The proposed change in GCSE grades

Ministers just can't help themselves can they? They talk about a radical overhaul of the GCSE grading system and all they mean is converting 2 or 3 levels of grade into 4. What a pointless exercise in futility.

They can't even work it out for themselves:

so that rather than having A*, A and B, you achieve 1, 2, 3, 4, and it might be the case that 1, 2, 3, 4 cover the band of achievement that is currently A* and A. 

So a 4 grade is a B wait no a 4 is an A-? Which makes a B a... B? The idea seems to be that greater differentiation at the top will allow better comparability between the 'high achievers' and between different exams. No it won't. It's simply adding two more grades into the system.

At the moment there's no way to tell the difference between a high A (missing out on an A*) and a low A (just beat a B). With this proposed system they'll be no way to tell the difference between a high 3 (just missed out on a 2) and a low 3 (just beat a 4). Perhaps we need some extra grading between those make it 1-6 instead of 1-4; and then 1-10 and then...

Or perhaps we could just abolish this entire notion of single grades and do something that would accurately reflect a person's score such as mark their position for that year. Much easier to say that Person A beat 94.65% of that year and person B beat 94.35% rather than just giving them both Grade 1's

It would even allow weighting for comparability with other years. Given the amount of statistics MPs have to look at and like to quote this approach should have been fairly obvious, but then again they only look at the statistics - they don't compile them or really need to understand them.

Educating for life not for work

I read an interesting piece in Sunday's Independent from Tom Hodgkinson entitled "Education needn't be so geared towards jobs" Annoyingly there are some areas I agree with, but talk about missing a big point.

The Ancient Greek word schole, which turned into our word for school, meant leisure, and the art of cultivating one's leisure was of central importance to the culture of Ancient Athens

and

In the Middle Ages, the basic liberal education was invented by the Greeks, became known as the trivium and offered the three liberal arts of grammar, logic and rhetoric.

Well yes it appears Tom doesn't realise the people at that time kept slaves and/or vassals.

Read More >>

Comicbooks in classrooms

Watching the BBC Breakfast this morning and discussions on P.E. (which is a whole other topic) and while discussing the issue of untrained teachers and improper equipment someone stated that they "wouldn't have comics to teach literacy" and I thought "Why not?".

Read More >>

The corporate face of academies

A brief glimpse on the news this morning had me nodding my head over mine own words:

The theory not presented to the public is that these will be run by organisations

It was the Brownhills school in Stoke-on -Trent renamed The co-operative academy of Stoke-on-Trent. Beyond the wonderful example of capitalisation inherent in the name plastered on the front (within the text it's referred to with both a capital C and A) what next?

Shall we welcome the Burger King Academy of Stourport complete with "Branded Tracksuit"?

Why the proposed changes to the exam system are wrong.

Education Secretary Michael Grove appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning to discuss the opening of 55 Free Schools and how wonderful this is. Firstly it's important to note that Free Schools are different to Academies. Free Schools are state-funded and free from Local Authority control whereas Academies are state-funded and free from Local Authority control. I jest; the big difference is that Academies were created by the previous Labour government whereas these 'much better' Free Schools were created by the Coalition government.

Read More >>

Exam grading - a simple one point change to solve much of the problem

I was close with my entry regarding grading on a curve, but like the politicians I was still stuck in the Victorian mind-set of grades to differentiate between students. It took a conversation with my family to suddenly click as to what should be done and how simple it a change it would be. So an big thanks to my mother for allowing me to explain it to her and a big thanks to my father who started me down this path.

The simplest method for removing the problems with grades and year-on-year comparisons is... remove the grades. Rather than create an arbitrary A-Fail set of boundaries mark as a percentage for that exam. If you score in the top 5% of your year then your 'grade' is "5.25% June 2012" if we want big numbers to be better we can switch to "94.75% June 2012"; but I think the former is a simpler concept.

Read More >>

The GCSE and A-Level marking conundrum

Watching the BBC Breakfast news this morning and the discussion on marking; Charlie Stayt, one of the presenters, asked  something along the lines of "Why can't we just set a mark and say if you score over this then you get an A or an A*?" and it never really got answered. So I'm going to give it a go.

Read More >>