GCSE overhaul

[StriderX]

Every end quarter of a school year is basically just copious amounts of pre-exam revision on top of mountainous test exams.

Some teachers even pride themselves on getting the best marks in a schooling area.

We need continuous testing throughout the year, not just all jumbled into one at the end so that it barely represents how good a student actually is.

 

[gregorius]

There's no such thing as "grade inflation". Grades are awarded based on how the actual paper went. Something like the top 20% of students will get an A and so forth.

There are a lot of problems with our education system, but this isn't even close to one of them.

Could you explain a little more what you mean here please? Grade inflation (as I understand it) is quite a serious problem. Least of all, it causes us in universities no end of headache

 

[AJK]

One of the major problems of the assessed coursework element of GCSEs (and many other qualifications) is that they are subverted in too many ways. The obvious problem is cheating by the candidates, which is widespread, but there are other problems. Having coursework done under supervised conditions may have improved matters (I haven't seen any studies on this yet).

Coursework needs to be designed such that cheating is difficult and/or the benefits of doing so are reduced. Contact time teacher->student is the best way to achieve this (check that the student actually understands the work they've handed in). Unfortunately it's incredibly resource-intensive and expensive. Never said it was easy!

Now, about exam conditions not occurring in the "real world"; in a sense this is obviously true, but if one is to test the knowledge/ability of individuals then there seem to be few workable alternatives. An exam does also test the ability to work swiftly under pressure, which is definitely a real-world situation!

Never in my life outside of education have I been placed in a silent room, told that I may use no reference material whatsoever, and given a set of questions carefully designed to be slightly unlike any previous similar questions I might have encountered. And on the rare occasion where something similar has happened (interview tests being one), there has always been an option to further discuss the answers and to explain areas where I've got stuck or failed to answer correctly.

I agree fully that testing response under pressure is useful, but there are plenty of careers where being bad at responding under pressure isn't a problem!

One of the ways that I've found to be productive (at university level) is the use of the long "open book" exam; it's a very good way of finding out whether students are actually able to use what they have studied. This can be difficult for some subjects (mathematics, for example) but I'd like to see the technique used more.

Open book exams are great, and they work for maths too (let's say "book" can mean "reference sheet" as well). No need to recall tons of useless information which you'll forget the second the exam is over; instead your ability to understand and use that information is examined. Much more useful.

 

[mothermachine]

And in one fell swoop all those kids out there who are more inclined toward the creative/hands-on things are screwed. For me, coursework was essential. I hated exams. The whole idea that all these years of hard work and pain all come down to a couple of weeks of exams is horrible. Coursework meant that you could gradually accumulate some decent grades and push towards your final goal over a longer time period, with less stress at the end. The real world is hardly ever like this as they now are pushing for. More often than not it's a gradual process of work, not some manic crunch-time at the 11th hour. I think this is terrible, generally.

 

[AJK]

What upward trend?

The trend for the percentage of students achieving grades A*-C going up year-on-year (devaluing the qualification), and those achieving D-U going down.

 

[gregorius]

Why are they slashing coursework?
At my University, nearly 30% of my marks come from coursework. It's ridicilous that they are cutting coursework, students need to be able to do practical work as well academic.

And there are plenty of us working in the university system who would very happily do away with the current form of coursework there as well! You are absolutely correct in stating that students need to be able to do practical work as well as academic; but the current form of unsupervised coursework is a disaster.

 

[gregorius]

Open book exams are great, and they work for maths too (let's say "book" can mean "reference sheet" as well). No need to recall tons of useless information which you'll forget the second the exam is over; instead your ability to understand and use that information is examined. Much more useful.

For mathematics at university level (studied as mathematics rather than as a service course) the problem with open book examination is that it is extremely hard to set questions that are (a) non-trivial and (b) answerable within a day or two! Believe me, mathematics students are bright enough to go into an open book exam armed with all the standard answers to standard questions.

 

[RomanNose]

Coursework != practical work.

I imagine it's ridiculously easy to abuse coursework at GCSE level. Swathes of parents could easily help their kids out, and I'd wager a hefty sum it happens an awful lot.

A lot of it is practical work though, like geography and science.
If people are cheating then they should just change the coursework from unsupervised to supervised.

 

[AJK]

Coursework != practical work.

I imagine it's ridiculously easy to abuse coursework at GCSE level. Swathes of parents could easily help their kids out, and I'd wager a hefty sum it happens an awful lot.

Sure, but there are plenty of parents helping their kids with revision for exams as well, and plenty who aren't. I know it's not quite the same, but parental help should be a good thing, not something to be discouraged.

 

[Judgeneo]

A lot of it is practical work though, like geography and science.
If people are cheating then they should just change the coursework from unsupervised to supervised.

I forged the results on my supervised science GCSE coursework, as our equipment was crap. Lots of people in my school copied story lines from games for their english creative writing coursework. Parents help out many many kids with their coursework too, even if its 'just' spelling and grammar.

 

[gregorius]

And in one fell swoop all those kids out there who are more inclined toward the creative/hands-on things are screwed. For me, coursework was essential. I hated exams. The whole idea that all these years of hard work and pain all come down to a couple of weeks of exams is horrible. Coursework meant that you could gradually accumulate some decent grades and push towards your final goal over a longer time period, with less stress at the end.

