Industry News – June

Welcome to the Industry News – June. June is a busy time in schools especially for those children sitting their GCSE’s. All the months of hard work are about to pay off as they complete this last stage of their education at secondary school level. Year 11’s are the penultimate year to sit the GCSE’s in their current form as from 2017 the format of GCSE’s is changing significantly as is explained below.

The dawn of the new GCSE format

The format of GCSE’s is changing. New GCSEs will be graded 9 – 1, rather than A*–G, with grade 5 considered a good pass and grade 9 being the highest and set above the current A*. The new system is intended to help provide more differentiation, especially among higher achieving students. The grades will be given for the first time in 2017 exam results, for specifications that first started teaching in 2015. By 2019, all GCSE results will be using the new system.

The main changes are that assessment will be mainly by exam, there will be new, more demanding content, which has been developed by government and the exam boards, courses will be designed for two years of study – they will no longer be divided into different modules and students will take all their exams in one period at the end of their course and resit opportunities will only be available each November in English language and maths. It is one of the most radical reforms to examinations since the introduction of GCSE’s in 1986 and it will be interesting to see how schools, pupils and employers cope with the new changes.

Leaked Sats Tests

All state primary pupils in England are tested at the end of Key Stage 1 (year 2) and Key Stage 2 (year 6). Some secondary schools base their year 7 sets on children’s year 6 scores so they are considered important. However, head teachers are calling on the education secretary to stop the publication of this year’s primary school results in England due to a series of “serious mistakes” in the introduction of changes to tests. This year’s primary tests also saw a series of leaks and cancellations. Leaders of the National Association of Head Teachers have written an open letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan urging her to cancel the public use of any data from this year’s primary tests.

It would mean there would be no primary school league tables, based on the tests taken by 10 and 11 year olds. The head teachers’ union says that individual pupils should be given their results, with warnings to parents about concerns over their reliability, but the results were not robust enough to be used to make comparisons between schools. Baseline tests for reception pupils also had to be scrapped, when it was found that the different types of tests being used did not produce consistent results. A Department for Education spokesman has said they will respond to the letter in due course so it will be interesting to see whether Primary School League tables will indeed be published this summer.

A Literary modern twist

A spoof series of four books called Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups, in which the Famous Five are now adults is to be published. The original 21 books featured Julian, George, Dick, Anne and their dog Timmy. Their escapades, set during the ’40s and ’50s, saw the children having virtually adult-free outdoor holidays where they solved mysteries while drinking lashings of ginger beer. Publisher Quercus said the five’s grown-up adventures which will feature titles including “Five Go Gluten Free” and “Five Go Parenting” will “remind older readers of the unbreakable bond” between the children and “introduce newer readers to the spiffing time you can have with a few friends and a dog”.

The Famous Five series is among some of Blyton’s most famous books, which also include Noddy and The Faraway Tree. The British writer, who wrote 800 books, was born in 1897 and died in 1968 and has sold more than 600 million books, which have been translated into 90 languages. Enid Blyton remains in the Top 10 best-selling authors list of all time. Ahead of the publication of these new Famous Five books, it may be worth reacquainting yourself with the famous five and immerse yourself in one of their many adventures.

Originally written 1 June 2016