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The exams watchdog has asked Education Secretary Michael Gove through a letter to rethink the changes he will bring in, which will have English Baccalaureate Certificates (EBC) replacing GCSE qualifications. Mr Gove responded by saying he will be conducting meetings next week with officials to talk about these concerns.
In the letter, Ofqual expressed their support for the reasons for bringing in the changes, but questioned if the EBC will be able to deliver what is expected of it. The regulators are concerned over the EBC’s planned focus on depth of knowledge and requirement of longer essays, which it says are not reliable indicators for league tables because marking such exams will involve subjectivity. Another concern is whether this is a type of exam that teenagers of all abilities will be able to pass.
Chief regulator Glenys Stacey of Ofqual says: “Our advice is that there are no precedents that show that a single assessment could successfully fulfill all these purposes.”
The watchdog requests to delay the move to appoint one exam board per subject of the EBC because of the severe difficulties it could pose. Exam boards unable to take on a subject will likely lose many of their experts. When this happens, the board’s ability to set A-levels in this subject area will also be affected.
Currently, various GCSE subjects have exam boards offering different qualifications. However, Mr Gove believes this has risen to “grade inflation” as a result of exam boards competing to have schools use their qualification, leading to a decline in learning standards. With the new changes, exam boards will go through a bidding process and there will only be one supplier of the entire EBC for individual subjects.
Under plans for the new EBC system, students starting their GCSE courses in 2015 will instead be sitting EBC exams in subjects such as English, maths and science two years later, with EBCs for history, geography and languages to be given later.
