GCSE Numbers Game Fails Pupils

Pupils are paying the price as pawns in a GCSE numbers game to prop up a government charade. The muddled exams mess has become a measure of failed New Labour performance which is failing children.

When a government department is put under the microscope, spin and manipulation are not far behind.

The government's obsession with GCSE exams is an inflatable joke. They've let the schools down, they've let the pupils down and they've let themselves down. New Labour has failed to deliver on its education promise, according to a Newsnight poll.

Deprived and disadvantaged youngsters in bog standard comps bear the brunt of a government playing politics with education instead of fixing the problems of their own making.

The current GCSE sham should be abolished. Only key subjects of maths and English are needed for entry into some professions. The rest are a mass of inappropriate and dumbed-down meaningless "studies" which are a yardstick for nothing.

A GCSE does what it says on the tin - a general certificate of secondary education. Nothing too taxing, but enough to show that youngsters spent some time at school. GCSE's certainly don't stretch bright pupils. It's difficult to know how the kids keep motivated and keep going.

GCSEs have become a shabby judge with schools reduced to entering pupils for soft option and pointless vocational subjects to boost results and school performance. Obsession with league tables produce record GCSE results, to stave off closure and meet unrealistic targets.

Schools are playing the system, as the government tries to switch "failing" schools to its discredited costly PFI academies sham, handing control over to big business backers and government sympathisers.

The government, with its school secretary, Ed "get me out of here" Balls, cannot keep up the charade for much longer. Today's shocking figures reveal the true extent of a decade of New Labour's failure.

The government record is appalling. Figures released by LibDems reveal after a decade of drivel, the number of 16-year-olds leaving school without even achieving the basic standard of five good GCSEs is expected to top 3 million.

Young people are churned out of a crammed classroom which has no room or time in the over-packed exam-obsessed curriculum to develop their skills and talents.

In the topsy turvy world obsessed with making everyone 'equal', failure is rewarded with a pat on the back and a clutch of worthless pieces of paper.

Rewards for failure does no one any favours. Far from creating a classless society, a decade of New Labour has widened the gap between the haves and have-nots. Class divisions are most noticeable in classrooms.

GCSEs have produced a class-ridden two tier system as independent schools come up with their own solution. More independent schools are switching to the harder iGCSEs this year to stretch pupils. The most able are leapfrogging GCSEs and taking AS levels a year early instead.

That comes at a price. Private schools are financially propped up by taxpayers with the sham of charitable status. State schools are left to muddle along with a discredited Mickey Mouse exam system to make them look good.

State schools, with all eggs in the exams basket, cannot compete on a level playing field. What's fair and equal about that?

The stakes are high. Exam boards compete for candidates. The more they dumb down, the more candidates and entry fees, they get. Schools face being stripped of funding and placed under the control of New Labour sympathisers as part of the 're-education' process.

Meanwhile, the government continues to massage the GCSE figures by introducing course-work modules and more retake opportunities for students, treating academic and vocational qualifications as if they are identical.

Today's artificial 'record' GCSE results come hard on the heels of last week's artificial 'record' A-level results. Both spun in a desperate attempt to prop up a decade of failed government education policies.

The legacy is a lost generation of youngsters branded failures with no future.

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Half-Baked GCSE Science Fails Pupils

A half-baked science GCSE was pushed through by the government, leaving pupils with a dumbed down qualification not worth the paper it's written on. 

The exam watchdog has slammed tests as being far too easy but it's ministers who now need to learn the lessons of their GCSE science exam sham. 

After two years of playing with the future of our children and moving the goal posts to hit unrealistic targets, regulator Ofqual has finally nailed the "dumbed down" science GCSEs with too many multiple choice papers and superficial questions which are no longer a challenge to the brightest pupils.

Both the LibDems and Tories have hit on New Labour failings exposed by the report which said there had been "an overall decline in the standards of performance" and the papers are now easier. The specifications for the science, additional science and physics exams raised "significant causes for concern." 

Now CSE boards have been told they must sharpen up their act to improve the quality of science questions in order to stretch and challenge students and the entire science specification should be rewritten.

The controversial new GCSE in single science has led to more than 500,000 students being told their qualification has been "dumbed down" because of "significant causes for concern" about the quality of the exams last year. 


The regulator, Ofqual, ordered a review of the controversial new GCSE in single science  after an investigation found a "lack of challenge" in papers, standards differing wildly across three main exam boards, and too many multiple-choice questions. 

Ofqual blames the monstrous exams quango, the qualification and curriculum authority but it was the government which rushed in the GCSE before pilots were finished.

Concerns were raised about the 21st-century science GCSE since its teaching began in September 2006. 

