Caution is urged over plans for GCSE changes
TEACHING unions and top scientists have questioned proposals for a major overhaul of GCSES in Wales.
The Association of School and College Leaders Cymru and Nasuwt Cymru have called for a delay, warning that continued Covid disruption left schools scant time to effectively engage in the proposals. ASCL also queried plans to cut the number of science, languages and maths exams.
The Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry also added their concerns, saying they feared the core sciences losing their identity and children missing an opportunity to develop a fascination for science that would lead them into rewarding careers.
The proposals would see the number of science, maths and English exams fall, with new subjects in film and digital media and engineering.
Director of teaching union ASCL Cymru, Eithne Hughes, said she was concerned that less than a third of people who took part in the first consultation thought merging English literature and English language was a good idea, and yet the idea had still made it into the proposals.
She said: “We also have some reservations about the proposals themselves, particularly the plan to create a new joint GCSE in English literature and language. Only 30% of those involved in the original consultation exercise thought this was a laudable or workable idea.
“Similar proposals to create a maths and numeracy GCSE and a new integrated science double qualification also received a mixed response, but the concerns of many respondents appear to have been overlooked in the rush to get this report out.
“Qualifications Wales needs to recognise the critical importance of getting the future shape of qualifications in Wales right and take a pause for breath.
“The severe pressure our schools are currently operating under risks jeopardising the entire project and trying to hurry it through now is self-evidently the wrong thing to do.”
She welcomed Qualifications Wales’s intention to recruit a team of teachers and educational professionals to help shape the proposals into exams but said the timing was bad.
Thousands of staff and pupils are off school each week with continued Covid absence, and 94,000 school sessions were missed by pupils between October 4 and 8, latest Welsh Government data shows.
“It is difficult to imagine a more difficult or inappropriate time to ask leaders to free up their staff to participate.
“The time that potential recruits are being asked to commit to the exercise would not be a problem in normal times but education across Wales is currently anything but normal with schools barely managing to cope with providing lessons due to unprecedented levels of staff absence caused by the coronavirus.”
Neil Butler, Wales secretary of Nasuwt, said: “This is not the time for far-reaching and widescale reforms. The New Curriculum and Qualifications Reform need to be pushed back.
“Problems are compounded by the still falling numbers of teachers in Wales. The Schools Workforce census just released shows us that there are 450 fewer classroom teachers than last year. So where are the teachers coming from to teach the new qualifications?”
The Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry have also warned that replacing three separate science GCSES with one combined science exam could reduce the quality of courses.
Responding to the proposals, the Institute of Physics said: “We’re concerned that Qualifications Wales’s proposals will contribute to a loss of identity for physics. Students will no longer get separate grades or be given a teacher with a background in physics.
“This will reduce the quality of their experience and give them less information on which to make choices for courses beyond 16.”
The Royal Society of Chemistry director of education, Sarah Robertson, said the society agreed with the overarching principle of providing a common route for students, but added: “To gain our full support, a single GCSE science route would need to present a clear identity for chemistry and other core sciences, that supports progression to the next stage, and is accessible to learners, with an equivalency of two GCSES.”
A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “It is vital that we develop qualifications that match the ambitions behind our new curriculum for Wales.
“Qualifications Wales’s report marks an important stage towards reform. It is important we maintain momentum, so the new qualifications will be taught from 2025 with the first awards made in 2027.
“We have outlined a number of measures that will help create space for the sector and enable them to work with Qualifications Wales to help shape the new qualifications. We are pleased to see real appetite within the sector for this.”