Posts tagged GCSEs
The Times: Open Letter - Rethinking Assessment: Mutant exam system is failing our children
The Times: Open Letter - Rethinking Assessment: Mutant exam system is failing our children

In this letter, leading educators demand urgent action as they launch a group aiming to overhaul the testing regime in schools.

We were told this summer that it was a “mutant algorithm” that had caused the anguish of the exam fiasco. Covid may have exposed the failings, but in truth, something more profound is going on, and it has been brewing for years: we have a mutant exam system.

Created with good intentions — “to raise standards” — it has mutated into something that neither measures the right things nor is very reliable, and leaves in its wake a trail of stress and unfairness.

Many of those who are involved in the exams merry-go-round are reaching the same conclusion — it’s not fit for purpose and needs to change.

This week a new group— Rethinking Assessment — is being launched to do something about it.

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Business, Charity, Education, Exam Results, Family, Interview, Lockdown, Media Article, Pandemic, Self & WellbeingSarah NorrisLando EducationOpen letter, Lando Education, Lando, GCSEs, kill off GCSEs, exam fiasco, Covid, Pandemic, Rethinking Assessment, Independent schools, OECD statistics, PwC, KPMG, EY, Lord Baker, Dame Glenys Stacey, Ofqual, Pisa programme, OECD’s Pisa programme, TechnologyComment
The Times: Pupils aren’t up to sitting exams next year, say teachers
The Times: Pupils aren’t up to sitting exams next year, say teachers

A survey found that over 50 per cent of teachers with pupils due to take exams next summer felt they were not on track to get the results they should achieve.

Questions surround next year’s GCSE and A-level exams after ministers, unions and private schools raised doubts that they would run as normal.

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Education, Exam Results, Higher Education, Lockdown, Media Article, Pandemic, ScotlandSarah NorrisLando EducationLando Education, Lando, lockdown, pandemic, The Times, teaching, exams, schools, GCSEs, pupils, teachers, survey, Scotland, Highers, Higher Education, National Education Union, Headmasters and Headmistresses Conference, HMC, Simon Hyde, curriculum, Teacher Tapp appComment
The Guardian: Interview - Morfydd Clark: ‘In the acting world, my ADHD tendencies are seen as charming’ by Claire Armitstead
The Guardian: Interview - Morfydd Clark: ‘In the acting world, my ADHD tendencies are seen as charming’ by Claire Armitstead

Directors are queueing up to work with the Welsh actor about to hit the big time in her first lead role, in acclaimed psychological thriller Saint Maud.

When Morfydd Clark was 16 years old, she crashed out of school. “After my GCSEs I just couldn’t go back,” she says. “I tried for a term but didn’t do any work and my mum said: ‘Why don’t you just drop out? There’s no point in being there if you’re going to be like this.’ So I spent a month in my pyjamas in my bedroom with the heating on, eating chocolates, and then she said: ‘Right, you’ve got to do something. You like acting, don’t you?’”

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Interview, Theatre, Television, Film, ArtsSarah NorrisLando EducationMorfydd Clark, acting world, actor, actress, GCSE, GCSEs, ADHD, National Youth Theatres, Welsh National Youth Opera, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Philip Pullman, Dracula, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, His Dark Materials, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Eternal Beauty, Maud, Saint Maud, Bilingual, Drama Centre London, Blodeuwedd, The Falling, Screen International star of tomorrowComment