Ministers and their New Labour lackeys reckon this is a science problem not a GCSE problem, coming out with the usual uneducated NewLabourSpeak.

But the report will trigger concerns because those GCSEs are entirely modular and that's the model all GCSEs will follow from September.

At the risk of stating the obvious, GCSE science tests are far too easy. Bright pupils just sail through. And that is an insult to the hard-working children who are forced to sit a set of worthless exams and then lulled into a false sense of academic achievement which does no-one any favours, not least the pupils. 

The warning bells were sounding back in 2007 when a science and technology select committee report noted the rollout of the science GCSE was rushed in without piloting, at a time when there was panic about not enough students coming through to the universities.

Many private schools have switched to teaching the more traditional International GCSEs to stretch bright pupils, in a move criticised with breathtaking arrogance by school's secretary Ed Balls as being out of touch with the reality of "our education system". 

His education system maybe but not "ours". Anyone with the best interests of all our children's future at heart will be shocked by these findings. How on earth can the country hope to get top-notch scientists for the future?

In one of his rare forays away from saving the world, Brown recently pledged to double the number of pupils in state schools taking three separate science GCSE exams in physics, chemistry and biology, by 2014. 

Just moving the goal posts and making exams easier is a shameful way to achieve a misguided and unrealistic political promise. 

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Adonis Arrogance Over Academies

The Blairite Adonis plan for a huge expansion of City Academies, revealed in yesterday's Sunday Times, took many in government and the Labour Party by surprise. Adonis and his pet project have been lying low recently.

Schools minister Lord Adonis, the architect of the programme, had the arrogance to say:

“My motto as an ardent Blairite is, in the master’s words, what matters is what works ... We will make a political decision in due course on where we go beyond 400. On the basis of the results and the demand, the only issue is how far. We have 100 opening in 2010. ”

Many have seen through the academy programme as nothing more than a clever way of building schools under the discredited PFI scheme, to keep the building off the public balance sheet. 

Then handing them over to an army of non-elected education consultants and bureaucrats in privately managed academies, out of the control of the local education authorities. Pupils and targets are manipulated to suit their own ends.

As observed here, expanding the academies programme further will result in more schools branded as 'failures'. 

The government has already earmarked 638 schools in England as 'failures' under the National Challenge programme. They face funding cuts and a switch to the academy programme, unless they meet unrealistic government GCSE targets.

Adonis is well-suited to the task. As Andrew Adonis, Blair gave him a peerage in 2005. A neat way of getting Blairite sympathisers into the heart of govenment. His elevation to the House of Lords, paved the way for his appointment as a government minister. 

So here we have a non-elected, non-democratic minister, not an MP, coming up with a plan to increase the number of undemocratic, unaccountable schools. That's probably why he's comfortable using the royal 'we'.

The teaching unions and true Labour Party members are incensed at the idea of more Blairite academies spin and see it as a further example of the Blairite stranglehold on the New Labour government.

In a delicious twist of irony, it was the city academies which first blew the whistle in the 'Cash for Honours' political scandal - when academy business backers were given peerages in return for New Labour Party loans - first exposed by the Sunday Times. 

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More Schools To Be Branded 'Failures'

Government moves to privatise state schools and hand them over to undemocratic business backers, are revealed in today's Sunday Times, with plans for a huge expansion of the flagging academies programme.

Last week's GCSE results showed, once again, how schools are being forced to play the education system and fight government obsession with league tables, to produce record GCSE results, to stave off closure and meet unrealistic targets. 

The government has already earmarked 638 schools in England as failures under the National Challenge programme. They face funding cuts and a switch to the academy programme, as the government hands them over to the vast army of education consultants and bureaucrats in privately managed academies.

Now the Sunday Times reports that Blairite academies architect, schools minister, Lord Adonis, is planning an expansion of the academies beyond the current target of 400.

Teaching unions and true members of the Labour Party will be incensed by the idea of a further 'focus on failure and closure' to switch to academies and see it as another example of the Blairite stranglehold on the New Labour government. 

Adonis, is quoted as saying: “My motto as an ardent Blairite is, in the master’s words, what matters is what works ... We will make a political decision in due course on where we go beyond 400. On the basis of the results and the demand, the only issue is how far. We have 100 opening in 2010.”

So just who is the royal 'we' that Adonis refers to? Certainly not the non-Blairites in the government or Labour Party, the teaching unions or the parents who have to put up with the hype and spin of the shallow academies. 

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Inflated GCSEs Let Everyone Down

The government's obsession with GCSE targets is an inflatable joke. They've let the schools down, they've let the pupils down and they've let themselves down.

