Why GCSEs are Broken - Mr Salles
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- Опубликовано: 17 ноя 2024
- Dear ...insert the name of your MP,
GCSEs are broken, and we need your voice in parliament to try to fix them.
As you know, the current grading by Ofqual of this year’s GCSE exams is being carried out on a statistical model. Teachers have been asked to grade each student, and then distinguish between students by ranking them all within each subject.
What this means, as Ofqual has stated, is that half of grades are likely to be changed. There are several reasons for this, but the one that shows GCSEs are broken is this:
Ofqual is going to use students’ SAT results to ensure ‘comparable outcomes’. This is not new. It is the system by which we always award grades. Broadly speaking, it means that the top 19% of students achieve grades 7 to 9. The bottom 30% achieve grades 1 to 3.
This is a ludicrous position. It means that, no matter what students know, and no matter what actual mark they get in the exam, their achievement is graded in these percentages.
If our schools got worse every year, and our students learned less and less, the same percentage would still achieve excellent grades.
Conversely, if our schools get better and better every year, and students know more and more, this will never be reflected in their grades. The same limits will apply, so that only a certain percentage can be allowed to have an excellent grade. We would expect the millions invested in Pupil Premium funding, free school meals and turning schools into academies out to have helped students know more. But the current system stops you from finding out whether you are wasting tax payer’s money.
This is a deeply flawed, even a nonsensical way to run an exam system. Imagine a driving test in which passes were allocated according to pre-set percentages. In a month where many poor drivers took the test, you might pass despite dangerous errors, simply because you were in the top percentage in that month.
Conversely, next month might be dominated by good drivers. Here you might need an absurdly high grading in order to get a pass, and would fail on a couple of minors.
The reason this doesn’t happen, the reason that there is an actual pass mark, rather than some notional percentage of drivers able to pass, is simple.
We know what drivers need to be able to do, and need to know about the highway code, in order to qualify them as safe to drive on our streets.
The same is true in the way we train doctors, pilots, accountants, any number of roles where knowledge matters.
Yet, with our young people, we don’t do this. Our exam system effectively says, knowledge doesn’t really matter.
Perhaps no greater proof of this is the call by teachers’ unions, and ASCL in particular, to modify next year’s GCSEs. Ofqual has astonishingly already embarked on a consultation to change GCSE assessment for next year.
This would be impossible in an exam system where knowledge matters. A GCSE system which is fit for purpose would decide on what this knowledge is, and stick to it. It would make no sense to claim a student had that knowledge when they didn’t. In the same way that we wouldn’t pretend a pilot could land a plane, or pretend a driver could safely navigate a roundabout, or pretend a violinist could play their grade 5 pieces, or a pretend a doctor could diagnose a heart attack.
The very fact that teachers, and their leaders, and Ofqual themselves are suggesting we alter what students are tested on reveals just how broken the current system is.
As an educational establishment, from the grass roots teacher, to the Multi Academy Trust Chief Executive, to the exam boards themselves, we have no faith in the curriculum we are delivering. Because, if we did value the knowledge our curriculum delivered, we could not imagine abandoning it.
As you know, the Chief Ofsted Inspector, Amanda Spielman, has revised the Ofsted framework so that schools are now judged on the quality of the curriculum. Not just what schools teach, but whether students actually know and remember it. This has been welcomed by teachers, head teachers and MPs. It just makes sense, doesn’t it?
We need an exam system which also makes sense.
Here are some practical solutions:
1. Have only one exam board for each GCSE subject.
2. Set a pass mark for each grade, regardless of how many students attain it. Students, teachers, parents and employers would have faith in what every grade means.
3. Have more than one exam season. Students would be able to take the GCSE when they are ready, spreading the load of examination papers in, say, November and May/June, in both year 10 and year 11. The 2019 Pisa tests showed that only 53% of British 15-year-old students are satisfied with their life, compared to a worldwide average of 67%.
And how much would it cost to fix this broken system? Not a penny.
I urge you to ask for GCSE reform and make them fit for purpose.
Yours sincerely,
Find your MP below
members.parlia...
I emailed two weeks ago and just got a letter from my local MP. He says he was very interested in the points that have been raised and has sent them to Nick Gibb, who is the Minister of State for Schools and he will get back to me when he receives a response. So hopefully other MPs have done the same and Nick will have loads of the same message and will have to respond and do something about it.
Thanks Jack, you are a star!
Its been a month and my mp replied saying theyll try and do something, and when i responded back asking if anything has been done they didnt say anything 😭😭
Refreshing to hear this from a teacher.
Why bro
@@p_4290 highschool trachers are getting 4-5s soooooo
Most teachers believe this tho.
Mr Rebuild Yep😬
Having done my gcses last year, I always felt that the English system was never focused on the actual knowledge we were learning. It was more about learning how to pass the exam than actually learning and solidifying the knowledge. Its such a shame that our country seems so behind other European education systems. I have an italian cousin and she was so shocked when she learnt about our system.
I agree!
The thing is though, for other subjects, you actually do the exams to reflect on all that you’ve learnt.
But English, you gotta learn things the way the exam want you to, like learning which questions to do in which order, learning how to complete one of the questions, etc.
