEC qualifications as the portfolio based, low pressure assessment technique suits our students more than a terminal examination.

It’s a shame that Mr Gove gave absolutely no consideration to lower attaining students or those with special needs, instead he just seems determined to take us all back to the good old fashioned teaching styles he experienced himself.   In the meantime we’ll go back to BTEC assignments and portfolios to give our students a chance to achieve a qualification they can be proud of.

Image © Mag373 on Flickr

Is the push for better results always in the best interests of the child?

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final examImage © dcJohn @ Flickr

I teach BTEC Applied Science (level 1) in the special school where I work.  I introduced this course because I had students who were working at the bottom end of GCSE ability and had seen how previous cohorts of students had been failed by the language and literacy demands of AQA Core Science.  I hoped that portfolio based assessment would be more appropriate for students who struggle to retain information for any length of time, whilst still keeping a significant level of challenge. I also thought the freedom to set your own assignments was a good thing.  The administration involved with running a BTEC is a chore, especially when you are the sole science teacher in your school and you rely on the goodwill of other schools to help you with hurdles like internal verification, but I thought the results would be worth it.

Earlier this year my first group were awarded their qualifications.  They did pretty well with a selection of results from passes to distinction.  They were a very suitable group for this course – they tried hard, they had excellent attendance and enough of them could work independently.

Following the success of BTEC, the course was introduced to other groups.  These groups of students do not have the same excellent attendance that the previous group had (for a variety of medical and other genuine reasons).   This means that progression through the course has been slower than I would have liked, with frequent catch-up lessons for the significant number of students who have been absent (most of whom are unable to catch up without teaching input and time to do so).  Looking across my spreadsheet of assignments, I see many gaps that students have to go back and complete (a familiar picture to anyone who teaches BTEC I’m sure!).

Is it fair that students who manage to get themselves back into lessons are rewarded with mountains of work to catch up with?

Is it fair on the more able students that progression through the course is slower than it should be because we keep getting derailed by catch-up lessons?

As a school we use Fisher Family Trust data to set aspirational targets for our students.  We have to look at progression guidance data from the National Strategies team and we have our own internal target setting system using CASPA.  We are (in common with schools across the county) being strongly encouraged to increase our ‘measurable output’ in terms of key stage 4 accredited qualifications.  We are an outstanding school because of the attainment of our students (amongst other things) and because of our commitment to these students.

Is pushing students (sometimes pushing very hard) to get a better qualification always in the best interest of the child?  Is there a conflict between strands of the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda – between enjoying and achieving?  Which is the most important?

For some students, simply attending school and sitting in lessons is a huge achievement, but we are encouraged to get them to jump through more hoops to make ourselves look better.  Until this system changes, can we really say we are acting in the best interests of the child?

I’d be interested to hear comments from readers of my website who find themselves in similar situations. (If you are reading this in an email or feed reader, click the title at the top of the screen and you should be taken straight to my site where you can leave a comment)

Getting students to prepare for exams–There’s an app for that!

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We all know that students are notoriously bad at preparing for exams.  Pearson (owners of the Edexcel exam board) think they have a solution – an app (for Apple devices).

From launching the app with the ‘My Exams’ icon, you come the my exams page where you enter the dates and subjects of any exams coming up.  You can also post how you feel about the exam (e.g. I am confident, I am busy revising) and also post a message about your exam to your Facebook page.  Once you have entered your exams, you are given a list of exams in date order, with a countdown for each.  Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much more to this section – I would have liked to see the ‘to do’ list as a separate tab in the application, perhaps collating the lists from all exams.

The app also has a section for useful and quite detailed study tips, like the importance of having a plan.  Whilst the app will only appeal to those students that are already preparing for exams (with an Apple device), it is another tool in their arsenal to help them succeed.  Search the Apple App store for ‘Exam Countdown’ – it’s a free download.

Now if only there was an app for willpower…