CHANGES TO GCSES
1/ I've
heard that GCSE coursework is being scrapped. This is good for home educators,
isn't it, because we currently have problems with getting coursework
authenticated ?
At present, home educated young people who take GCSEs as private candidates
need to find someone who can authenticate the coursework element of their GCSE
and sign a statement vouching that this is all the student's own work. In many
cases this means that the home educating family signs up with a distance
learning provider such as NEC NEC or Oxford Home Schooling . Courses for each subject
cost in the region of £250. The student completes the assigned coursework at home
and sends it back to the tutor who has become familiar with the student's level
of attainment. There are other ways of getting coursework authenticated but
this is the most common route. Some home educators presumed that the coursework
element would simply be replaced by more final exams but this is not the case.
2/ Coursework in most subjects is being scrapped and replaced by
controlled assessments. This is NOT the same as taking extra exams.
The Qualification and Curriculum Authority maintains
and develops the national curriculum and associated assessments, tests and
examinations as well as accrediting qualifications in colleges and at work. It
also regulates awarding bodies and exams to ensure they are fit for purpose. In
October 2006 QCA put forward proposals for scrapping coursework and
replacing it with controlled assessments.
In June 2007 QCA
launched a consultation into these proposals and the results were published on
the QCA website and reported in the press on 21 December 2007. QCA also proposed a number of other changes
to the way the exam subjects were studied and assessed and many teachers
responded. Education Otherwise asked how the
controlled assessment system would be
implemented for home educated young people sitting the exams as private
candidates.
3/ What are
these controlled assessments ?
They are sometimes
described as “exam type conditions”, but this has been explicitly rejected by
QCA. Controlled assessments have also been described as “supervised extended
essay writing” or “projects set by exam boards under controlled conditions. “
One way to imagine
this working in a school is that the pupils would go to the school library
where they would complete their project under the teacher's supervision. There
is a 19 page article on controlled assessments to be
found on the QCA website from June 2007, which talks about task setting, task
taking and task marking. We might usefully think of “tasks” as “projects”.
Task setting is to
do with the kind of projects that the students
carry out and how much the projects are directed or determined by the
exam board. Task taking is to do with the conditions under which the work is
carried out. Task marking looks at who
has responsibility for marking the projects.
TASK
SETTING
There are a number
of possibilities for task setting and this appears to be an area which causes
QCA less concern than task taking and where there might be more flexibility
from different awarding bodies in different subjects . One option would be for
the awarding body to set the tasks, which could be accessed eg via an online
task bank. Alternatively, the awarding body could publish guidance and criteria
for tasks, and teachers would submit task proposals for approval. Under another
proposal teachers would consult published guidance and criteria before devising
tasks but would not need to secure prior approval from the awarding body.
Finally, the teachers might set tasks with minimal awarding body guidance/criteria.
TASK TAKING
As set out on page
6 of the QCA article, under the
highest control for task taking, students would complete all work under the direct
supervision of a teacher ( authenticity control ) ; feedback to students would
operate within tight guidelines specified by the awarding body ( feedback
control) ; students would have a limited amount of time in which to complete
the work ( time control ) ; students would complete all the work individually (
collaboration control ) ; and access to resources would be limited to those
specified by the awarding body (resource control).
TASK
MARKING
The different
levels of control for task marking would be to do with whether the awarding
body/exam board marked the task, whether the teacher marked and the awarding
body moderated the marking, whether the teachers were further accredited to do
their own unmoderated marking, or whether, at the lowest level of control,
teachers mark against guidelines or standards with no external moderation.
4/ What will this mean for home educators ? How will we be able to
fulfil the terms and conditions for these controlled assessments ?
An article in the Times stated that “controlled
assessments will be supervised under strict conditions at school. Although
pupils will still be able to consult the internet and other source material,
teachers will be on hand to ensure that the work is suitably referenced and not
simply copied.”
We just don't know how this will operate for home educators. What seems
likely is that home educated young people will no longer be able to complete
assignments at home in their own time. It may be possible for them to attend a
recognised learning centre to complete their controlled assessments or to sign
on to some type of online arrangement similar to the one proposed by QCA for
disabled students engaged in distance learning. ( See question 15)
QCA has
published an article on coursework review which talks
about electronic assessment, where the student could upload to a PDA under controlled conditions [ p.33 ]
5/ Can't we just sit an extra exam paper ?
In theory one possible option would be for home educated young people
who register as private candidates to take additional exam papers if suitable
arrangement cannot be made for controlled assessments.
6/ What if
they just try and fob us off with an
extra exam paper ? My son/daughter would
get a much higher mark for coursework than for a final exam and more exams will
be very stressful. Isn't it discriminatory if they just make us take more exams
than everyone else ?
Putting 100% of the marks into the end of course exams would prejudice
the chances of those home educated candidates who perform better outside the
restrictions of final external exams.
7/ Isn't there some kind of GCSE where you don't have coursework in the
first place ?
If home educated young people want to do all-exam courses, because they
prefer not to do coursework or because of difficulties/expense associated with
getting coursework authenticated they can
choose IGCSEs over GCSEs. International
GCSEs do not follow the English National
Curriculum and are therefore not taken at present in state schools in England,
though they are widespread in the independent schools sector. This has
implications for home educators when it comes to finding an exam centre which
will accept private candidates.
8/ What is EO doing about it ? (
+ What can individuals do ? )
If you have any queries about the consultation summary or the
qualification and subject criteria, you can also get in touch with QCA at: GCSE@qca.org.uk.