Lmao, the Italian system is really, really bad mate. I've lived there. Trust me the English system looks like paradise compared to theirs. Imagine everything that's wrong with the English system but 10x worse. And btw, only the Nordics are doing better than us. The rest of Europe have flaws in their systems too. Come to think it of; every nation does.
Phoenix Mario it’s like that for languages too, I remember being so annoyed when doing German in school because I really wanted to learn the actual language but they just taught us how to pass the exams. It’s shit!
@@spilltheteaspillthetea yeah i know it has stupid parts im not saying its the best lol, ig the whole of europe needs some reform lol
Gcses are basically like a massive memory test
Exactly
A big memory test that doesn’t matter since if everyone remembered everything then still only 19% of them could pass
A memory test that teaches us useless skills
wnbrn
A useless memory test that basically decides a section of your future based off of said useless skills
Ethan Colman
Yeah! All those statements are very true! Sure, I can write a decent speech, but unless I want to take a career path that uses that skill (No I don’t I wanna do art) then it’s literally useless!
I took my GCSE’s last year in 2019 and can I just say from my SATs data I was predicted 4,5 and 6s but got 7,8,9s in my actual gcse exams it’s not at all representative. I feel so bad from 2020 leavers
Thank goodness, I also was predicted low because I also did terribly in my SATs and I thought I would get marked down by it
I’m one of those 2020 leavers and haven’t got my grades back. On the plus side I managed to get a place in college which is good news.
I didn’t even do my Sats because I moved abroad for 2 years so I have no clue what’s going to happen
I am one of those 2020 leavers!
Yep I’m so confused because I have no idea what any of my grades are gonna be. I’m just hoping they give us the grades we would have got if we had taken them and not just the grades we got in our mocks.
This kind of makes me worried because I was quite unintelligent in year 6 and now I’m quite smart so that doesn’t sound promising that they’re using our sats results :(
i think if you’ve done well in your mocks and your teachers think you’ve been working hard you’ll do okay! i’m going into year 11 in september so good luck, hope you get the grades you deserve :)
From someone that's going through the same thing, and had the same grade situation (predicted 3's and 4's / attained 4's and 5's and two sevens in English.) I'm sure it'll be okay. Just remain calm and try to relax. :D We are all in this together!
Just resit in November if the results turn out badly
@@Ollie-dh9it exactly!
I heard that it's our years sats results not your individual one so your personal individual grade wont matter dont worry xx
why have they made it so that there can never be a year where everyone passes, surely the more people that pass the better
Exactly!
@@MrSallesTeachesEnglish Something to acknowledge is that in countries like Italy, grade 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10(yes grade 10 is basically the top of a grade 9) are given in base on the amount of knowledge that a student knows compared to the amount of knowledge that the student should know!! If a country like Italy could do it I don't get why the all mighty and superior England couldn't!
@@efeoni9499 that sounds like a much better system than England's current system
Ellie Powlesland no cos then it looses its value
Cheta Enwegbara gcses arent meant to be like money. It’s about education. It’s wrong
The entire education system needs a rethink and one that encourages learning useful skills and information instead of memorising science facts and quotes that we will never need to know.
Smelly gcse books
I agree with that. When I sat my exams. A student asked my maths teacher “when will we ever need this” and the teacher just replied “probably never but you need it for the exam”. Although she did admit that she thought it was stupid too. I did a real life maths course 6 months later and that was actually useful. Learned how to do finances etc. Learned how to analyse data. Basically all the stuff that everyone should be learning.
@@colmanator2386 my baby ethan❤
Please pray for all of us, as well as I hope students get into their dream University. I need 7's to get into my 6th form. Results day is nearing.
Thank you 'Mr.Salles Teaches English' for these videos, it keeps us updated with what's actually happening. Your videos have improved me a lot from going from a 4 to a 7.
I hope you and every other year 11 going through these struggles get the grades you need, can’t imagine how frustrating this must be
@@john-joewallace1202 thanks for the support.
@Hannah Massey thanks a lot for the support. The fact that I don't want to do GCSE's during my AS level is another stress of having to re-sit.
We are taught to memorise things, in my Spanish speaking mock I didn’t even know what I was saying. I was just repeating what I had remembered
ikr its so sad. its such a beautiful language but we're not really learning at all
I'm starting to panick again
oh godd me too
@epic gaming panicking will do nothing as its not good for your health; the best thing you can do is keep calm, cool, and collected.
You spelt panic wrong and its all because of the gcse’s
I’ve been watching GCSE results videos because they’re in a couple weeks and it’s stressing me out lollll
@Del stress is not gonna change ur results so just relax and chill enjoy ur summer
Trying to divide the country by results on a test when you’re 16 that decide what you can do in the future is never a good idea.
Fr it sounds so dumb. Plus the thing we learn in school aren’t going to be need in our future lives🤦🏾♀️ what is Macbeth gonna do for me when I become a nurse, plumber or tax collector???nothing🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
@@Chanelx11 forgot all the quotes and it's been 4 months (keep in mind we spend over 20 hrs learning this)
@@Chanelx11 English Literature is one of the Least useful subjects honestly.
