GCE / GCSE

[Gardian]

I have a feeling that there are one or two former teachers on this Forum, so this one may ruffle a few feathers, but here goes.

 

It just seems to me that the current furore has been coming for years and the only surprise is that it has taken so long. Just about everybody knew that examinations had become easier and that something had to be done about it, although I hasten to add that I have no doubt that today’s students apply themselves to their studies just as diligently if not more so than ever.

 

The evidence is in the absurdity of A* grades and even A** grades which were talked about a year or two back.

 

I have heard it said that the cause of the problem is league tables, which seem to be universally loathed by the teaching profession. My contention is that there’s nothing wrong with the measurement of performance: after all that’s precisely what an examination is. The problem arises when there isn’t a level playing field, as in the same qualification being offered by different exam boards where there may be a differing degree of difficulty.

 

I feel that Michael Gove has grasped a long overdue nettle. OFQAL and teachers are squabbling like hell over it all, but it had to be done.  There ………… I’ve lit the blue touch paper: I’ll now retire immediately.  

[idun]

Incidentally, the same complaint about exams being 'easier' has been broached on french tv in the fairly recent past and from what I remember the government is looking into it.

I'm not sure about Michael Gove and his ideas. I suspect that he is just another power mad politician who wants to make his mark one way or another. I would much prefer that any changes for the better were suggested and subsequently made by the people within education.

[Quillan]

I have always worried about politics and education, they simply don't go together, in more ways than one, which is why I took my daughter out of state education quite early on. Since then things only seem to have gone from bad to worse with the politicians meddling in quite often something they don't understand, I am talking about all politicians and not any particular party.

It is very difficult to find any information on how many ministers in charge of education have ever been teachers although I believe there was one in the last Labour government, a woman who's name escapes me and I don't think she lasted very long. In the current government David Laws was a investment banker and Grove was a journalist neither have any background in education.

Personally I would like to see education removed from the control of politicians and put under a committee comprising of teachers, parents and business managers, all of which should be active (i.e. still work and have children in school etc).

Currently these idiots make changes then walk away or get reshuffled and the damage their policies have done are not immediate and can take years before anyone sees a result by which time it is too late for the kids who have been through their system. Trying to score political points using children's futures is really not on.

 

[Hoddy]

I don't mind rising to your bait Gardian. Many people, teachers included, would like to have a really good look at examinations. We could start by asking what are they for, what should be examined, and what the levels awarded, if any, should be. The present system which is still basically the old system of university entrance exams may not be useful any more.

What makes me so angry about the present situation is this:

children sitting exactly the same exam in different parts of the year have had their papers marked according to different criteria. Disgracefully unfair in my view. This morning's attempt to blame teachers is, I believe, despicable.

Change the exam system by all means, but not half way through a year when some children have already sat their paper. The losers in this are the children whose life chances have been affected by this crass decision.

Hoddy

[YCCMB]

I'm not a "proper" teacher. However, it isn't just the tinkering with exams that messes everything and everyone around, it's tinkering with just about flaming everything.

When I started teaching ESOL 9 years ago, armed with a language degree and a specific TESOL qualification, I was the most/best/only qualified person among the cohort of teachers in the two colleges in which I worked. Since then, the requirements to do the job I am still doing have changed every 12-18 months, and I officially became unqualified to teach my subject about 4 years ago. I refused to go back and do the various courses I was "required" to do, because they seemed to me to be of little value and were of no use outside the sector. And lo, they're now changing them AGAIN, and the courses I could/should have taken have been suspended pending a decision as to which hoops they'd like everyone to jump through next.

Meanwhile, as has been discussed here (I think), they're now insisting that new entrants to teaching must pass further tests in Maths and English before even being allowed to progress into teacher training. Let's face it, if they'd tightened  things up a bit some years ago, they might not have had to worry that the education system was churning out people somewhat lacking in those basic skills.

Of course, the curriculum has to evolve in line with real life, but surely there's a strong argument for just getting a good system in place and then leaving well alone? Although I suspect that vast numbers of Civil Servants (and, let's be honest, it's they who are putting the politicians up to it) would be left sitting at their computers playing battleships if they couldn't tinker any more.

[Quillan]

[quote user="Hoddy"]The losers in this are the children whose life chances have been affected by this crass decision. Hoddy[/quote]

Exactly Hoddy and it happens time after time as each bunch of idiots decide they know best yet they have no practical experience in teaching kids nor in working out what is required re their education. Labour and Tory and now the Liberals (what a surprise to see them in government and to see they are actually no different from the other two) just can't resist education and tampering with it, it is almost like it is some form of drug to them. The education system was never broken, in fact at one time it was the envy of the world and as the saying goes "if it ain't broken then don't fix it".

