11 Plus Exams Forum

Help needed from all you experts out there ..........
DD in year 9, school just starting to mention this to them to get them thinking ahead.
We will be starting in 2012 (so first cohort of new/ old exams) and so feels a bit unsettling.
I know I have seen on here before the list of subjects taken more seriously by uni admissions, but try as I might I can't find it - can anyone help?
Generally looking at a broad mixture of subjects, but also are newer ones like AS Science in Society regarded highly enough to warrant the extra effort as will be taken at the same time as GCSEs.
The other AS subjects on offer (you can only do one) are Citizenship and Food Tech!

A ramble, I know, any advice would be fab

This http://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/index.php?pageid=604" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

or this for more

http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images ... _Truth.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I think at GCSE as long as you have 8 good subjects, that should be sufficient and then they can do whatever subjects they like. Personally I don't see the point of doing more than 10 GCSE unless the child is gifted that they can easily clear A*. Its better to work on quality and not compromise grades by doing too many which seem to be the trendy thing to do these days. 14 GCSEs is standard in some schools coupled with doing GCSE very early on to fit in these many subjects and I really don't get it.

thanks so much - will look at those now

Mr Gove is still saying he will remove all the modular exams so we don't yet know what the syllabuses will look like - he may also eliminate (exterminate!) all remaining cousework. Coursework now is done under controlled conditions ie no taking it home etc.

Mmmmmmm - kind of no taking it home. Just sit at home learning an essay off by heart that you are going to regurgitate word for word in the exam itself having made sure that teachers and parents think it's a great essay first.

If that is what your child is being encouraged to do then that is totally against the exam boards regulations

I'm sure DD has done some coursework at home, for example writing up experiments. Maybe I am wrong and it was just practice I thought there was a difference between coursework and controlled assessments. Has it definitely changed for all boards? Life was much easier when we just had two exams at the end - one multiple choice and one written!

In my experience the information on how to complete controlled assessments is so badly written and unclear that different schools - and different teachers within a school - interpret it differently. My DD's experience with controlled assessment in languages, and that of her friend (with a different teacher) (and between them, they did around 10 - 12 controlled assessments) was that every one was run differently.

Oh, and my DS has just done another at a different school, and that was different too. Same exam board.

There is no confusion if the rules are read correctly and the exam board asked

Schools run the risk of coursework being rejected if they cannot show they are running it correctly.