Now I understand why the system is stupid. Before, I thought it made sense as employers would be able to detect the 'best possible' employees based off their grades, but obviously employers look for employees not from one particular age group, but rather from a wide range of ages. This is where it makes no sense. Let's say for 2016's exams, you need 90% of marks in English to get a grade 9, and a student gets 88% (so a grade 8). However, let's say in 2017 you only need 76% of marks for a grade 9, and a different student gets 78% (so a grade 9). This would make the employee want to choose the second student which sat the 2017 exams, even though he/she is clearly not as good as the first student in English.
Periodt
Ikr
Thats implying that the exams are the same. Curve fitting always insures that if you get a ridiculously hard exam compared to a previous year your grades reflect that. Raw score does not imply attainment.
@El T That's true, but I still disagree with the idea that 30% of students are guaranteed to fail gcses even though they would have tried immensely hard. Maybe examiners should change the % pass rate whenever they change the difficulty of the exam paper (rather than using data from peoples' results). I get that exams do differ, so undoubtedly students' performances do as well, but maybe the grade boundaries should be regulated by OfQual for each exam paper (e.g. 1 year you may need 53% in maths to get a grade 5 and the next year 47% to get a grade 5, depending on the paper).
pray for me, i need six grade 7's to get into a sixth form. im doing maths, chemistry, biology and economics
I hope you get the 7's you deserve.
@@jamie_sg thanks
May god gift you with the grades you deserve💯
So we’re we gonna retake if we fail and don’t get into the sixth forms applied for ?
Very true
A lot of careers are going to be ruined
Tbh, gcse's arent the end of the world, you can resit.
Ethan how much u got?
All im gonna say is....They screwed us over
I've just emailed this to my MP Chris Clarkson, I don't expect a reply but I'd like him to read it at-least!
I hope together we can all make a change :)
Thank you!
Wish we could copy and paste the description ☹️ 😂
@@mauve9266 yep
@@mauve9266 you can
Amina Ragab oh well it’s not working for me 🤷🏾♀️
I feel like school is like this because there aren't enough top jobs for everyone. So they might think everyone succeeds and they all want top jobs, it can't happen so they try to stop people from succeeding with the school system.
Empowering
The top jobs are far more interested in university degrees and a levels. Nobody will give a fuck about this year’s grades
Alexander Hamilton how do u get the degree though
H1SHM 123 A levels. As long as you have semi decent GCSEs you’re sorted. Employers care more about A levels
A levels are more. Important and far more specific.
I'm in year 12 and gcses don't affect me anymore but I have to say that sadly a lot of this applies to a-levels too. We need a set pass mark, the same exam board and actual representative way of testing our 'knowledge'
Lol if they go off SATs I get no grades
Me too haha. I moved to England 3 years ago, straight into year 9, therefore I haven't sat my SATs :))
@@snxdrxx3363 same, i came at the beginning of yr10
They go off the average sat grade distribution of students going up to your school and the previous amount of progress made to see what the gcse distribution will be at your school. Individual sat scores aren’t important.
d Holmes That’s a wholly inefficient system, but honestly I had never heard of SATs til this year - moved from a state primary school to an independent “prep” and then senior school
same I came last year and moved straight to year 11 sooo I guess I'm gonna fail lmao
Dude, I barely even knew how to speak or understand English in Year 6, so my SATs were not great, but now I've been literally getting some of the highest grades possible but the fact that this won't be acknowledged just because of my SATs is very upsetting
exactly, my friend barely spoke English in year 6 and got 7,8 and 9s in her GCSEs last year. It’s so unfair I feel for you guys :(
Feel sorry for u bro
Same :(
They’re not basing it off ur individual sat grade it’s on the average of your entire year group’s sat results then comparing it to your rank made by the teacher
@@MarrSar-wz7xq and also your avg school gcses results which may disadvantage some pupils!
Finally a teacher acknowledging the issue with GCSEs and pretty much the whole school system instead. It’s pretty fucked up that exam boards and the government are far more concerned with making sure that students are having to compete with eachother and that a certain number of people should fail each year to make education seem ‘challenging’ and ‘top tear’ and could care less about students actual learning of a subject or even just getting the qualifications they need to succeed in life.
This is so much so that they are even willing to use sat results in order to achieve an outcome of only a few benefitting. How ridiculous. This just proves that they are far more concerned with tests and ranking rather than actual learning.
Can we just abolish our school system and change it to be like Finland’s please?
This is why I am a pessimist.
love how i didn't do ANY SATs at all so all my target grades were 5s and i came out with 789s :/
Sent this to about 5 MP’s. They work for us. Change will happen. Thank you for spreading awareness.
If they are going off our SAT’s does that mean that the Mocks and the grades which the teachers put through are pointless?
ExposerDanTv They take the average sat scores going up into your school and add the average progress grade for your school to see what the average distribution should be
Your mocks and teacher grade should determine what rank you are, which depending on what percent they expect to get a certain grade, will determine your grade
yh
Yes they don’t go off individual sat scores
What if you didn’t do your sats like you came from a different country ?
