Exam boards have been told they should fix pass rates and grades for this summer’s GCSE and A-level exams to match last year, to halt the year-on-year rises in exam success.
With the news from the Daily Mail of leaked papers on the changes of GCSEs to a more O-Level type exam, here are the other changes that Michael Gove announced last week as part of a ‘Transformation’ of Education
Michael Gove spoke last week at the National College of Leaders Conference. With the focus of the three day event being ‘Seizing Success’ Gove’s speech concentrated firstly on the progress in leadership development in our schools, moving on to how the government are planning to transform the next generation of quality teachers.
This is the summary of the main points that stood out from the keynote speech:
John Cridland, director general of the Confederation of Business Industry, warned that GCSEs encourage ‘teaching to the test’ and aren’t delivering the key skills needed in the workplace The Guardian reports.
Only the “very highest quality qualifications” will be included in future secondary school performance tables, to stop schools ‘playing the system’ to boost rankings,the Department for Education announced last week. So will the move raise standards, or “exacerbate the vocational/academic divide” during a recession, when young people need vocational opportunities the most?
The announcement followed recommendations made in a report by Professor Alison Wolf last year, which highlighted how the current performance table system creates “perverse incentives” for some schools to put pupils on courses that might boost their performance table positions – but which “are not qualifications which benefit pupils’ prospects”.
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