GCSE RESULTS DAY
Thousands of youngsters across the North East were picking up their GCSE results today.
There will no doubt be tears of both joy and disappointment as the Year 11s find out if two years of hard work has paid off.
The teens now face the choices of going on to continue academic studies with A-levels or taking the workbased route into employment with schemes such as apprenticeships and Btecs.
Girls are expected to maintain their dominance over boys across the vast majority of subjects. Last year’s results showed 73.1% of female students were awarded at least a C grade – generally considered to be a “good” pass – compared with just 64.7% of males.
This is the last year in which GCSE results, introduced nearly 30 years ago, will be scored with grades A*-G.
Students who started GCSE courses last September in maths, English and English literature will get the new numbered grades, from 9-1, when they receive their results in 2017.
The new grades will come in for most other common GCSEs the following year, including the sciences, languages, geography, music and history, which will be taught from September 2016, with exams taken in the summer of 2018.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers’ union in the UK, said: “This apparently minor change masks the most substantial reform in a quarter of a century to the key general qualification offered to learners in England. The content and structure of the new GCSEs are very dif- ferent from those they are replacing.
“Whatever view is taken of the new GCSEs, it is clear that their implementation has been rushed, poorly thought through and undertaken without meaningful consultation with the teaching profession. The late release of exam specifications and other key information about the new GCSEs has created excessive and wholly avoidable burdens on already overstretched teach- ers and school leaders.
“Despite all these shortcomings in the way in which GCSEs have been reformed, teachers and school leaders have continued, as ever, to ensure that pupils receive high quality learning experiences and can secure the best possible chance of exam success today.”
Professor Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Education and Employment Research, has carried out an annual analysis of predicted grades.
He said: “The results this year will be very close to what they were last year, but the increase in people repeating maths and English could lower the top grades slightly because these candidates are more likely to be aiming for a C.”