Imagine studying for a GCSE and then deciding to drop it at least halfway through the course. What about all those lessons and copious homework assignments – was it all for nothing?
But that’s what has just happened to dozens of Year 10 pupils at Clayton Hall Academy . Staff have advised them to focus on fewer subjects when they start their final year in September.
The school has become increasingly concerned about the pressures being placed on young people following the introduction of tougher GCSEs. Some are struggling to cope.
The GCSE maths syllabus, for instance, has earned the nickname ‘fat maths’ nationally as it contains double the previous amount of content. There are also far more exams crammed into the summer period.
By getting young people to drop one of their other GCSEs, they can spend more time on English and maths and stand a better chance at good grades.
On the face of it, Clayton Hall’s advice makes sense and most pupils will still take nine qualifications.
But it also illustrates the muddled mess caused by the GCSE reforms.
There is so much ground to cover for the new courses that the majority of schools (including Clayton) now start GCSE work a year early. The three-year key stage four – despite being frowned on by Ofsted – has become the norm.
A recent survey by the National Foundation for Educational Research found 56 per cent of schools were beginning ‘most if not all’ GCSEs in Year 9. And three per cent were introducing GCSE content in Year 7 – the first year of high school. That can’t be right.
The new GCSEs were supposed to address longstanding concerns over grade inflation and provide more challenging work for the brightest teenagers.
But in order to prevent pupils being unfairly disadvantaged, exam boards have to tinker with the grade boundaries so results are comparable with previous years. It means you don’t need many marks to achieve a grade 4 – an old C – in some subjects.
That begs the question: why put so many pupils and teachers through all this upheaval just to end up where we started?
Clayton Hall is caught in a catch-22 situation. The subjects it has advised students to consider dropping include languages, history and geography.
Yet these are the very subjects young people need in order to achieve the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), which the Government sees as the gold standard in schools.
Ironically, Clayton used to be one of the best-performing schools in our region for the EBacc. It also has a tradition of championing languages and is unusual in teaching French, German and Spanish.
Now it will be penalised in league tables for reducing its EBacc entries, although students are likely to get better overall grades. It’s like pass the parcel with different performance measures.
Some parents claim their children were left with no option but to comply with the school’s advice. One mum said they were presented with a letter about the changes as if it was a fait accompli.
A number of pupils who have decided to continue with all their subjects say they’ve been told they will have to do some of the work after school. It’s far from ideal.
Ultimately, we’ve got a bunch of teenagers who have spent up to two years studying for a qualification they will never actually receive. That’s as much down to the Government’s mishandling of the reforms as to the school’s lack of forward planning.
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