[Hotgossip]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-30-years.html

About time too! GCSE's are just ridiculously easy and employers have been saying it for years.

[irishguy]

Wow - thats pretty lame.

I've no problem with them toughening up the exams so they can actually differentiate between all the current top grade students but to bring back an exam format that is more than 15 years old is daft

[far2cool]

" Top secret plans revealed in leaked documents seen by the mail "

Sounds trustworthy enough...

[Rhumbatugger]

They really won't make things harder. Success, success, success - on paper, is what counts.

[cultureman]

Well since, according to official figures, educational standards have been rising year on year for decades; this is basically "dumbing down".

No?

[cpu121]

Sounds very much like the system in Scotland - in which case it can only be a good thing.

[Ethel_Fred]

Gove's idea of localism - you can do as you want as long as you agree with me

It was only a couple of days ago he was insisting on children learning by rote - but now he's abolishing the National Curriculum which this would have been part of and in any case Free and Academy schools didn't have to follow the National Curriculum.

Does he actually have a coordinated policy for schools or does he just decide to implement something because he thought of it over breakfast?

[RobinOfLoxley]

Hurah!

[tealady]

‘Would you look at the Moon with a microscope or a telescope?’
Yes, I'm sure that is really representative of the questions in the exam.
Will the standard be absolute or relative to your cohort?

[Biffo the Bear]

So while schools will be able to teach "what they, when they want" the pupils will still be expected to sit an exam of a national standard?

This contradiction alone marks this out as another u-turn policy to me. I'm getting quite good at spotting them now. Expect teaching unions to protest about this with lots of negative spin about unions over the summer, but the plans quietly dropped in the autumn.

[Tassium]

These Conservatives just don't care what chaos they cause do they?

It's like policy via random number generator.

It's basically destruction of public services by destroying the quality. Leaving people having to go private to get anything of note. No money to compete in the educational marketplace? Too bad.

Is it intentional or just stupidity?

[Caldari]

Originally Posted by tealady

‘Would you look at the Moon with a microscope or a telescope?’

To which the correct answers is, 'it all depends on your location'.

[Belligerence]

This autumn, exam boards will enter a competition to win the right to set the first new O-levels.

Who gets to bid the most? Perks of free market Tories.

[GeoBa92]

Originally Posted by tealady

‘Would you look at the Moon with a microscope or a telescope?’
Yes, I'm sure that is really representative of the questions in the exam.
Will the standard be absolute or relative to your cohort?

I sat my GCSE exams in 2008.

In all the papers I sat, I never once seen a question as stupidly easy as that!

[Biffo the Bear]

Originally Posted by GeoBa92

I sat my GCSE exams in 2008.

In all the papers I sat, I never once seen a question as stupidly easy as that!

It was a multiple choice question in 2006:

GCSE Science (Edexcel, 2006)
Many people observe the stars using
A) A telescope B) A microscope C) An X-Ray tube D) A synthesiser

^ That makes it not quite so daft. Nice selective referencing by the Mail. Correction to appear tomorrow on page 64.

[GeoBa92]

Originally Posted by Biffo the Bear

It was a multiple choice question in 2006:



^ That makes it not quite so daft.

Was it a foundation tier or higher tier paper?

[Biffo the Bear]

Originally Posted by GeoBa92

Was it a foundation tier or higher tier paper?

Combo - here's the full paper:

http://www.st-josephs.slough.sch.uk/...ics11and12.pdf

I bet a lot of the sneering folk would struggle with some of them.

edit - just realised, yes that was on the foundation part of the paper, not higher tier.

[Aaron.Bishop]

Does this mean I could get a job somehow if I scrapped my own GCSEs (bad idea) and took O-levels instead.

[bean999]

The article mentions Singapore but they take O levels in several countries. I guess they never really went away.

http://www.cie.org.uk/qualifications...level/overview

[Welsh-lad]

Leaked documents seen by the Mail

Were they found in the pockets of some long-forgotten pin-stripe trousers left by Tebbitt at a Westminster dry-cleaners circa 1989?

[Zaphodski]

Originally Posted by Biffo the Bear

It was a multiple choice question in 2006:



^ That makes it not quite so daft. Nice selective referencing by the Mail. Correction to appear tomorrow on page 64.

Edexcel GCSE maths (foundation) June 2012 calculator paper Q1

a. Write the number four thousand two hundred and sixteen in figures.
b. Write down the value of 8 in the number 78,561.
c. Write down the number 3568 to the nearest ten.

That's 1.5% of the overall mark.

Question 11
a. Shows an illustration of 10:30 on an analogue clock. Write down the time.
b. Write 4:10pm using a 24 hour clock.

That's another 1%

~70% gets you a grade C.


Introducing calculus into the new O level should shift the chaff from the wheat!

[Resonance]

Originally Posted by Biffo the Bear

Combo - here's the full paper:

http://www.st-josephs.slough.sch.uk/...ics11and12.pdf

I bet a lot of the sneering folk would struggle with some of them.

edit - just realised, yes that was on the foundation part of the paper, not higher tier.

The most ridiculous thing is it's multiple choice. Just out of interest what grade would you receive for getting 25%?

[Inspiration]

Originally Posted by far2cool

Sounds trustworthy enough...

His office has confirmed the plans are genuine.

[Belligerence]

The problem with GCSE's -- this goes without saying about modern languages is people can get by with doing an exam, yet are unable to apply that knowledge they've learnt into practise. I know numerous people who have got A's and B's in Spanish yet are unable to tell the time in the language or order a coffee.

Don't see how rebranding the exams will solve anything.

[samnoon]

So you cherry pick the easiest questions from the easiest of the current exams, intended for less intelligent pupils, and use that to argue for the return of O-levels and CSEs, the latter of which will also be sat by the less intelligent pupils who will answer the same questions you're sneering at now?

It seems like when it comes to examinations everyone has an opinion but nobody bothers to actually think it through. I wonder how they'd do on a critical thinking paper...