9/ What is the timeline for this ? As QCA points out "none of these examples has been
trialled. Awarding bodies will be expected to trial their own controlled
assessments before they are used in live examinations. " p. 8 of QCA article on controlled assessments June
2007.
According to an article in
the Guardian, Controlled assessment will replace teacher-marked coursework in most major
GCSE subjects in 2009. We give more details about the proposed timescale for
other changes to the GCSE curriculum in Question 14. QCA's final consultation report says that the awarding body
revised specifications will be submitted to the regulators in spring 2008, with
the majority being accredited by August 2008. The specifications will be
available to centres from September 2008 with first teaching from September 2009.
10/ Will it apply to all subjects ? ( And if not, why not ? )
The QCA website published
revised criteria for 28 GCSE subjects on
December 21st. Here is a link to the main page where you can check what
is being proposed for various different subjects, covering modular exams and
the relative proportion of controlled assessment to final exams.
1,865 teachers contributed to the QCA consultation into curriculum
reform and the Times Educational Supplement believes that the teachers'
influence was behind many of the differences between the draft proposals put
forward in June and the final criteria which QCA published in December.
In Modern Languages, music, engineering, Media Studies and Citizenship
GCSEs for example, the results will be based on 60% controlled assessment,
whereas in Religious Education both the short and the full GCSE course will
remain exam-only. Law, sociology and psychology will become exam-only courses
from 2009. (Currently, pupils can opt to take up to 20 per cent of the GCSE as
coursework.) Geography and history will specify 75% external assessment, or
exam, and 25% controlled assessment, or supervised extended essay writing. Latin and Greek will also remain exam-only
11/ Did anyone ever ask us about this before they went ahead and decided
?
Education Otherwise was not formally notified or invited to comment on
the proposed changes. We became aware of the extent of the reforms through articles
in the press in June 2007 which we flagged up on the Education Otherwise Campaign Website and on home education
internet support lists.
12/ Why are they doing it ?
There are a number of reasons for the proposed GCSE reforms. The major
impetus behind changing the arrangements for coursework ( either replacing
coursework with controlled assessment or moving to exam-only system ) has been
the fear that coursework is susceptible to plagiarism and outside assistance as
outlined in this June article from the Guardian .Teachers have also lobbied
for changes to the system, some wanting more emphasis on external exams and
others wanting a higher percentage of marks to be awarded via internal
assessment.
13/ Where can I find out more ?
Details can be found on the QCA website. where you can also register for email updates. This is the QCA page of useful links including FAQ and contact details for
awarding bodies/exam boards. You can also read the March 2007 QCA article on internal controlled assessments
There
will be more information about this in the Education Pages of newspapers such
as the Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph. We would also expect the BBC Online Education pages to feature regular
updates.
14/ I've heard that students will be able to resit parts of the exam to
improve their grades. What's that about
?
According to the Times QCA has been describing the new
GCSEs as modular or “unitised” exams, where pupils will be allowed to resit an
exam unit if they are unhappy with their marks. Critics of modularisation at A
level have said that pupils are tested before they are ready and that
knowledge becomes fragmented. The Daily Mail terms the new GCSEs as “bite-sized GCSEs you can keep resitting until
you get a pass.”“Pupils will be able to walk into final exams at the end of two-year
courses with 60 per cent of their marks already in the bank.” You can find more
about GCSEs on the QCA website .Education Otherwise
Government Policy Group will be discussing the new curriculum requirements with QCA, with the different awarding bodies/examination boards and also with DCSF.
15/ What account are they taking of Special Educational Needs ?
In June 2007 QCA published a 19 page document on the regulatory impact of proposals to change
coursework arrangements. The following is from page 9 : “QCA has consulted a
small number of students with a range of disabilities on the implications for
replacing traditional coursework with controlled assessments. One major issue
to be resolved concerns the timed nature of the assessments. Reasonable
adjustments will need to be made for
some students involving additional time. This raises questions about how that
best fits into a normal school timetable and who might be able to carry out
supervision. As part of the consultation on the draft GCSE criteria, the
regulators are seeking advice on how these important practical issues can best
be addressed and on the implications of the introduction of controlled
assessments for distance learning students. "
The December consultation report refers briefly to the
Disability Discrimination Act, stating : As part of our consultation on the
draft GCSE subject criteria, we asked stakeholders whether they thought that we
had only included requirements essential to each subject, and therefore not put
unnecessary barriers in the way of students with disabilities. “
Quite clearly, more work needs to be done in this area.
16/ Does this only apply to England or will it be extended to Wales and
Northern Ireland ?
The QCA website
states that the consultation on GCSE reform was carried out with the regulators
of external qualifications in Wales [ DCELLS ] and Northern Ireland [ CCEA]
The regulatory body in Wales is the Welsh Assembly. Welsh( first language),
Welsh literature, English, English Literature,Mathematics and ICT were not
covered in the consultation as these GCSEs were already being revised for
teaching from September 2010. At the time of writing there has been little in
the media in Wales about the new GCSEs, but the relevant website is the Department
for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills Further enquiries may be directed to miranda.morton@wales.gsi.gov.uk or by post to Qualifications and Curriculum 14-19
Division, Castle Buildings, Womanby Street, Cardiff, CF10 1SX
The CCEA website has links to revised
curriculum specifications for GCSEs in Northern Ireland and further enquiries
may be directed to info@ccea.org.uk 02890 261200 Council for
the Curriculum Examination and Assessment, Clarendon Dock, Belfast BT1 3BG.
It seems as though controlled assessments will also replace
coursework in Wales and Northern Ireland, although the individual GCSE subject
specifications may sometimes differ in detail from those proposed for England.