Schools are playing the education system and fighting government obsession with league tables, to produce record GCSE results, to stave off closure and meet unrealistic targets. A view shared by the leader in  today's Independent.

With the spotlight on school league tables, today's GCSE results show more and more pupils are being entered for soft option and 'pointless' vocational subjects to boost results and school performance. The biggest jump in top grades since 1990, according to the BBC. 

Traditional tough subjects like physics and chemistry and being replaced by the easier combined science and languages shunned altogether. Single subjects are being rebranded as 'studies' which require less rigourous academic study.

Schools, afraid of being branded failures, are coming under increasing pressure, as the government tries to switch schools to its flagging Adonis academies programme - using PFI schemes to keep public spending off the balance sheet and handing control over to big business backers, sympathetic to the government. 

In June, it was highlighted by the Orange Party here, that the government is planning a cull of one in five secondary schools in England, unless they make the grade and hit the benchmark targets of 30% of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including maths and English. 

In a desperate attempt to boost targets, the government has already threatened to take funding away from so-called 'specialist schools', which promote themselves in areas like arts, technology, unless they deliver.

These schools face being stripped of funding and placed under the control of New Labour sympathisers as part of the 're-education' process.

The 638 schools targeted are being unfairly stigmatised as 'failing' as an excuse to hand them over to the vast army of education consultants and bureaucrats in privately managed academies.

Teaching unions are rightly indignant and reject this "focus on failure and closure".

Meanwhile, the government is trying to massage the GCSE figures by introducing course-work modules and more retake opportunities for students. 

In an attempt to produce a meaningful 16+ examination and counter the spin, some schools have started to switch pupils to the International GCSE which is more akin to the old 'O' level.

Today's artificial 'record' GCSE results come hard on the heels of last week's artificial 'record' A-level results. Both spun in a desperate attempt to prop up the government's failed education policies which are failing our children. 

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Neat Proof Exams Have Got Easier

Proof exams really have got easier comes from a neat piece of research today, where 16 year olds were given chemistry questions from the 1960s and later, mixed in with questions from the present day. 

The result was hardly surprising. They failed miserably.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) gave around 2000 youngsters an exam paper that mixed both O-level and GCSE questions from the past fifty years. 

Around 450 UK schools took part in the exam, organised as a competition and the average overall mark was just 25 per cent.

Youngsters scored an average of just 15 per cent on the O-level chemistry questions from the 1960s.

It can be argued that schools teach different things these days and you need a different kind of exam to test this. But wait a minute. This is chemistry. Atoms have been around forever and chemicals get up to the same things now as they did then.

For the past ten years New Labour's warped sense of values has created an education culture where schools have been forced to dumb-down the teaching and create meaningless exams by a government obsessed with targets. 

Never mind the quality of teaching, problem solving-skills and rigourous study, just look at the quantity. Everyone passes, everyone gets a worthless bit of paper and everyone's a winner.

There are just as many bright sparks around today as there were in the past. But the way of manipulating present education policies to suit political targets is damning for the future. Just who will go on to become the future scientists, researchers and inventors? 

Commenting on the results, Dr Richard Pike, chief executive of the RSC, said: "This remains a major issue for universities and employers, who say the country needs better problem solving skills to remain at the forefront of an increasingly competitive world."

Try telling that to schools secretary Balls.

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Dumbed Down Diplomas

Industry chiefs are telling the New Labour government what many have been saying for ages - the new Diplomas to replace academic GCSEs and A-levels aren't worth the paper they're written on. Dumbing down just go dumber.

The employers' organisation, the CBI, says government plans for Diplomas for academic subjects in England are "an unnecessary distraction".

Of course they are. It's a sham. A New Labour wheeze to justify the billions of pounds spent trying to achieve ridiculous education targets. 

They've tried dumbing down the GCSEs and A-levels, introduced course work to make them easier and a whole range of subjects which require little rigourous academic study in an effort to boost results. But after ten years - that still doesn't work.

They want more youngsters to stay on at school between 16-18 to keep down the unemployment figures. But you can't expect them all to study A-levels. 

Diplomas for vocational subjects (GNVQs) are already taken by students and have been for years. They're simply being rebranded as Diplomas and introduced for both vocational and academic subjects, all rolled into one 'qualification'.

The uptake of the new Diplomas, to be introduced from September, is poor even from the state schools where their funding source dictate what they should do. There's a shortage of markers for the subjects and universities are beginning to set their own entrance exams because the A-levels are becoming worthless.

In the shallow, fantasy world of New Labour, everyone's a winner. More students get good results and everyone passes. It's a School Leaving Certificate by another name. In the US it's called a High School Diploma.

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