[Chancer]

What about the latest proposals from Mr Hollande then, I thought it must have been April fools day.

Banning homework for children because it favors those with parents that engage to the detriment of those who parents dont give a four X.

It is one of the few things that I think is very good about the French education system, the lunatics have really taken over the asylum.

[Gardian]

[quote user="idun"]

I would much prefer that any changes for the better were suggested and subsequently made by the people within education.

[/quote]

Surely, the last people in the world to suggest any "changes for the better"?

[Hoddy]

I agree Gardian. If should not be decided by teachers and other education professionals. What we need is a national debate about exactly what we should be teaching.

Clearly the basics of reading writing and arithmetic are needed. Where do we go from there ?

I think I could make a good case for the much maligned media studies. At the moment most of the kids read literature but only a few of them ever go on to read a book whereas all of them will spend a good deal of their time using other forms of media.

Hoddy

[Gardian]

I must admit that when this all blew up a couple of weeks ago my first reaction was "It needed doing, but daft to do it mid year".

Then, when thinking about posting this thread, I realised that most (if not all) of the students taking Maths or English GCSE last Winter will have been re-takes from Summer 2011.  I'm right, am I not?

The point is that they're a different year group. If you were going to 'toughen things up', that was precisely the point in time to have done it.  Arguably, the issue is that nobody told the schools in September 2011.     

[Rabbie]

AS a non-teacher I feel that if exam results are to be reliable they should not include assessments by teachers who could appear to benefit from better results from their pupils. While continuous assessment seems a good aidea in theory it is open to abuse from teachers who boost their pupil performance to improve their own image.

Of course the majority of good, honest teachers would not do this but the system is open to abuse

 

[Hoddy]

Things may have changed but when I was involved in marking coursework, I and all my colleagues had to submit our marks to the exam board. They would send us a list of the work they wished to see. If any teacher's marks were shown to be too high then all the pupils in that group would be downgraded which was a very great disincentive to over-optimistic marking.

As I've already said I think we need to go back to basics and decide what we want and are willing to pay for with this. In my old school, a comprehensive with around 1200 pupils, the cost of exam entries was our third biggest bill only exceeded by the cost of staff and fuel.

Hoddy

[Pommier]

On the question of which subjects should be taught, when I was at school there was a choice of subjects so long as courses were followed in at least a minimum of five areas; English, Maths, a language, a science and an art subject. That seems a fairly balanced selection.

[Chrissie]

Moving the discussion up to a later level of education, surely the absolute aim of it all is to get young people coming out of education at a stage appropriate to their abilities and also equipped to do a job which will be needed by the community and will provide them with a decent wage.

I lived in a Scandinavian country once where the number of University places was limited/related to the perceived future requirement for people with those qualifications.  i.e. a fairly steady if not rising demand for engineers, chemists, doctors and the like, but restricted funds/places available for budding politicians/graphic designers/ economists..............  Everyone accepted this without seeming perturbed.  The best applicants for the number of places available were chosen and the others went on to other things on a sort of preference system.  I assume the same sort of thing went for technical qualifications such as, er, piano tuners, plumbers (struggling a bit with ideas here, but you get the general principle.) 

And on a purely personal note, at the end of a long, hard-working Saturday, I have to say that if I hear one more young adult, with little apparent ability or application, tell me they want to run a sports centre or want to be "in the meejah" I may have to kill them.

Chrissie (81)

[Debra]

[quote user="Chancer"]

What about the latest proposals from Mr Hollande then, I thought it must have been April fools day.

Banning homework for children because it favors those with parents that engage to the detriment of those who parents dont give a four X.

It is one of the few things that I think is very good about the French education system, the lunatics have really taken over the asylum.

[/quote]Clearly you don't have children who arrive home between 5pm (primaire) and 6pm (college), shattered but still with a couple of hours worth of homework to do!  Just how much can a five year old cope with?  It's already a very long day for mine and when he arrives home at 5pm, glazed over, he just wants to eat and relax a bit before going to bed. 

[YCCMB]

But are they still cramming 5 days education into a 4 day week?

Perhaps there's a simple solution?

[idun]

Home work was banned for primary pupils, 40 odd years ago or is that 50 odd years ago, in France.

Betty, there is no simple solution. The parents in general don't trust or like what they don't know. And they are not taught to 'imagine' any other system.

[Debra]

[quote user="You can call me Betty"]But are they still cramming 5 days education into a 4 day week?

