GCSE grading crisis: fight to resolve 'injustice' (From Bournemouth Echo)
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GCSE grading crisis: fight to resolve 'injustice'
9:14am Thursday 13th September 2012 in News By Katie Clark
Terry Fish at Twynham School
THE head of a leading Dorset academy is urging parents to write to their MP in a bid to resolve the GCSE English “mess”.
The crisis has seen thousands of students awarded lower than expected grades in the pivotal subject due to controversial grade boundary changes halfway through the school year.
Dr Terry Fish , head of Twynham School in Christchurch has now written to all parents encouraging them to hold all their MPs to account for the fiasco, which is having a “catastrophic effect on individual students”.
The school, which usually expects between 75 per cent and 80 per cent of students to gain a Grade C or above in GCSE English, was shocked when only 66 per cent of pupils had achieved a C grade or higher this year.
Dr Fish said: “We could not comprehend what had happened and it was only when the news broke across the country that we began to understand.
“As another head teacher said, the goalposts weren’t just moved, they were put on another planet.
“Our calculations show that 77 per cent of our students gained a Grade C in English based on the January grade boundaries.”
Commenting on the unfairness of the change in grade boundaries, he added: “Since we are not a school which “games the system” but concentrates on teaching well and submitting marks at the end of the course, our students were clearly very significantly disadvantaged and hence our English results.
“While this affects league tables, of far more importance is that about 67,000 young people across the country appear to have gained a Grade D in English rather than the C grade which they deserved since they had met the published criteria for that C grade.”
Dr Fish said any faith he had in the fairness of the examination system has been destroyed.
At The Bourne Academy in West Howe, Principal Jackie Steel said their English results had been slashed by 23 per cent.
She said: “They should have been similar to maths, which saw students get 61 per cent. Instead students in year 11 got a lower grade for English than the other subjects they took.
“Our students and staff worked their socks off to get good grades. They did extra lessons before school, after school, on Saturdays and in the holidays .
“We agree with Dr Terry Fish at Twynham School that it would be brilliant if parents and carers voiced their concerns and demanded that the Government ensures that the examination boards play fair for the children in this country.”
Comments(12)
simong
says...
12:40pm Thu 13 Sep 12
Evry studint should get at least an 'A' grade for turnen up.
Its totilly rong to make these exams harder. Wat if you want to go to univercity and dont get in becus of this.
And the poor teechers mite have to do some extra work as well.
polblagger
says...
1:54pm Thu 13 Sep 12
So what if the mid term exams were favourably marked in comparison. Pupils who take their exams early are nearly always in the upper levels of ability and would have gained good grades anyway.
This marking structure makes no overall difference in A level placements, the same kids are going for the same places in the same relative position they would have been anyway.
KermitTFrog
says...
2:33pm Thu 13 Sep 12
polblagger
says...
4:18pm Thu 13 Sep 12
Schools do not put C grade students forward to do exams early. Normally the kids that take exams early are A students, that's why the schools let them take the exams early, otherwise what would be the point?
Kids that are grizzling about getting a D instead of a C are going up against exactly the same people for A level and college places.
If a 6th form has 100 A level places that require a C pass, they're not going to reduce the course size if they have too few C applicants. They're going to take the best of the D students. In the same way they'd have had to choose from C students had it been oversubscribed.
The same kids are going to end up in the same places, just without the over inflated exam grades they wanted.
TBH the level of coursework in GCSE's makes them nearly worthless as a gauge of ability anyway.
Azphreal
says...
5:10pm Thu 13 Sep 12
sea poole
says...
5:45pm Thu 13 Sep 12
KermitTFrog
says...
11:08pm Thu 13 Sep 12
This isn't about when students sat their exams or whether they were A grade or C grade students. Each student had to submit a piece of work which formed part of the overall grade. The pass mark for a C was up to 10 points higher in June than in January thereby putting those students who submitted their work in June at a disadvantage. Their overall grade was brought down by the higher pass mark required in June compared to January.
While I agree with you on the issue of the number of 6th form places etc it is not the only issue. Schools that failed to get a certain percentage of pupils obtaining A* to C in 5 subjects inc Maths & English are at risk of being classed as "treading water" or failing and being forced to become Academy Schools. Hardly fair when the goalposts have been moved rather significantly.
polblagger
says...
8:08am Sat 15 Sep 12
If a student is capable of submitting a significant piece of course work 6 months early I doubt very much that they were on the cusp of a C/D grade.
As for the schools ranking system, they're in the same position as the students. If they were ranked 15th in their area last year, they'll still be ranked 15th this year.
KermitTFrog
says...
10:44pm Sat 15 Sep 12
If you read the comments on the Times Educational Supplement forum you'll see the difference it makes.
http://community.tes
.co.uk/forums/t/5977
92.aspx
The following is taken from a news item on the BBC website which shows why the grades are important to the schools affected:
"The concern over English results is pertinent because this year, schools in England have to ensure that 40% of their pupils reach the government benchmark of five A*-C GCSEs, including maths and English.
This is a tougher than last year's requirement, where school were expected to ensure 35% of pupils made this grade - in total 107 schools failed.
This is one of the measures used to decide whether schools should be taken out of local authority control and pushed into academy status. "
The link to the full article is below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk
/news/education-1935
5956
polblagger
says...
12:17pm Sun 16 Sep 12
As for school standings, the government can't turn every school that's outside the guidelines into Academies, so once again the status quo will remain unaffected.
I work with young people all the time and although exam results suggest that there are improvements year on year, my personal experience is quite the reverse. I work with young people who are post A Levels or degree, as interns and on work experience. Their standard of speech, written english and maths is mediocre at best. They have little or no problem solving skills and often lack leadership and social skills.
As an employer I have little or no respect for current qualifications. Apart from the generally vague standard the reliance on course work makes them next to worthless in my eyes.
Virtually every job has a degree of stress attached to it, not dissimilar to exam conditions, the idea that you can dodge that stress and pressure by doing coursework makes that qualification useless to me as a yard stick for employees. That's without getting into the fact that coursework can be palmed off to a third party, parents or plagiarised from the internet.
bertbean
says...
7:29pm Wed 19 Sep 12
muscliffman says...
11:40am Thu 13 Sep 12
Ask any employer of younger people with these modern GCSEs in English and they will confirm it probably is best in many cases to ask the parents to write the letter!
This raising of standards was undeniably required and should be only the start.
How it was done on this occasion is naturally another matter and on this the Headteacher has a point.