Making me think!

Well its been a long summer and this is the first time I have thought of blogging for a while. What prompted this sudden urge?? Well, it's GCSE results day today and my youngest daughter is full of nerves and trepidation! But, I have already started seeing reports that the number of A*-C passes has dropped again this year due to stricter marking!! Little consolation for the children who have worked just as hard as their predecessors and possibly even written exactly the same answers but will achieve a lower grade? Very frustrating for the students, but I found myself thinking about it from a teachers perspective. Here you are with a class of students that you have calculated should be due x percentage of A*-C grades, then when you analyse the results they are lower than in previous years and your expectations. You must start to have doubts about your teaching skills?? As a dance teacher I can pretty much gauge how well a child is going to do in their dance exams, allowing for mess ups on the day, but if I started to see a drop in the marks across the board I would immediately be questioning MY ability.

I could understand if they had already implemented changes to the exams - i.e. the publicised return to two levels of exams like the old 'O'Level and CSE combinations that were available when I took my exams. This would be clear to anyone in the future, as it was to me as an employer when GCSE's first started to appear on application forms for jobs. But as they are still GCSE's and effectively the same exams how can a future employer be expected to remember that up until 2011 the marks were easier to attain than in 2012 and 2013. Ridiculous!!!! Rant over, but wishing all GCSE students a happy day!