From the BBC:
Schools in England are braced for "volatile" GCSE results, following significant changes to the exam system.
Go on, why's that then?
This year's results will reveal the outcome of a much greater emphasis on exams at the end of the two-year course and a reduction in coursework and modular units.
Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment at Buckingham University, warned of "shocks in store" for some schools, depending on "how much they relied on gaming the old system".
Hooray, say all the people (like me) who like the white knuckle ride of the exam experience and look down on all this "coursework and modular units" nonsense, it's a recipe for favouritism and cheating, not to mention involving more work for pupils, not just cutting and pasting stuff off the internet, but sucking up to teacher all year long.
So it's not really "changes to the exam system", it's "a return to the exam system".
But wold this lead to "volatile" results?
We all assume that they give the top few per cent an A, the next few per cent a B and so on, just because they are doing proper exams again doesn't change that.
Debate Magazine