Believe me, I have a lot of sympathy for your position. But the problem with unsupervised coursework remains; it is too often subverted.

For the creative and practical arts (I'm thinking of painting, sculpting, woodwork, metalwork and the like) perhaps the whole idea of assessing in a GCSE type framework is a poor one anyway. If the teacher-student relationship is actually taken as a master-apprentice relationship (which is what it really should be) then the evaluation of the practical part of the production of an artwork would probably take a completely different form.

The real world is hardly ever like this as they now are pushing for. More often than not it's a gradual process of work, not some manic crunch-time at the 11th hour. I think this is terrible, generally.

LOL! After thirty years of manic crunch times in industry, the public sector and now the university sector, I applaud your optimism!

 

[Furbs]

Coursework in the old fashioned sense has not existed in GCSE exams for a year or two. It is now called controlled assessment.

The rules over controlled assessment are that is has to be carried out in a "controlled" environment, ie. with a teacher present so you can not cheat.

In my subject no work is allowed to be brought in from home other than some basic research, everything else must be done and checked off by me in the classroom.

 

[PermaBanned]

Could you explain a little more what you mean here please? Grade inflation (as I understand it) is quite a serious problem. Least of all, it causes us in universities no end of headache

Been a while since i did GCSEs and i don't remember the terminology, but it's more or less the same system as for A levels. Each paper has a certain number of raw marks available, and a UMS (Uniform Mark Scale) equivalent number of marks. The conversion between raw marks and UMS is how each paper is "balanced" so the different content of each season's paper doesn't affect the grades.

So, hypothetically, let's say that this morning i sat a paper with 75 raw marks available that's worth 100 UMS (okay, that bit isn't hypothetical ). The average raw mark attained by all the students in the country who sat this paper might be, i don't know, 56. That becomes the break even point, above which you get more UMS marks than you got raw marks and below which you get less... well, depending on how spread out the results are, anyway. Some weird things can happen if the standard deviation is incredibly narrow or incredibly wide.

The full qualification is graded based on how many UMS marks you achieved on all your modules (exams and coursework). Might help to play around with this:

http://www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/about-results/uniform-mark-scale/convert-marks-to-ums

The trend for the percentage of students achieving grades A*-C going up year-on-year (devaluing the qualification), and those achieving D-U going down.

Show me the data.

 

[Judgeneo]

Show me the data.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/17/gcse-exams-replaced-ebacc-history-pass-rates

 

[AJK]

Helping them learn or revise is fundamentally different to doing the assessment for them/changing their answers to make them far better. I'm sure you can see that.

Hence why coursework submission needs to be accompanied by contact hours, with some kind of challenge to make sure that the student actually understands what they've submitted.

I'm thinking of an A-Level Computing project which due to some bizarre scheduling at my school needed to be done mostly at home or in out-of-hours lessons. My submission was accompanied by a discussion with the IT teacher who got me to talk through certain areas, decisions, and parts of the submission. Not thoroughly by any means, but (hopefully) in sufficient detail to confirm that the work was mine.

 

[gregorius]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/17/gcse-exams-replaced-ebacc-history-pass-rates

So the obvious sort of questions arising from this type of data are:

(i) Are children getting better at doing exams?
(ii) Are children better "educated" than they were twenty-five years ago?
(iii) Are teachers getting better at "teaching to the test"?
(iv) Are the tests getting easier?
(v) Are children achieving top grades this year as "capable" as those achieving them twenty five years ago?

It would be wonderful if (ii) and (v) were true. Unfortunately, for those of us who have to teach remedial this, that and the other (but especially Maths and English), the worry is that (iii) and (iv) are true...

There are many confounders underlying any sensible debate on numbers like these.

 

[gregorius]

Been a while since i did GCSEs and i don't remember the terminology, but it's more or less the same system as for A levels. Each paper has a certain number of raw marks available, and a UMS (Uniform Mark Scale) equivalent number of marks. The conversion between raw marks and UMS is how each paper is "balanced" so the different content of each season's paper doesn't affect the grades.

So, hypothetically, let's say that this morning i sat a paper with 75 raw marks available that's worth 100 UMS (okay, that bit isn't hypothetical ). The average raw mark attained by all the students in the country who sat this paper might be, i don't know, 56. That becomes the break even point, above which you get more UMS marks than you got raw marks and below which you get less... well, depending on how spread out the results are, anyway. Some weird things can happen if the standard deviation is incredibly narrow or incredibly wide.

Unfortunately this process can be confounded by the conjunction of the two simultaneous processes (a) exams getting easier and (b) pupil achievement declining. This is the big worry for those of us who see the end product of the secondary schooling system.

 

[PermaBanned]

Unfortunately this process can be confounded by the conjunction of the two simultaneous processes (a) exams getting easier and (b) pupil achievement declining. This is the big worry for those of us who see the end product of the secondary schooling system.

Exams aren't getting easier though. Content that would have only been mentioned at university five years ago is taught at A level, and A level content is taught at GCSE. It all filters down.

 

[dim_pwn]

....Change for the sake of change.

 

[AJK]

Exams aren't getting easier though. Content that would have only been mentioned at university five years ago is taught at A level, and A level content is taught at GCSE. It all filters down.

Where's your supporting data to show that exams are not getting easier? In absence of such, results data (linked above by Judgeneo) would seem to suggest that they are.