I-GCSEs to be taken by state school pupils

[dinah]

There are several problems with the teaching of English and the subsequent examining of it. For political reasons ie. vote for me because I will make your child clever by giving them an A , GCSE English is a size that fits noone let alone all.
I can only talk about one exam board specifically but all follow, as directed by the government ,the same pattern. I don't believe that parents know the truth about how exams are marked.
In English with one board there are 2 papers . Both have two papers with a Reading Section and a Writing Section. In the reading section you can spell everything incorrectly and write grammatical nonsense but you will be awarded the mark if you have made point that matches with the criterion.Eg . 'the prosontashion is clear and it draws your eye the bulet points make everithink clear and easyier and divide up the text into smallerparts. the caption holds the text down and shows you how to think'.
This shows the candidate understands what the presentational devices are for in a media text and also understands bias . The same answer spelt and punctuated correctly will gain no more marks. Imagine this was a C grade at GCSE. What would an employer think?
In every other subject you are not penalised for incorrect spelling or grammar so a History teacher may pay no attention to good English as the student will get the mark however they write the answer as long as the history is correct.In Science it is mostly multiple choice and some of that is only vaguely connected to Science.

[Looking for help]

There are a few marks available in all written papers for good grammar and spelling apparently

Not desperately trying to support the current system, just defend the children who seem to do an awful lot of exams. Surely the point of the English reading paper is to understand a piece of writing, marks are therefore awarded for showing you know what the piece is saying.

Just a thought....

[Amber]

Sadly, I have to agree with a lot of what you say Dinah. I have taught 2 boards at English GCSE, one of which is iGCSE - it is very much more traditional and, dare I say it, difficult. I am currently teaching GCSE Science and yes, it is multiple choice and yes, some of it is eye-wateringly simple. Much of the material is based on, say, a graph or table, with 4 multi-choice options; for example - 'what kind of relationship is shown between the amount of lead in solder and the melting point?' - no relationship; a positive relationship; the melting point goes up as the amount of lead goes down' etc, which an intelligent 10-year old could answer. A friend of mine did one year as an examiner in Science but then could hack it no more - having to mark answers correct if just one correct word appeared in them: the example being 'boiled' - eg 'the water boiled at 40 degrees' had to be marked correct, even though it is blatantly wrong, because the word 'boiled' was used.

The really worrying aspect of this is that bright students tend to do less well than they should, because they look for more in the question than is really there. Quite a well-known one in a Biology paper a couple of years ago looked at using invertebrates to measure ions in water. Students were asked what the advantage of this was - and the bright ones looked for physiological reasons why an invertebrate might be a good choice. The correct answer was that they are easy to count (not in my book!) and less able students were more likely to get that right. Teachers will give you lots more examples. In English it is similar - a mark for using ellipsis, a mark for recognising alliteration, that type of thing; but write a wonderfully evocative piece with perfect spelling and grammar and you will do no better than someone who produces a formulaic script which ticks all the boxes.

I really feel that, far from trying to avoid labelling anyone a failure, we should be looking at ways in which the really able students can prove their strengths, and that, more than anything, is what is now lacking in the system.

[Looking for help]

Forgive me, but why should we be looking for an education/exam system geared to the very few very brightest students ?
The wonder of this country is that it is a melting pot of different cultures, of colourful people with all sorts of gifts and obviously whether you are talking about education or anything else for that matter , one size cannot fit all. However what we need to find is the line of best fit, and the iGCSE may be for a few but it is certainly not for the majority. It is elitist and designed to exclude, and does nothing for most of the children in this country.

[Amber]

Forgive me, but why should we be looking for an education/exam system geared to the very few very brightest students ?
The wonder of this country is that it is a melting pot of different cultures, of colourful people with all sorts of gifts and obviously whether you are talking about education or anything else for that matter , one size cannot fit all. However what we need to find is the line of best fit, and the iGCSE may be for a few but it is certainly not for the majority. It is elitist and designed to exclude, and does nothing for most of the children in this country.