It's 'nice' to know how we are told to work hard and we will achieve, yet these old professors sitting in a darkened study and will merely, with the flick of a pen or the click of a mouse, change our grades to 'suit' a system, therefore changing our future careers
I also remember how GCSEs, for science, never really tested your understanding of the subject. They just wanted you to learn the mark scheme, so no matter how correct your answer was, they don't give a flying monkeys, if it isn't worded as it is in the mark papers, you do not get the mark
That is a good evaluation of the problem with the science GCSE, and you are right - different exam boards actually have different definitions - which is stupid
That is so true and its even true at A levels like you need to use certain phrases to get marks
Isnt it nice knowing that my year groups 5 years of secondary school are all going out the window because its based off of our SATs.
Thank you for this video, even though i set my standards for grades quite high, i feel like the system is still rigged. You've helped me imporve my english and not only that but you're confident enough to speak up for whats right! I hope this video raises attention and hope you succeed in your attempts, many thanks as you've made my secondary experience a lot easier
Thank you very much!
I’ve literally had so many nightmares during quarantine of me opening my result letter and getting failed results, I don’t know if I should be revising for the October/November retake or if it will be a waste of time :(
It’s not accurate at all. I was predicted 4 and 5s but actually ended up getting 7,8,9s. However, it did push me to work harder and work against what they had predicted me but it doesn’t represent students whatsoever.
Me too
@Mr Salles Teaches English Something to acknowledge is that in countries like Italy, grade 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10(yes grade 10 is basically the top of a grade 9) are given in base on the amount of knowledge that a student knows compared to the amount of knowledge that the student should know!! If a country like Italy could do it I don't get why the all mighty and superior England couldn't!
i emailed my mp and she actually responded, wow im in shock rn. Hopefully she takes action.
edit: for anyone wondering she told me that she wants to know my address so she can make sure im her constituent and then she'll respond. I'll update you when she does
edit2: 5 days and still no response :(
potatoyama Who was your MP and what did she say
Well done! mine is contacting the Secretary of State for Education - if lots of people write in, we might get somewhere
@@MrSallesTeachesEnglish thats great! i really do think that if enough people email their mps then we can make at least SOME difference
I feel like this years GCSE Generation will be the forgotten generation
Yep but what about next years ? Its gonna be chaos compared to this years well ik that the 2021 GCSEs will he taken but in the account that they would have missed half a year of vital education and ontop do the year 11 work aswell plus the revision given the same time they would get in the previous years and given the situation that is unfair and unjust and will make many upset or angry that they got the grades they didnt want
Sounds like the kids would feel right at home reading ‘1984’.
Finally! Someone finally speaks up on this matter, which I’ve been stressing since I was in year 10. I even based my GCSE English speaking exam on this, I find it so frustrating. This system needs a change. Over the years, all the government really does is increase the topics in the curriculum, and we’re forced to MEMORISE, rather than UNDERSTAND. We NEED to be able to apply our knowledge to real-life situation, but we can’t because we don’t UNDERSTAND.
I really, really hope that those in authority realise they’re discouraging the youngsters, and not pushing them in the right and efficient way. I don’t want the years below me to go through the same repetitive things I had to go through, it’s not right. No wonder most students lose hope, and start messing around in high school.
I honestly am shocked. You surely know that the exam board don't dictate what knowledge is necessary or valued. The government sets the AOs and all the exam boards do is use different texts and formats though actually the texts are by and large the same.
I never took SATS in 6 six because I was out of the country. Technically the only evidence my school has of my progress has been since year 9 to year 11 now. What does this mean for people like me?
It means nothing as they’re taking an average of all the results for our year not individuals or else I’d be screwed 😂
Your teachers don’t grade you off sats, they grade you off of mocks, class work and the progress they think you’d have made. Sat scores are just to see the average grade distribution going into secondary and is couple with average progress in past years to see what the distribution of gcse grades should be. This is to make sure schools, especially private schools, can’t cheat by massively over predicting.
Essentially if you’ve been working hard, you’ll be fine
d Holmes Mauve thank you I get it now
@@dholmes264 Do they grade you off all mocks including ones you've done before GCSE?
Our English class, 2017... the first year of 1-9. Our teacher left due to maternity, our replacement didn’t show up for a month after, she took a holiday, she we didn’t have a teacher, for 3 and a half months. It was one of my most stressful times of my life, and I was abused as a child, during exams I wouldn’t sleep for 2-3 days at a time, when I got sleep it would be me crying myself to sleep, I was running on caffeine, I was depressed and so was my class, we didn’t know what was gonna happen, I practically taught my class half of Dr Jekyll and mr Hyde, as well as going through animal farm with them. I was practically a quasi teacher, we didn’t even cover most of poetry, as we just had the average supply teachers, we had enough at the end of March so we wrote a letter telling them we’re boycotting the exams. So at the end of year 10 I got a 2 and 4...
I ended up with a 7 and 8 for language and literature. I cried so badly. Honestly hate the new system, it just doesn’t give kids incentives to do well, they should’ve at least given students to do exams in the year before and or mid term exams which go towards the end of their grades.
Thank you so much for bringing this issue into the forefront. As a student who was supposed to take exams this year, I appreciate this immensely, and have just sent an email to my MP. Thanks from the bottom of my heart for leading the charge in calling for the change we need❤️
Honestly I'm expecting high grades and still think everyone should just get either a pass or a fail
Due to grade boundaries it all comes down to brackets and percentages
In my case my entire school has been downgraded
This is evidenced statistically.