Perhaps there's a simple solution?[/quote]Not sure, since my five year old gets more homework now than my older children did when they were in primary and we're in one of the areas that always had a 4 day week.  However, I believe they achieved this by cutting odd days off holidays here and there so maybe they had the same teaching time overall.  What they're talking about now is doing half day Wednesdays again but also having shorter holidays so between the two, that should enable them to have the time to do everything at school. 

Shorter days would be good too but I don't think the French would be happy with the shorter holidays that would be necessary to achieve that.  At the moment, my youngest is exhausted after two full days and really needs that Wednesday to rest so he can go back for the other two days.  If the days were shorter he might be OK with the Wednesday but if not, I'm not so sure it would be a good thing, even if it got rid of the homework.  Of course, working all day Wednesday would enable a shorter day too but again, the French wouldn't be happy with that.  Wednesday is traditionally the day they do their various sporting activities - though I think it was originally meant to be space for RE, wasn't it?!

[Debra]

[quote user="idun"]

Home work was banned for primary pupils, 40 odd years ago or is that 50 odd years ago, in France.[/quote]So we heard.  We decided one day when he was just so tired and overwhelmed by it all that we'd just leave it and let him redouble CE1 if he has problems - and if the teacher complained he wasn't doing his homework, bring up that law!

[Debra]

[quote user="Debra"][quote user="idun"]

Home work was banned for primary pupils, 40 odd years ago or is that 50 odd years ago, in France.[/quote]So we heard.  We decided one day when he was just so tired and overwhelmed by it all that we'd just leave it and let him redouble CE1 if he has problems - and if the teacher complained he wasn't doing his homework, bring up that law!

[/quote]I should add the further explanation that having been there and done that with the two older boys, we also appreciate that not every child is ready to read and write at age 5.  My eldest was reading before he started school but my second son hated it and we had nightmares trying to start him reading - until one day at around six and a half he wanted to read a book he liked the look of and asked me to teach him to read.  He learned in a few weeks and he's never looked back since and is actually more of a reader than his older brother, who started early.

[idun]

 Well kids, if not six, are just about six in France when they start CP. I know some last sections of Maternelle try and teach the kids the read and write, but that is really not their function as official school (CP) doesn't start until the September of the year that the child is six years old, so this year, it was all kids born in 2006, for those that didn't know.

 

And citing the law, well been there, done that, but there are always excuses, but not only excuses, tutting at me, for being so stupid as to make such a suggestion........and I have yet to hear another parent say anything about it.

We had constant changes. We had a new school rhythm started, maybe 6 weeks school and two weeks off, or was it five weeks on, two off. That didn't last long, although I notice that they are back to a two week break this year. Homework to be done at school during the last half hour in primary. That didn't last long either. And basically we always ended up with the same system.

The savoy region always had Saturdays off, so that families could ski or not simply be extra cars on the roads on Saturdays in winter. And in the end they had Wednesdays off too and did a couple of weeks extra school in summer and the odd extra day during other holidays. Then later everyone was down to four day weeks.

AND now they are talking about reverting to the four and a half day week. Still the basic program and actually teaching the teachers to teach other than what lessons to give hasn't really changed. So the gems, those sparkling wonderful gifted few, who are natural teachers are great and the huge percentage should never be in front of a class of children, and blame the kids if they haven't understood.

I'm glad that Hollande has been discussing some aspects of french education that always worried and concerned me, but what he could actually do about it, little is my guess, the system has been entrenched since the 1880's with few changes since. Although apparently, so one poster told me, great advances have been made in their region, but I have yet to hear about these advances, anywhere I actually know, and I wish I would hear of them.

 

[Chancer]

[quote user="Debra"][quote user="Chancer"][/quote]Clearly you don't have children who arrive home between 5pm (primaire) and 6pm (college), shattered but still with a couple of hours worth of homework to do!  Just how much can a five year old cope with?  It's already a very long day for mine and when he arrives home at 5pm, glazed over, he just wants to eat and relax a bit before going to bed. 
[/quote]

Indeed I dont have children Debra, when I was having French lessons it was at my tutors house (she and her family are now my closest friends) in the afternoons, we would break at 4 to pick up her children and then we would all sit around the table doing our homework together, mine was a continuation of the afternoons lesson plus I had proper homework as well.

She is very competent and had no problem multi-tasking between 2 children of different ages and an adult, we all benefitted from the experience soaking up the language that the other was being taught in.

I sadly did not have parents nor teachers that took education as seriously as she did (she is a professeur) and in all my schooldays I did not one jot of homework, my parents never asked me if I had any or had I done it nor did the teachers follow it up, TBH the only kids around me that did hand in homework were those whose parents took an interest and it was always the immigrant families (we lived on a large sink estate).

