Sir Chris Woodhead Blog: The new GCSE Maths exam
2 June 2015
Just six school weeks before schools have to start teaching the new GCSE Maths syllabuses, the exams regulator, Ofqual, has told the examination boards that they must reconsider the level of difficulty of the questions they are asking. A research exercise has, apparently, shown that three of the four main boards are asking questions which are too hard and one is asking questions which are too easy.
If I were in charge of a mathematics department, I would be pulling out what remains of my hair. Glenys Stacey, the chief executive of Ofqual, thinks that there isn’t a problem. I doubt that there is a mathematics teacher in the country who agrees with her. I imagine that parents must be wondering why the DfE and Ofqual have failed so abysmally to introduce this new GCSE in a timely fashion so that schools are properly prepared to teach their students when the new school year starts in September.
But this latest debacle is not simply a matter of administrative incompetence. When Michael Gove first announced his intention to make the GCSE examination more rigorous so that it was a better preparation for the A level, there were newspaper reports that he wanted to return to the old system where there were O level examinations for the academically able and a different examination, the certificate in secondary education (CSE), for the less able.
It was said at the time that Nick Clegg thought this proposal elitist and anachronistic and stamped his deputy prime ministerial foot. Whatever the dynamics of this coalition spat, Gove backed down and those responsible for the implementation of the new examinations have had to struggle with the impossible task of creating a more intellectually demanding GCSE which both challenges the most able and gives the least able some opportunity to demonstrate what they know.
Circles cannot be squared. Nobody can devise an examination which caters for every level of ability. In offering a two tiered examination in mathematics (a more difficult exam for the more able and a ‘foundation’ level paper for the less able), the Government has in effect recognised this. Nonetheless, the problems remain.
Was the old O level/CSE really so anachronistic and elitist? In my view, it simply recognised the truth that our system of public examinations had to recognise the fact that there is a huge range of ability amongst secondary school students. I have never understood how the civil servants managed to persuade the highly intelligent Sir Keith (later Lord) Joseph, who was Secretary of State for Education at the time the GCSE was introduced, to accept their pie-eyed, egalitarian proposals.
What is clear is that the soothsayers at the DfE have spotted trouble down the line. If the exam boards had been allowed to set papers that were really challenging, Nicky Morgan, or whoever is Secretary of State for Education in two years time, would have to explain to the electorate why so many more children were failing to achieve a good grade in this key subject.
On the one hand, our soggy egalitarian ideals; on the other, the political realities when it comes to examination results. What a mess it all is.
Professor Sir Chris Woodhead was formerly Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools from 1994 until 2000. He is author of Class Wars and A Desolation of Learning. His areas of expertise are education and leadership, accountability and the drive to raise standards; his research interest currently is the involvement of the private sector in raising educational standards. He retired at the end of 2013 from the chairmanship of Cognita, the international schools company he established in 2004.