I agree with all that, but at the moment there is no chance for bright students to show what they are capable of - there has been so much attention paid to making sure everyone can pass a GCSE, that at the top end there is no discriminatory element left. In fact, this very morning the exams regulatory authority has sent back the exam boards' latest attempts to make Science GCSEs harder, saying they are still not good enough. Unless there is more rigour in the exam system, a knock-on effect is felt right through higher education, and into research departments. In the end, academic culture, in the form of useful scientific research, does suffer. Many parents are probably not aware that science GCSEs are all modular these days, so a student never has to master the entire syllabus ahead of an exam, just a small portion of it,eg in Chemistry "Products from Rocks' - 20 questions and that module is done and dusted, though of course you can always sit it again if you don't get a high enough mark.

So far from seeking to gear an entire system to the brightest few, all I am arguing for is for the brightest few to have something which will discriminate them from the rest and show what they are capable of, because at the moment nearly everyone can be an A grade student.

[KB]

Delta - would it be possible to know which school you are referring to where Enclish grades went down with introduction of IGCSE? Maybe PM me if you would be happier?
DS's school about to introduce it which is why I'm particulraly interested.


We have had experience of the 'dumming down' of the GCSE sciences & I agree that making it 'accessible' for less able pupils makes it harder for the able students to shine & is no preparation at all for Higher Education.
DD is very gifted at Science but hated the GCSE exams- especially mutiple-choice questions - as she was always trying to answer the questions 'scientifically' ( as Amber described above.)
Unfortunately there has been similar movement with A2 science (just look at the infamous 'shrew and glue' A2 Biology paper in January - although today's paper thankfully had some real Biology in it

Could they not introduce different level papers like they do at Maths so the less able can get a pass grade but to get the A/A* you have to cover more advanced work?
Then everyone ends up with the same qualification, so Unis can compare fairly but those who are able to study the subject in an 'academic' way have the opportunity to do so.
With so few taking Science subjects to higher levels the last thing we should be doing is 'turning off' gifted students at GCSE level.

It does worry me that we are moving towards a return to the two tier system where the fact that a student was entered for CSE rather than O-level immediately marked them out as less able. Meanwhile, in the short term, those with slightly lower grades at IGCSE than their GCSE counterparts may be disadvantaged - until the University admission systems catch up with the 'new' qualification.

[Bewildered]

Could they not introduce different level papers like they do at Maths so the less able can get a pass grade but to get the A/A* you have to cover more advanced work?

Sorry, could you clarify KB.

I was under the impression that most GCSE papers had two tiers already.
Higher with possible grades A-C & Foundation with possible grades C-E.

[KB]

When DD did GCSE maths - a few years ago now - they did it in a modular format.
I'll try to explain but can't remember the exact details

There were a number of papers on a scale of increasing difficulty ( I think they did something like papers 5,6,7,8,9 but there were easier ones that they could have done). There was a maximum grade they coiuld be awarded for each paper eg. grade A on paper 8; A* on paper 9.
They could take as many papers as they wanted but only the most difficult 4 (I think) counted towards the overall grade.

So sort of similar to concept of lower & higher tier but much more precise in the differentiation.

Do hope thats a bit clearer!

[Bewildered]

That's interesting. I'd not heard of this before.
Thanks for the info.



BW

[dinah]

If we are going to put all our cards on the table -and Amber goes a long way towards doing this we have to accept a univerasal truth. Not all people are academic in the strictest sense . So many parents seem to beleive government propaganda - that any child can be ultra intelligent and that that is simply not true. Successive governments have lead parents to believe that there has been a conspiracy of poor teaching and 'upper class' discirimination that has prevented 'ordinary' children from achieving top grades.This is simply not true. In any generation there will only be about 2% of the population who are gifted academically. This is not a criticism of any one else -it is just a fact. Until we accept that academia is only a small part of education and life in general we are all on a hiding to nothing.
When I need a plumber I won't be calling an expert in Ovid to fix my boiler.