As I understand it, exams will be at the end of the GCSE course which means at end of Year 11 for separate sciences and end of Year 10 for 'core' science, then end Year 11 for 'additional science' as these are discrete GCSEs. This will mean the end to the 40% rule. Not sure about resits.

found nemo

  Not sure about resits.

My guess is that a resit will mean everything especially as controlled assessment tasks are exam board defined and time limited.

In some ways it will be easier, just teaching the course and pacing to the end rather than having module tests at rather arbitrary points on the course. However, I suspect that grades will fall. It will be the fault of teachers.

How long until A levels become terminally assessed as well?

As far as I know Nemo is correct.

P

Both previous posts seem to be a correct assessment of the situation, although it has yet to be officially confirmed that ANY GCSE can be taken at the end of year 10 and count to performance tables...I'd love to say that that isn't important, but for most us it is!

Exams will be taken in May/June only, and it will be the whole course assessed in one sitting. If that was at the end of Year 10, it would seem reasonable that it could be resat at the end of Year 11...but the whole course will need to be redone!

I'm rather looking forward to it - no more planning teaching to fit in around arbitrary exam dates...we can plan our own modules, our own teaching order...should be good!

Mark

Sorry to burst the bubble of continuing with Core in Year 10 and Additional in Year 11, but at an AQA meeting in December we were all told that the qualification must be complete in May/June of Year 11. I have since looked into all the relevant documentation from Ofqual and the Department of Education and it backs this up, yes I know these are proposals but look at the CON/DEM history on forcing educational policy through. From 2014 the qualification will not count on the school stats unless it is sat in the May/June in the academic year of a students 16th birthday following 2 years of study.

AQA told us that this means 6/9 exams in the summer depending on if students are doing "double" or separates.

Do you have any links to this documentation?

shooppoop

AQA told us that this means 6/9 exams in the summer depending on if students are doing "double" or separates.

That way they can still hang onto their exam fees cash cow of course. Why else have three exams per GCSE?

Any ideas how long summer terminal exams will be? When I did my GCSEs in 1996 I did triple with NEAB and we did a 2.5 hour exam for each subject. In those days there were 3 tiers I think the tier below might have been shorter.

 With AQA the current legacy specification exams are 2.5 hours long if you do modules or 2.25 hours if you do long answer questions for unit 1. The new spec has 3 x 1 hour exams for triple so 3 hours. iGCSE from AQA is 2 x 90 min hour exams. I'm guessing that we are most likely to get 2 papers of 90 mins each. Not sure GCSE students of today could cope with 2.5 hours in one go!

http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/help-and-support/94-articles/821

 

Hope this link works! May have to cut and paste in browser. From my understanding of question 8 and the answer, students can take a discrete GCSE early in Yr 10 so that could be Core, Additional, Bio, Phys or Chem.

Problem with that though is we would have to decide really early on who is doing the separate sciences and if we get Biology, for example, done in year 10 and the other 2 in yr 11 it means that for one whole year students will not study biology! Not sure how this will affect sixth form results. We have considered the option of teaching all three in parallel over two years and then examining in Year 11. Does anybody do this currently and if so how does it work in terms of numebr of lessons per weeek and number of teachers per class?

 

Thank you

x

We do a mix of Core and Additional  and also 3 seperate sciences. Core and Additional get 9 classes per week (3B, 3C and 3P) taught by specialists. Then the seperate science classes get 4 periods per week per science taught by specialists. We get course completed reasonably easily.

[edited by: alfredrussell at 16:24 (GMT 0) on 12-1-2012]

Here is one of the links

Ofqual confirmation of changes to GCSE's - http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/news-and-announcements/130-news-and-announcements-press-releases/820-ofqual-confirms-changes-to-gcses

The rest I will have to refind, thanks to IT loosing all my favourites when fixing my laptop.