I know how much my lack of education has cost me and I see such a difference between my friends children (they are now 10 and 12) and some of their peers whose parents have different values.

I guess there has to be a happy medium and it would be a real shame that the parents will soon be able to abdicate all responsibility, it does seems that the system of redoubling is a very good thing in the light of your comments, maybe he will attack that next!

[Debra]

[quote user="Chancer"]I guess there has to be a happy medium and it would be a real shame that the parents will soon be able to abdicate all responsibility, it does seems that the system of redoubling is a very good thing in the light of your comments, maybe he will attack that next![/quote]He is saying that redoubling may not be necessary if they make the changes he proposes.  Maybe the extra hour your friend has makes all the difference, but my son doesn't get home until 5pm and he is 5 and not 6 until the very end of the year.  There is a huge difference between what he will be happy to do this year and the same time next year.

I don't think it means that parents will be able to abdicate all responsibility at all but they will be able to concentrate on monitoring the progress of their children at school and giving them the targeted help they need rather than trying to get them to complete homework that is given to a whole class and not really based upon the needs of the individual child.  When I had problems with this sort of thing in the UK I just took them out of school and home schooled them for a few years to get over the initial difficulties they had with the methods of teaching reading and writing and maths too.  I don't feel I can do this in France and to be honest, after the experience of teaching both of my very different sons to read and write I don't feel it is worth putting him under any more pressure than he is already under at school, at the moment.  Just like my middle son did, he is coming around to learning as and when he is ready.  During this holiday he has picked up the 'tout savoir' book we got him to prepare him for CP and has been working through it, checking with me now and again if he isn't sure how to do something.  He has also completed a writing exercise book we got him to help him learn to write cursif script - whereas not so long ago, it was a really painful experience trying to get him to do this sort of thing as he just wasn't ready.

Idun he is six this year but he only made it into this school year by a matter of a few days.  My middle son only made it into his school year by the same few days when we were in the UK (born end of August rather than end of December) and I've seen it all before.  My eldest was born in October and therefore one of the older children in his year when he started school in the UK and it was a totally different experience.  He couldn't wait to start school - he was ready.  As he could already read the silly methods they were using to teach reading at the time didn't affect him.   

I don't think they redouble kids in CP but if he hasn't caught up by

the end of CE1 they'll probably suggest it.  It was mentioned in grande section and I

said no - I couldn't believe they had learning goals for reading,

writing and arithmetic which had to be achieved before starting CP, before compulsory school age, but

nobody told us until nearly the end of the year!  I insisted he started CP and decided then that if he struggled and hadn't caught up by the end of CE1 I'd agree he could redouble - which he will be quite happy to do since all of his friends from GS will then be in the same class!  Most of them are only between a week and two months younger than him.  I don't think it would have done him any good to stay in maternelle - especially within a group of English speaking children.  He is picking up French well now that he is in a class with no other English speaking children and hopefully won't lose that when his friends join him next year. 

I know that tales of children struggling at all in the French system make you nervous after your own experiences, Idun, but we really are keeping a close eye on him and are prepared to act if he has problems.  We're poised to move if on balance we feel the children would be better off elsewhere.  My eldest son (you may remember he redoubled 5eme) is now doing really well and has just passed his B1 DELF and though he has said he might prefer to change schools in the past, now says he would be a bit worried about leaving his current French teacher as she is very good; he has a rapport with her and he feels he's really getting the hang of written French.  I never saw that one coming!

[idun]

You did have the derogation option Debra, whereby he could have, if permitted, stayed in the grand section maternelle for another year. Children born at the very end of the year can do this. As do those born right at the beginning of the year, have the right to ask for a derogation to enter CP, what is in fact a year early. I know of children that have done both. And the parent's choice has depended on how they have thought that the child could deal with the rigors of CP. French families, so they certainly understood the system.

 

And in our village school, some kids did double CP.

[Debra]

OK - maybe he can repeat this year then.  The trouble with staying in maternelle was 1) they were closing the school down so he would have gone to another school for 1 year whereas the way it works for us now he could go to the same school for the whole of primaire (it used to be 3 schools) and 2) he would have stayed with his friends who all spoke English to him and translated for him and he really seemed to be insisting on sticking with those and wouldn't speak French.  He says he doesn't speak it now but when the older boys' friends visit he chats away to them.  It's simple French - my eldest says he makes the most of the words he knows - but he is communicating.  I'm hoping he will really progress with his French this year so it won't matter that the little English speaking group are reunited next year.  He is in a mixed CP/CE1 class so whichever year he redoubles, he'll have two years with his friends.  If it looks like they're holding him back next year we'll move, because the older boys will be interns at lycee by then so a house move won't affect them!