Introduction
If, to quote an old cliché, a week is a long time in politics, how about a few days in education? Draft specs for the primary curriculum, consultation on A levels and now, it seems, potentially significant reform for the GCSE system, all following in quick succession. At the moment details on the latter are sketchy but clear enough to provoke strong headlines, lead to urgent questions in Parliament and generally set the wires crackling. What’s caused most of the concern is the suggestion that GCSEs could be scrapped in favour of a two tier exam system. Concerns have also been raised about changes for the exam system, the skills and knowledge required by young people and the direction of education reforms generally
Background
Debate about GCSE has never been far away, often particularly at exam time. Many have argued that with the raising of the participation age we don’t need an exam at age 16 at all, others have been concerned about the proliferation of different types of exam and different forms of assessment and others too about the effect on pupils hell bent on collecting as many GCSEs as possible. But underneath, five issues have emerged which seem to have led the Secretary of State to act. First, that whatever the grading system, a grade C has become the default line; second that constant tinkering with modules, resits, coursework have left the qualification less robust than it should be; third that many recruiters, employers perhaps in particular, have remained sceptical about skill levels of school leavers; fourth that securing a balance between requisite knowledge and skills has proved problematic; and fifth that whatever the virtues of international rankings, our pupils seem to be falling behind. It has to be said that many of these concerns were already in the process of being tackled, the Wolf Review was for instance tackling core requirements and equivalencies while Ofqual was tackling controlled assessments, qualification design, the grading scale and international comparators
So how do things stand now?
As we await the consultation, four points seem clear. First that Michael Gove seems determined to press ahead, with the removal of tiering in GCSE exams a priority. Second, that the context for reform of the exam system may be set by the Select Committee’s
Report on July 3rd. Third, that the battleground will be how best to provide for the lowest achievers (generally poorly served in qualification reforms) and fourth, a busy schedule of change now seems likely (see bullets to the right)
Possible timetable
July 2012
- Select Committee Report on the Exam System published
- Closure of Ofqual’s Call for evidence on Controlled Assessments
- Possible release of GCSE consultation
September 2012
- Implementation of new linear and new spelling, punctuation and grammar arrangements
- A’ level consultation closes
Autumn 2012
- Alternative date for release of GCSE consultation
- Consultation on primary Programmes of Study
- Update on secondary National Curriculum
2013
- Ofqual international benchmarking exercise
2014
- Possible introduction of new style GCSE exams in core subjects
2016
- Possible introduction of new style GCSEs in other subjects
- Possible scrapping of 5 good A – C performance measure
Steve Besley
Head of Policy (UK and International)
The Pearson Think Tank
@PearsonThinkTk