{"id":225,"date":"2013-11-14T20:07:50","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T19:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hilarymoriarty.com\/blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2013-11-14T20:07:50","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T19:07:50","slug":"a-fond-farewell-to-gsce-coursework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"A fond farewell to GSCE coursework"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nThe GCSE reforms will spell the end of most coursework as part of GCSE examination. Hilary Moriarty can understand why the government and Ofqual have made the move, but wonders what will now cater for students with different talents.
\n
\nYes, I remember coursework: one afternoon of heat, the exam train stopped there; it was late June.
\nOr it may have been July. Certainly by September, we were totally committed: that year\u2019s cohort of year 10s would do an English course that was not 20 per cent coursework, not 50 per cent coursework, but 100 per cent coursework. Yes! All of it!
\nA timed class exercise was in there somewhere (surely?) but no final, externally set exam. Just a fat file for each candidate of 10 pieces of work covering the range of English tasks \u2013 the usual suspects of creative, imaginative, functional, persuasive, factual or fanciful pieces of written work.
\nAt the time, I headed an English department of four, in a city girls\u2019 grammar school, and I recall how we really were sold on the rhetoric: \u201cEnd-of-term exams, time limits, pressure do not reflect the real world these students will enter for work and life. There, people do drafts and re-do them, have second thoughts, improve their work. Let this qualification reflect what they know, understand and can do, not what they can produce in a panic-stricken rush with hayfever in a hot exam room.\u201d
\nDid we not see, coming towards us like trains, two things? First, the possibility that self-interest coupled with weak policing would mean highly literate parents were quite happy to \u201ccontribute\u201d to their daughter\u2019s homework efforts \u2013 \u201cDarling, just a little tweak..?\u201d Second, the certainty that even if the first did not happen, everyone would think it had.
\nLord, how we worked to make it fair and even and abso-flaming-lutely above board and utterly defensible to parents, colleagues, the head, and a Crown Court if necessary. Across four teaching sets we held broadly to the same tasks, the same texts. We monitored each other\u2019s marking regularly. We demanded a day off timetable \u2013 \u201cA whole day! For the entire English department? Are you mad?\u201d \u2013 to moderate the final, fat folders.
\nAfter our wrangling, sample folders for each grade boundary went to the exam board for verification. We quaked till we got our lists back, approving a combined eight years of real effort on our part as well as the students. \u00a0And I honestly do not recall any grade changes being made.
\nI do recall students who enjoyed the many and various challenges we set them, enjoyed clocking their progress across two years, enjoyed making extra special effort where we could demonstrate the need, (or a grade boundary being too close for comfort \u2013 or a higher one within reach).
\nQuite how we would have managed the whole business in a bigger school with really mixed-ability classes is another matter, though I believe trying to acknowledge better the talents of all students, academic or not, was one of the first incentives to introduce coursework.
\nWith time, repeated effort, correction and consultation on improvement, and without the stress\/demand of a one-off end-of-two-year performance, even the weakest students had a better chance of proving what they could do.
\nLofty ambition. The problem was that those who could were now able to do it more easily, and those who couldn\u2019t often failed to rise to the bait. The very willingness to persevere and do it again and make it better was often not there \u2013 which was one of the reasons such students were not considered academically able in the first place.
\nWeak literacy going back to the cradle does not magically improve with coursework. But it is not cured by making the course more demanding and returning to the big exam memory test either.
\nMemory testing probably has even less relevance now than it did 20 years ago. A professor recently complained that his medical students cheerfully do not bother to memorise symptoms and diseases because they, like their patients, can internet-search whatever they need.
\nHaving lamented GCSE requirements apparently shrinking in my lifetime to the point where A*s and As were well within standard reach, rather than indicators of real or even exceptional talent, I\u2019m all in favour of making the exams harder, really discriminating between top candidates.
\nBut CSE used to cater for candidates with different talents, and what will cater for them now?\b
\nHilary Moriarty is national director of the Boarding Schools\u2019 Association and taught English for 25 years.\u00a0 This post originally appeared on the Sec-Ed website at http:\/\/www.sec-ed.co.uk\/blog\/a-fond-farewell-to-gcse-coursework\/#sthash.wWgJRsUx.dpuf<\/a><\/em>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GCSE reforms will spell the end of most coursework as part of GCSE examination. Hilary Moriarty can understand why the government and Ofqual have made the move, but wonders what will now cater for students with different talents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[69,76,87,98,145],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sec-ed","tag-coursework","tag-dfe","tag-examination-reform","tag-gcse","tag-ofqual"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}