The shockwaves from the latest round of school league tables are still reverberating across staff rooms up and down the country. The headlines have been about a drop in the proportion of pupils achieving…
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Articles on GCSEs
Displaying 41 - 60 of 63 articles
Revising for exams is a necessary evil. Ever since written university exams were first set in England by the Cambridge chemist William Farrish in about 1792, students have struggled to revise. And with…
Our world is built on ideas. We have ideas about how science should be conducted, how a liberal society should defend itself, how discussion is better than conflict, how far toleration should be extended…
Pupils in London do better at school than the rest of the country, but why? Sam Freedman, a former adviser to Michael Gove and now head of an education charity has called this “the biggest question in…
The idea that children can inherit the ability to get good results at school can spark heated debate. But, put simply, all this means is that children differ in how easy and enjoyable they find learning…
Despite a number of dire warnings, overall GCSE results have not been very volatile. Across the country, the number of students getting A* to C grades has increased slightly, by 0.7% points. On the basis…
Students collecting their GCSE results this summer will now be obliged to participate in education and training until at least the end of the academic year in which they turn 17. From the summer of 2015…
Children’s access to high grades at GCSE is determined by our examination system, which assigns grade limits in some subjects. Known as tiering, this means that some 16-year-olds sit a foundation GCSE…
The number of students entered for a GCSE exam a year early plummeted by 40% this summer. Before 2014, the number of students taking their exams in Year 10 rather than Year 11, particularly in English…
This year’s GCSE results day is predicted to be “chaos” if recent exam reforms cause large fluctuations in students’ grades. Exam boards, teachers and teacher unions are talking of “nervousness”, “turbulence…
Teenagers across England are waiting nervously for their GCSE, AS and A Level results. Now new figures have shown more of them are choosing to take more “academic” subjects, such as the humanities, languages…
In what must surely be seen as a significant demotion, secretary of state for education, Michael Gove, has been moved to become chief whip in David Cameron’s cabinet reshuffle. Given he is such a big fan…
While the proportion of students from more deprived families and neighbourhoods who go to university has been increasing in recent years, those from poorer backgrounds are still far less likely to go to…
In Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, the fictional character Whisky Sisodia comments that the “trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss hiss history happened overseas, so they dodo…
Sweaty-palmed and reciting facts over and over in their heads, the hordes of university and school students sitting down to exams this month will have precious little time to think about how their exam…
The government has recently announced changes to the content of GCSE and A level history exams in England. As in previous reforms to the history curriculum, the documents set out the proportion of British…
Teachers play a fundamental role in enthusing students about their subjects and helping them prepare effectively for important examinations, such as GCSEs. They can motivate students. But, despite their…
In September 2013, I wrote for The Conversation about the way reform of A-level exams was being conducted and the worrying implications for subject content and assessment. These concerns were echoed by…
With the creeping rise of exam results over the past few decades, many have questioned whether standards are really as high as they were in the past. More worrying still is whether pupils in the UK can…
In 2016 the Department for Education (DfE) will radically overhaul their school league tables and replace their five A* to Cs grades measure with a new approach measuring results across pupils’ best eight…
Top contributors
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Director of the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment, University of Oxford
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Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice, Lancaster University
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Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow, King's College London
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Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Edge Hill University
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Vice-Chancellor and Prinicipal, Brunel University London
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Professor of Educational Assessment, UCL
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Director, Nottingham Institute of Education, Nottingham Trent University
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Professor of Economics, University of Bristol
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Programme Leader, MA in Educational Assessment, UCL
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Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London
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Professor in Education, Liverpool John Moores University
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Head of School, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds
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Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Derby
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Professor of Education, School of Education & Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia
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Professor of Education, Jesus College, University of Cambridge