I was a prospective imperial student but make a guess as to what happened. My school was naive enough to grade us proportionally based on last years results. This is fine since i would be packing to imperial. But Ofquals algorithm pushed this down further for every student. My school expected 4 A's for computer science ( last years cohort was abysmal) and i was number 4. I have been downgraded. Safe to say comp sci results will not reflect last year. It is a mess and to assume the government is naive, well, is naive. I have seen private schools go from 60% a* to c up to 96%. Their classes are similar in size to my school.
This is unexplainable and inexcusable corruption
My school does English literature a year early which is great as it's less stress in year 11 but Ofsted doesn't like it. We also stated most GCSEs in y9.
Very nice to hear this from a position of experience. I’ve always been frustrated with how a lot of what I learn isn’t set by teachers themselves and the current grading system is incredibly classist and detrimental for people’s mental health right now. Finally an English teacher I can get behind and agree with 😊
If they’re basing grades off of SATs, I’m screwed. In my SATs I got (old) 5s, yet I worked my butt off in HS and now get (9-1) 7-8s. I just wanna do higher maths but I doubt they’ll let me if my grades are dodgy
Edit: BOYS i got mostly 8s and 7s with two 6s can i get a W
IKR like same. My primary couldn’t teach properly and I needed extra support. But ever since I went to high school, I’ve coped fine and now this year I’ve been achieving mostly A*/A’s in my subjects.
Exactly another reason why we shouldn't base it on SATs the current Y11-Y13 probably did old and easier SATs and KS3 spec (I did old spec for both I think). Basing the grades of SATs is wrong IMO but thank God I am not in Y11.
Same, I did terrible in my SATs in maths back in primary school but throughout high school I've constantly been improving, and now I want to do A-level maths. If I don't get a 6 minimum I'm screwed
Your teachers don’t grade you off sats, they grade you off of mocks, class work and the progress they think you’d have made. Sat scores are just to see the average grade distribution going into secondary and is couple with average progress in past years to see what the distribution of gcse grades should be. This is to make sure schools, especially private schools, can’t cheat by massively over predicting.
Sofia Thompson Your teachers don’t grade you off sats, they grade you off of mocks, class work and the progress they think you’d have made. Sat scores are just to see the average grade distribution going into secondary and is couple with average progress in past years to see what the distribution of gcse grades should be. This is to make sure schools, especially private schools, can’t cheat by massively over predicting. If you’ve worked hard the past couple years I’m sure you’ll do well
This video is sooooo true!!! I’ve been thinking this for ages, the exam system right now is in no way geared for a smarter and more knowledgeable population over time
Thank you
Imagine doing well in GCSEs and then finding out that it apparently isn't worth anything xD
It really isn’t. For the amount of stress I went through during GCSEs, it really wasn’t worth it. I’m at uni at the moment and I, nor does anybody else, don’t give my GCSEs a second thought. As long as you do well enough to get on to the next stage of your life, it’s irrelevant what you achieved. Even then, there’s plenty of opportunities to retake. The school system causes massive amounts of unnecessary stress and it needs to change
@@laurenpreston9702 Yh but it is like the most basic qualification you need to get a job so if u have no GCSEs what are you supposed to do
Siddique Muzzamil redo them? Get a job that doesn’t consider qualifications in the mean time. What I was saying is that so many people stress, unnecessarily, to get the best grades when they’re barely considered once you’ve done higher qualifications.
i'm a year 11 and one of my best friends moved to the uk from italy when we were in year 7. she didn't do SATS and didn't speak english at the time, so she was given low target/predicted grades. however, 5 years on, her predicted grades are still low despite how much she has clearly improved. she is an inherently smart multilingual who has been getting the same good grades as her non-immigrant counterparts for a few years now. she probably won't get the grades she deserves and would've achieved otherwise just because she moved here late.. it's been almost a THIRD OF OUR LIFE since we did our SATS :/
I hardly remember anything I learnt from my GCSEs. It just goes to show how GCSEs are basically a short-term memory dump. Thank you for the educational video, I sent an email to my local MP.
The Yellow Raincoat Thank you
Should we email our local MP then?
Yeah quickly
I suck at learning at home. My exams are next year but I hope it goes well..
I came to England in 2014 I was in year 6 at the time and I had to seat my SATs regardless of the fact that I knew almost no English.
Now I’m in year 11 and obviously I’m much more smarter than I was in year 6 and the fact that they will be using our SATs to grade us. Has my stomach rolling...
How is Religous Studies gonna help me get a job honestly waste of time and resources that could be spended on core subjects
The idea that education is for a job is not one I and most teachers share!
Even if you get good grades you are never really thought about how to get a job they just tell you what a CV is or give you a lesson on it which is not enough
That bit about teaching kids how to pass an exam vs actually teaching them something valuable is more true than I could even imagine
Thankyou so much for this video! I will be writing to my local MP, thanks again. Some action needs to be taken 😔
Am a y11 and leaving this year
I never took my SATS, i went to private school during y6, and i was infinitely better during my mocks
As a student who took my GCSE’s last year (24 different exams) I can agree that they are horrible and unfair!!
For those of you who are watching on phone and can't copy:
Dear ...MP's_name... ,
GCSEs are broken, and we need your voice in parliament to try to fix them.
