At our NPD training course last month we discussed the problem of what to do when a test is not universally sat by every pupil in every year. One good example is the Key Stage Two maths extension paper, sat by some 11 year olds in the years up to 2002 and then between 2012 and [...]
Ofqual last week wrote to awarding organisations (AOs), asking them to justify the size, and guided learning hours, of qualifications of theirs which count in Key Stage 4 performance tables. The regulator may wish to go further and consider also how grades in non-GCSE qualifications relate to GCSE grades. GCSE grades awarded by different AOs [...]
We were commissioned by Ofqual to consider the likely impact on different types of schools of different approaches to the award of grade 9 in new GCSEs. Three approaches to the award of grade 9 were modelled: 20% approach: the grade 9 boundary in each subject is set so that the top 20% of students [...]
This year, 81 schools are using the new Proof of Progress Tests (PoP tests) from FFT to assess writing and conceptual understanding in maths at the start and end of Year 7. The tests are designed to be sensitive to learning, but resistant to practice effects. In other words, we would only expect pupils [...]
Answer? Law and astronomy, although there are very few entries each year. The much bigger issue is that GCSEs in modern foreign languages are graded more severely than other subjects. Just before Christmas, Ofqual published a set of very interesting working papers about inter-subject comparability and subject difficulty in GCSEs and A levels. The conclusion [...]
At the launch of the Social Market Foundation’s Commission into Educational Inequalities a couple of weeks ago, the observation that regional inequalities had widened since the 1970s garnered a great deal of interest. The analysis released by the Commission was just a starting point and I, alongside the other Commissioners (Rt Hon Nick Clegg MP, [...]
David Bowie sang “And every time I thought I'd got it made, It seemed the taste was not so sweet” (Changes, 1971). He could have been thinking about the changes which will happen over the next few years in government accountability systems – scaled scores at Key Stage 2 in 2016 and reformed GCSEs from [...]
Reformed GCSEs in English and mathematics will be introduced in 2017. Noticeboards in staff rooms across the country are adorned in postcards from Ofqual summarising the changes. But although the grading structure will change, we are led to believe that broadly similar proportions of pupils will achieve grade 4 and above as currently achieve grade [...]
Schools prepare students for the qualifications that they believe will help them get on in life, within the constraints of a National Curriculum set by politicians. But they do so with one eye on the accountability measures by which the school itself will be judged. No government has ever been as active as the Coalition [...]
