GSCE’s to be Replaced

Yesterday education secretary Michael Gove announced his plan to shake-up the education system by replacing GSCE’s with a new qualification called an English Baccalaureate Certificate.

However Gove then went onto say that students wouldn’t actually sit the first of the new exams until 2017, which is a clear indicator that there’s a lot more work to be done in finalising and implementing these changes, surely if he and the government were truly committed to these reforms why push back the date of introduction so far.

What happens if Labour, who at the moment are greatly opposed to these changes, win the next general election in 2015, what then the whole thing will be up in the air and it will be the students who suffer as a result.

While there is a lot more work to be done by the government to make these changes, there are some aspects of the reforms that are difficult argue with, starting with the fact that exams will be more rigorous which are designed to stop students coasting through subjects.

Under the changes there will be a single exam board for core subjects, which will not only end competition between exam boards, which many believe leads to a ‘race to the bottom’, with an incentive for exam boards to attract more business by making it easier to pass, it should also bring a greater clarity to what is being taught and to what kind of standard.

Another shift is that under the new system standards will be measured against international standards to ascertain how good, or bad, the levels of teaching and learning are compared with other nations.

However there are areas where the new system doesn’t sound as appealing, for instance what about the students who sit the GSCE’s in 2016 the final year before these new Baccalaureate Certificate’s are brought in, aren’t they effectively going to leave school with a redundant or inferior qualification.

But perhaps the most contentious issue will be the abolition of coursework in favour of a one-off end of course exam, which I think unfairly punishes students, of which there are plenty, who simply aren’t very good at coping with the pressures of exams, and it will also affect students who are more creative and make up for their lack of exam skills by excelling on the coursework side.  

As these proposals have yet to be put through the consultation stage and with the date for the changes so far away, at the moment things still seem a little hazy.