As you know, the current grading by Ofqual of this year’s GCSE exams is being carried out on a statistical model. Teachers have been asked to grade each student, and then distinguish between students by ranking them all within each subject.
What this means, as Ofqual has stated, is that half of grades are likely to be changed. There are several reasons for this, but the one that shows GCSEs are broken is this: Ofqual is going to use students’ SAT results to ensure ‘comparable outcomes’. This is not new. It is the system by which we always award grades. Broadly speaking, it means that the top 19% of students achieve grades 7 to 9. The bottom 30% achieve grades 1 to 3.
This is a ludicrous position. It means that, no matter what students know, and no matter what actual mark they get in the exam, their achievement is graded in these percentages.
If our schools got worse every year, and our students learned less and less, the same percentage would still achieve excellent grades. Conversely, if our schools get better and better every year, and students know more and more, this will never be reflected in their grades. The same limits will apply, so that only a certain percentage can be allowed to have an excellent grade.
We would expect the millions invested in Pupil Premium funding, free school meals and turning schools into academies out to have helped students know more. But the current system stops you from finding out whether you are wasting tax payer’s money.
This is a deeply flawed, even a nonsensical way to run an exam system. Imagine a driving test in which passes were allocated according to pre-set percentages. In a month where many poor drivers took the test, you might pass despite dangerous errors, simply because you were in the top percentage in that month.
Conversely, next month might be dominated by good drivers. Here you might need an absurdly high grading in order to get a pass, and would fail on a couple of minors.
The reason this doesn’t happen, the reason that there is an actual pass mark, rather than some notional percentage of drivers able to pass, is simple. We know what drivers need to be able to do, and need to know about the highway code, in order to qualify them as safe to drive on our streets.
The same is true in the way we train doctors, pilots, accountants, any number of roles where knowledge matters.
Yet, with our young people, we don’t do this. Our exam system effectively says, knowledge doesn’t really matter.
Perhaps no greater proof of this is the call by teachers’ unions, and ASCL in particular, to modify next year’s GCSEs. Ofqual has astonishingly already embarked on a consultation to change GCSE assessment for next year.
This would be impossible in an exam system where knowledge matters. A GCSE system which is fit for purpose would decide on what this knowledge is, and stick to it. It would make no sense to claim a student had that knowledge when they didn’t. In the same way that we wouldn’t pretend a pilot could land a plane, or pretend a driver could safely navigate a roundabout, or pretend a violinist could play their grade 5 pieces, or a pretend a doctor could diagnose a heart attack.
The very fact that teachers, and their leaders, and Ofqual themselves are suggesting we alter what students are tested on reveals just how broken the current system is.
As an educational establishment, from the grass roots teacher, to the Multi Academy Trust Chief Executive, to the exam boards themselves, we have no faith in the curriculum we are delivering. Because, if we did value the knowledge our curriculum delivered, we could not imagine abandoning it.
As you know, the Chief Ofsted Inspector, Amanda Spielman, has revised the Ofsted framework so that schools are now judged on the quality of the curriculum. Not just what schools teach, but whether students actually know and remember it. This has been welcomed by teachers, head teachers and MPs. It just makes sense, doesn’t it?
We need an exam system which also makes sense. Here are some practical solutions:
1. Have only one exam board for each GCSE subject.
2. Set a pass mark for each grade, regardless of how many students attain it. Students, teachers, parents and employers would have faith in what every grade means.
3. Have more than one exam season. Students would be able to take the GCSE when they are ready, spreading the load of examination papers in, say, November and May/June, in both year 10 and year 11. The 2019 Pisa tests showed that only 53% of British 15-year-old students are satisfied with their life, compared to a worldwide average of 67%.
And how much would it cost to fix this broken system? Not a penny. I urge you to ask for GCSE reform and make them fit for purpose.
Yours sincerely,
When your sixth form says if you need to retake an exam they just wont let you in that a level because they are in november which is already three months of content lost plus you will have to wait for results
Sadly for a few of us, our mps are quite partisan, I'm in chesham and amersham and writing isn't likely to do much to one of the safest conservative seats in the country
it's sometimes hard to distinguish between a student doing bad and a test being more difficult
i got a D in psychology when i was predicted an A simply because the only stuff that came up was the stuff i didnt revise (and i was revising)
speaking of revision - there are so many subjects that would take so much time to revise it's ridiculous
This is why the Edexcel iGCSEs are "easier" and better. No wonder why private schools do so well when it comes to GCSEs, they haven't got to remember (retain) 2 years worth of content when they do their exams they're only tested on one modulr/unit at a time (I think) and apparently the marking is more lenient in the iGCSE compared to the 9-1 "normal" GCSE. Go and compare a 9-1 iGCSE English Language paper with a regular 9-1 GCSE paper, you'll find that the iGCSE questions look a hell of a lot easier. Linear exams are grotesquely unrealistic and need to go 👋.
Ive just come from your other video, I have emailed my pm and as a year 10 student going into year 11 I honestly hope the GCSE revert back and there is some form of change
Extremely useful information . I am really worried for results day. One question: I have got 9's since year 10 and in my first two mocks in year 11 for a subject but in my recent mocks I got 4. What do you think my predicted grade would be?
