The first GCSE’s with the new formula results are out.
What a joke!!!
They have, under the guise of making the exams harder, merely taken them back to the 50s. They have filled them with knowledge and made them into a memory test. They have taken out the skills and coursework.
Is this what we really need in the 21st Century? I think not.
the 1950s required people remembered large amounts of knowledge. In the 21st Century all knowledge is there at the flick of a finger. Who needs to memorise everything? Nobody!!
What we need are students who are capable of independent learning, teamwork, lateral thinking, creativity and have a range of skills, not rote memory.
Making the exams into a memory test is backward thinking.
This means that low ability students are going to find the courses too hard, become disaffected and disruptive. Is that what we want? A whole group of students who have no qualifications, low self-esteem and feel they have no future? Plain daft!!
They have changed the grading system from A*-G to 9-1. What on earth is that about?? Stupidly they have even changed it around so that confusingly 9 is the top grade and 1 is the bottom grade. How silly is that? How does that do anything for raising standards??
Grade 9 is an A*. Why can’t they just call it that? Why confuse parents and employers? Sounds to me just like they wanted to confuse people so they could pull the wool over people’s eyes. Plain daft!!!
The GCSE was quite a good qualification. It enabled all levels of ability to gain qualifications commensurate with their ability. In order to really differentiate the top end for colleges and employers all they really needed to do was release the raw marks.
The government knew that the results were going to plummet. They didn’t want that did they? Their answer – reduce the grade boundaries – i.e. fiddle the results. That’s what they done. Magically the results have come out slightly higher than last year!!
This is yet another Tory mess up!! They’ve taken education backwards in order to compete with the ridiculous international PISA tables which are cram courses which drive kids to suicide in Japan, China and Singapore and stifle creativity.
Surely creativity is what Britain has traditionally been best at? Why dump it for a cram course??
We’re heading down the wrong road!!!