{"id":7599,"date":"2019-11-22T08:11:24","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T08:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2019-11-22T08:11:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T08:11:24","slug":"lets-end-the-misery-of-gcse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2019\/11\/22\/lets-end-the-misery-of-gcse\/","title":{"rendered":"Let's end the misery of GCSE"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"\">I have long thought that there is little chance of a serious focus in secondary schools on environmental \/ climate issues that we all know need to be tackled whilst schools are so exam-focused in years 9 to 11. \u00a0 If the GCSEs did not exist, there would be enormous scope for real-world educational activities as opposed to examination-focused ones. \u00a0The gain would surely be enormous \u2013 the loss nugatory.<\/div>\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"\">Given the publicity this week from prominent organisations (a Times leader, for example) saying that GCSEs are utterly anachronistic, this would be a good time to make this case to government, even though change-averse civil servants (and others with an interest) would not be keen, and there will always be at least 65 reasons not to do anything too radical \u2013 or anything at all. \u00a0See:\u00a0<strong>*<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"\">I\u2019m told that the UK is the only developed economy with two sets of of school-leaving exams, but don\u2019t know if that is correct. \u00a0Of course, just to write down \"two sets of of school-leaving exams\u201d shows the absurdity of the position we are in.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"\">I've suggested \"An end to GCSE\" be added as a 7th key goal for Teach the Future. \u00a0Fingers crossed ...<\/div>\n<div>..............................<\/div>\n<div><strong>* \u00a0<\/strong>The Times this morning has a letter on this from Barnaby Lenon, the new Prof of Education at Buckingham. \u00a0He writes:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\"It is very hard to motivate pupils, especially teenage boys, if there is no high-stakes exam at the end of the course. \u00a0Will a 16-year-old boy commit his French vocab to memory if there is no penalty for failing to do so? \u00a0Yet committing useful knowledge to the long-term memory is a fundamental purpose of education. \u00a0Exams do stress pupils, that is one of their virtues.\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have long thought that there is little chance of a serious focus in secondary schools on environmental \/ climate issues that we all know need to be tackled whilst schools are so exam-focused in years 9 to 11. \u00a0...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}