I don't know I am afraid
Good luck shining dove
@@lucafinco1876 Thank you
I moved to the UK in 2018 and jumped straight into year 9 when i went to school so what will happen to people like me who never did their SATS?
I think the main idea of doing tests and passing an exam is not about knowledge as the leaders of the world know that anyone can learn any skill and they supress our curiosity with statements such as "You can only sing if your born with it" or "You have to be talented to paint" Its a ridiculous idea that has been planted in the minds of young children making them fall into the trap of adopting a fixed mind set so they can be prepared to obey instructions and do what the companies tell them to do and stay loyal to the company for years like people have done in the 60s and before. We are literally trained subconsciously to become factory workers, our creativity is stripped away from us just so we can become human resources for the real leaders of the world. People are starting to wake up and there are 16 year olds becoming millionaires through TikTok, RUclips, entrepreneurship and it just goes to show that they are trying to sedate us with useless information to make us obedient because they know how powerful our minds are and what we can achieve.
You learn to pass your exams, not to learn.
GCSEs should be scrapped. I did my GCSEs back in 1998 and I hated it because I hate exams.
I’m 13 years old and I am very glad that this appeared on my recommended
Me too (not the 13 year old part!)
Awesome man
Happy I took my gcse last year. Was predicted all 4’s and got straight 6’s and 1 level 7 and 8. Not to mention it triggered high anxiety levels causing me to need counselling.
Don’t understand why they hype gcses up that much
I did them last year too, at the end of the day they’re no different to any other test you’d do at school and moreover within 15 years you probably won’t bother even including them on your cv
@@Ollie-dh9it Exactly
Hi Mr Salles, I don't know if you remember me from a community post. I said how I loved your literature videos; they were so insightful and detailed. I've only got 1 more exam on Friday, (physics) then I've finished! I decided to hop onto this video since it came up on my for you page. I'm so grateful that I could do my GCSE exams, must've been terrifying for most student during 2020. I'll let you know what I got in English Literature and Language in August. I predict i achieve 7-6. I've been getting 5's the whole year but in April I stumbled across your channel. I'm confident with your excellent teaching and by understanding all your analysis and creative writing, I'm fairly confident I'll achieve these results. I'm definitely recommending you to my brother. Than you so much!
I’ll be delighted to hear how you get on! Good luck
I am retaking my gcse english and maths and I myself along with others Did not ever know or infer just how important sats were and was told "well sats are for the school you shouldn't worry too much"
Come collage and one of the higher achievers in my English gcse class only for covid to hit and I may get my results downgraded from a 7 to.. well who knows!
And they said to us sats were just for the schools benefit.
Shocking. It's like they do the thinking for us.
Wait, what? I didn’t even do SATs... man all I can hope for now is that I get the grades I need for the A level subjects I want to do
Sad that it took a pandemic to have this conversation... great video btw.
Glad you enjoyed it. I agree!
What an absolute legend.
Thank you!
I hate the system so much. Education is important but school ruins it and makes it a horrible and depressing experience
Having completed my English GCSE and continuing at A Level, not being allowed to take the books into your exam makes no sense. Being expected to remember quotes from 3 novels and various poems with all your other subjects is unreasonable. This is different at A level as I can take my books in with me.
I can’t agree more
Thank you so much for talking about exam stress and burn out! You have truly spoken on behalf of GCSE candidates and IGCSE candidates TOO!! Personally, being an IGCSE candidate in an African country, just for mocks in preparation for the October/November IGCSE session, we write over 4 papers a day which is absolutely ridiculous! These are our golden and precious years of life which we are supposed to enjoy to the fullest before we take up adulthood but with such a ridiculous education system, it is impossible. This system must change and it must change for the better
That does indeed sound like very hard work. Good luck!
Don't worry for anyone who is reading this on the 17th gcse grades are now solely teacher predicted
Great video. Certainly depressing times for students and teachers alike. Government needs to do more. I fully back this.
Thank you
@@MrSallesTeachesEnglish I'll be forwarding your template onto others 👊🏽 we need to get the momentum solid
Everyone please do this it will benefit us year 11s please
I mean I was roughly on track to get 6s and some 7s, so who knows what’s gonna happen now, 2020 leavers is quite frankly the worst set of leavers yet 😂
We spend so much time coaching children about how to cope with the exam. They spend so much time becoming less and less interested in each subject. The curriculum is based on exam ready facts and, questions built to accept them. We are not educating people as much as simply forcing people through a limited and limiting cookie cutter. The statistical limitation imposed on pass rates is the final crime perpetrated on education. There must be myriad people out there believing they’re not good enough, they were people damaged by the way education was done to them. We have discovered that schools could be improved and our nineteenth century model for teaching is full of anachronisms and holes. It’s time to throw a lot of things out and reconsider the serially unfair practices that are holding us all back.
