20th March 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
I trained a new assessor last week, so we’ll have a few more available assessment dates in London for the next few months. We’ve been quite short on these recently, with only one assessor other than me arranging any dates in London. I think I’ll have to train at least two more people to assess before the summer, because there will be a mass influx of tutors then.
I noticed this week that Michael Gove released statistics suggesting that students taking a GCSE early actually do worse than if they take it when 16. This is an issue I was faced with recently because I have two half-brothers doing their GCSEs, and my dad was thinking about entering them early. I discouraged him at the time, because I’ve genuinely never understood the benefit. I don’t think students are ready to go to university before they’re 18, so even if a student is guaranteed the top grade, there really isn’t a reward other than boasting for a year about already having a qualification.