Changing Qualifications
Posted: Fri 1 November, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Change, Cynicism, Education, News, Thoughts 3 Comments »It’s been announced today that OfQual has announced the finalised changes to GCSEs from 2015, with first exams in 2017. The changes will initially be for English language, English literature, and Maths – others will be announced later.
The key changes are :
- Grading by numbers 9-1 rather than by the current letters A*-G
- No more modular courses, instead full exams taken at the end of two years
- Controlled assessments (coursework done under exam conditions) will be scrapped for most subjects
I think most of these are good, but the one that makes my brain bleed is about the changes to grading. I don’t care about it being numbers or letters, but why change the order of them? Until now, for decades, A has been the highest mark. Why would it now change to 9? That’s just counter-intuitive. When you think of ‘the best’, it’s usually “Number One” to be the best, not “Number Nine”.
Employers are used to that grading system, with A being the best. Changing that round is – I suspect – likely to cause more confusion than any other part of this revamped assessment.
I believe the grades are numbered that way so that a 10 can be added later as an A* equivalent.
Yes, Sarah’s right. The simple thing to do would be to have the grades equalling the marking percentage, but I’m sure they won’t.
Yeah, that does make sense. I hadn’t thought of it like that – although I’d rather see it all making sense and thought through from the start.
But hey, what would I know?