4th April 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
The education secretary, Michael Gove, has warned against pupils taking GCSE exams early. Reported on the BBC website, nearly a quarter of students took their maths GCSE early in 2010, and the same is true for English, and Gove claims that this could be detrimental for the students concerned. His department released figures showing that 29% of students taking maths early received A*, A or B, compared with 41% of end-of-course entrants. In English these figures were 30% for early entrants and 45% otherwise.
Early entrance is an increasing trend, and has risen by nearly 400% since 2007, from 67,000 to 326,000. Mr. Gove said that it could be beneficial for gifted students who are to be accelerated through to an A Level in the subject, but that he is concerned that some schools are entering students early when this isn’t the case.
Even after resits are taken into account, early entrance students perform worse than others, and with recent evidence showing that students are less likely to succeed at A Level when achieving grades lower than an A, Michael Gove believes that the figures “speak more generally of a narrowed curriculum, focused not on sound subject teaching as a basis for successful progression, but on preparation to pass exams.” For students not entered early, they have more time to study a subject in depth.
There is an argument that taking exams early give students more focus; students who may otherwise drift away from education. However, there appeared to be agreement from examining boards and teaching unions that Gove is right to tackle the problem to ensure that students do as well as they can.