Christopher Ward Thanks Christopher - I agree with so much of this
I largely agree with the points raised in this video, but I thought the reason certain grades are allocated to certain percentiles of students was to account for variation in the questions asked each year. Some years the exam questions asked are piss easy, and other years they're incredibly difficult, so if there was just a benchmark '70% = 7, 80% = 8, 90% = 9', then some years would have tonnes of grade 9 students and some years would have almost none, which would be completely unfair for students who would now have worse career prospects simply because they were born in the wrong year. Also, students' circumstances vary each year, most prevalently with the current Year 10s who are likely gonna perform far worse in their GCSEs than other years cuz they've had about 4 months of school disrupted. If adjustable grade boundaries weren't a thing, then they'd be screwed again to no fault of their own. Driving tests work the way they do because they're all of equal difficulty and have been for years. The tests are practically identical, and you can't cheat on them. However, if school exams were the same every year (the only way they'd be able to fairly set benchmark percentages for each grade), then the entire paper would be leaked within a week of the first year taking it.
Bob Ruperts You are right if we accept that in 10 months of prep time an exam board could not construct a paper which had the same difficulty as the year before. I just don’t accept that. The driving test is the same - you need 80% on the knowledge test - the Highway Code and then have to be able to demonstrate particular skills, no matter what the traffic, weather or road conditions are like on the day. Just as with GCSE, it is entirely possible for a driver to fail a test in the morning, but pass another in the evening. It is a pretty exact analogy.
@@MrSallesTeachesEnglish Yeah I suppose so if like you said each subject had its own exam board then drawing up a new set of papers in 10 months would be doable - likely a lot more doable than asking e.g. AQA to rewrite a new set of papers for every subject they offer. I guess the one issue that would remain though is trying to get exams to be of equal difficulty (and requiring the same knowledge as the previous year) without being the same exams as previous years. Obviously you can't test every single topic of a subject in maybe 2 or 3 exams, but yet exam boards have to test every topic over the course of 3 years. So one year for English Lit, the question may be about Macbeth's famous monologue before he murders Duncan, and the next year it may be about Malcolm or Lennox. Obviously they can't ask easy Macbeth questions every year, and at some point they'll have to ask questions about niche themes or characters, so it's effectively a wheel of fortune as to what year gets the easy questions and which get the hard. With the driving theory, there's 50 questions which require basically the same level of knowledge just slightly differently applied, but with subjects like English, there's only like 2 questions per exam which have to be different to previous years, which means the same knowledge required for each isn't the same, meaning the pass rate shouldn't be the same either
Yes, you make some great points here
Why GCSE's are REALLY broken:
IN CLASS: 2 + 3 = ?
HOMEWORK: 2 x 3 = ?
EXAM: x is inversely proportional to 2/3, use this to work out the mass of the sun. (100 marks).
I'm getting my gcse results on Thursday and I'm actually terrified. I've worked so hard for the last 5 years getting 9s and 8s and I'm so scared these grades won't reflect how hard I've worked. I'm worried they'll play the postcode lottery and give me low grades because of where I live! This system doesn't seem fair
@@katy.x9660 Thank you so much, I'm so grateful they have been put back into place xx
if this has a impact and they decide to change wont this affect the becoming y10 and 11's and will it become a drastic change?
Bruh I’m in yr 11 and I’m getting more and more stressed the further I get into the video, but it is great and informative, thank you so much your doing a great job
love the new editing
Thank you - I'll try a few more to see if they take off
I've sent the email a few weeks ago and got a reply. My MP said that they will monitor the situation as we go along.
To be fair, it would be very hard to get a test that works the same where the same level of knowledge would get the same mark year to year
Hello Mr Salles! I emailed my MP however he just responded with information about the 'new' 9-1 GCSEs.
Perhaps they are a bit dumb, or think you are! Why not reply?
Already been 2 years now its my turn to taje my gcses and gcses still haven't changed a bit
I wasn’t even allowed to take level 6 (when is was 6a, 6b, 6c etc.) English for my sats when I have been getting 8/9 in every language and lit test
i sent the email to my local mp! hopefully things change in the system. thank you
Thanks!
I wish we got to specifically choose what subject we wanted to do a gcse in like we do have options but there are some subjects that are compulsory and I dont like that. 2020 needs to be the year if change in the UK!
We do...
@@IN-pr3lw sorry I worded it badly
I agree with the video, but I think that the reason the grades are capped at a certain percentage is so if the exam is harder, then that’s reflected in the grades - you don’t get less people getting the top grades just because the exam board have given them a harder test, which seems fair to me. Similarly next year (I’m sitting A levels next year) the grade boundaries will mean that although it has absolutely sucked learning essentially by ourselves for nearly 4 months, the grade boundaries will ensure that everyone doesn’t just fail because of their lost knowledge, which clearly isn’t their fault. So I don’t know, either way some students are going to have it worse off, I don’t think there’s an easy solution to it.
i'm not sure if A-levels differ all that much froom the GCSEs. Kinda sucks that I've just finished year 12 and not 11 or 13, but also glad that I did well in my GCSEs through my own efforts
Sent a letter to my MP. Really hope he reads it and attempts to do something about the broken GCSE system.
As someone from a grammar school this ranking system concerns me. Our school normally does incredibly well for GCSE results but if they do it by a rank system a lot of people in our school will get 6/7s rather than the norm in our school being 8/9s
No, the opposite - you'll do well
@@MrSallesTeachesEnglish oh, so they take the schools grades into account?
It’s about being the best. Everyone can pass. It’s about who works the hardest. It is also the best indicator for universities.