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AQA

Who's to blame for the new English literature GCSEs?

2014-05-30T11:29:18+01:00May 30th, 2014|English|

The sound and fury surrounding text choices for GCSE English literature just won’t go away. The exam boards got their digs in first with Paul Dodd of OCR claiming Gove wanted to ban US authors because he "had a particular dislike for Of Mice and Men and was disappointed that more than 90% of candidates were studying it". Gove then struck back saying neither nor anyone else had banned anything: ‘”Just because one chap at one exam board claimed I didn’t like Of Mice and Men, the myth took hold that it – and every other pesky American author – had [...]

Is teaching cheating?

2012-11-26T22:52:59+00:00November 26th, 2012|assessment, English|

The Teachmobile Today I was sent this: It purports to be a briefing sheet used by an AQA advisor to justify the movement of controlled assessment grade boundaries in this summer's GCSE English exam (otherwise referred to as the GCSE fiasco.) I can't vouch for its provenance beyond saying that it was emailed to me from a Head of English at another school who I have no reason to believe would have sent her time inventing fake documents. But you never know. Now, the arguments about grade boundaries have been rehashed endlessly over the past few months [...]

Slow Writing: how slowing down can improve your writing

2014-06-28T14:50:08+01:00May 12th, 2012|English, learning, literacy|

NB - my latest thinking on Slow Writing can be found here. Exam season is nearly upon us and English departments across the land will be gearing up to the Herculean labour of training students to churn out essays which, they hope, will earn them the much coveted A*-C grade in English Language. The AQA paper gives candidates just a meagre hour to write a short descriptive, explanatory piece and then a longer piece which asks them to persuade and argue. This isn't much time and most students default position is to race into it, cram in as much verbiage as [...]

Teaching to the test

2011-12-08T19:33:56+00:00December 8th, 2011|assessment|

In the light of the Telegraph's revelations that, shock! horror!, examiners tell teachers how to prepare students for exams it seems an opportune moment to reflect on the past two days. The chest thumping and blood letting that's followed the 'scoop' has been as predictable as it is pointless. The Telegraph says, The investigation has exposed a system in which exam boards aggressively compete with one another to win “business” from schools. Evidence that standards of exams have been deliberately driven down to encourage schools to sign up for them has also been uncovered. Twaddle. This, as every teacher knows, is [...]

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