Blog: the story behind the new GCSEs

In an extract from his blog, Laurie Smith, of the King’s College London Let’s Think In English initiative explains the new GCSEs and gives the recent history that led us to this overhaul of the system.  [Read the full blog].

Today students received their GCSE results, in a radically reformed system reflecting the UK government’s new approach to raising standards in education. The reforms means GCSEs are now:

• more demanding in examination (end-of-course only), content and assessment (more challenging questions)
• graded differently with 9 grades (9 – 1) instead of 8 (A* – G)
• consistent in standard between Exam Boards (Ofqual)
• referenced to national standards over time by national reference tests in English and Mathematics
• equitable so that all grades count towards Attainment 8 and Progress 8
• the lead measure of school accountability through Progress 8
• focussed on effective teaching e.g. by requiring Ofsted to report on how schools are closing the gap for disadvantaged pupils and by funding research into effective teaching methods, chiefly through the Education Endowment Foundation.

Behind the new exams is a history which has only partly been made public. A good place to start is Professor Robert Coe’s paper Improving Education: A triumph of hope over experience [PDF document]. This shows how standards in England’s schools haven’t risen for 25 years, hidden by the GCSE grade inflation which led to Ofqual taking control of the Exam Boards’ marking and awarding.

The Labour Government elected in 1997 was committed to raising educational standards (”Education, education, education”) and set about this by creating the National Strategies, initially in English and Maths. Advised by consultants employed by the DoE, a formulaic teacher-led model of lesson delivery was developed with learning objectives, a starter activity, episodes often evidenced immediately with some writing and a plenary. In English, simplistic techniques like Point-Evidence-Explanation were encouraged.  

At the same time Ofsted pressured schools to assess students more and more frequently to track their progress against predicted National Curriculum levels and, in secondary schools, predicted GCSE grades. Neither of these policies was based on any research – the consultants employed by the DoE and Ofsted assumed they would raise attainment because this looked sensible. But they didn’t. The three international surveys of educational attainment – PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS – showed England’s attainment as flatlining.

This lack of improvement was disguised by GCSE results which showed a year by year increase of A – C grades (subsequently A* – C) from 29.9 per cent in 1988 when GCSE began to 81.1 per cent in 2012, a rise not remotely paralleled anywhere else in the world.

By 2008 the Labour Government accepted that the mismatch between the international surveys and the GCSE results was unsustainable. It created Ofqual which was eventually was given statutory powers to monitor and control the awarding of GCSE and A Level grades, and in October 2008 announced the immediate end of the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum tests and the end of the National Strategies. Later, in 2010, the Coalition’s government found over-assessment of pupils’ work against National Curriculum sub-levels widespread, frequent and pointless.

Despite this, schools have never been officially informed that the two failed policies – the National Strategies and frequent assessment of progress towards target grades – are discredited. Schools have found ways of continuing frequent assessment of students’ work against the new National Curriculum though there is no evidence it raises attainment. For the Coalition and Conservative Governments, giving schools guidance on teaching, learning and assessment conflicts with the policy of devolving these wholly– schools are to manage these matters themselves with final assessments as national tests (KS2) or monitored by Ofqual for reliability and consistency (GCSE and A Level).

The 2017 GCSE results suggest schools and students have risen to the challenge posed by the new exams. A fuller picture of the impact of these wide-ranging changes, and the continuing afterlife of previous education reforms, will emerge over time.