gcse

The Public Forum (Statements & Questions) business for today’s meeting of the Cabinet of the City of Bristol is now available.

As well as three questions from local green blogger Glenn Vowles on Red Trouser Gate, Ashton Gate Gate and Corn-Starch Bags [Gate?], there is a really good questions from new MEP Ashley Fox about the education of Bristol’s children:

C4. Councillor Ashley Fox to Councillor Clare Campion-Smith, Executive Member for Children & Young People Admissions and results

1. Many Parents in my Ward of Westbury-on-Trym and the neighbouring Wards of Stoke Bishop and Henleaze are unable to send their children to a Primary school of their choice. The position with Secondary schools is even more serious with a majority of parents in those Wards opting out of the state sector in Bristol altogether. What steps will the Executive Member be taking to remedy this situation?
2. This year will be the first time that the exam results of Colston's Girls' School and Bristol Cathedral Choir School are included within the results for Bristol. What steps will the Executive Member be taking to ensure that when comparing results for 2009 with previous years, a consistent approach is able to be taken?
3. Will the Executive Member give me an assurance that when she publishes Bristol's exam results for 2009, she will also show the difference that inclusion of these two schools has made upon the average figures?

As we all know, state-run schools in Bristol are generally dire. Looking at the last couple of years, here’s the obligatory celebration of city GCSE results in 2007:

The proportion of students with five or more at GCSE Grades A* to C or equivalent vocational qualifications at state schools in Bristol has risen by more than 3% this year - with several individual schools improving their results dramatically, city council leaders revealed today.

The results build on significant improvement last year, when performance increased by well over seven per cent, making an improvement of over 10% in two years.

Bristol City Council welcomed the today’s results as ‘encouraging’.

• 2007: 36.5% achieved 5 or more A* to C grades
• 2006: 43.8% achieved 5 or more A* to C grades
• 2005: 36.5% achieved 5 or more A* to C grades

Whereas in the 2008 obligatory celebration of GCSE results the presentation is dramatically different:

Provisional GCSE results for Bristol schools show an improvement of 3.5 percentage points this year. This brings the percentage of students gaining five or more GCSEs at grade A* to C including English and Maths to 35%.

These results build on significant improvement over the last five years, and show continuing progress in raising standards in Bristol schools.

Between 2004 and 2008, the number of students achieving five or more GCSEs at grade A* to C including English and Maths - the government's key performance measure - rose by 9 percentage points.

Over the same five year period, the percentage of students achieving five or more GCSEs overall increased by 17 percentage points, to 52%.

In 2007, results rose to 36.5%; in 2008, they rose to 35%. Syme would be proud. If you haven’t spotted it, the difference is that the 2008 figure includes a pass at English and Maths.

So Ashley Fox is on the ball here. Education bosses must promise to refrain from boosting their numbers by the tempting trick of “folding in” the 97% 5-passes rate of Colston’s Girls’ School or the 90.1% 5-passes rate of Bristol Cathedral Choir School.

But will they? I’ll be watching…

For A-Level results day, I traded comments with local socialist (Lib Dem branch), Neil Harrison, about the year-on-year increase in Tractor Production exam grades. Head over there to read in full, but pay particular attention to this gem in the comments:

"Unless we socially engineer massive change within the system, it is difficult to know how to crack it. The Irish used to allocate university places by lottery (to some extent - fuzzy on the details). We can't tell students which universities they should go to in order to have a better social mix. I do think that killing or changing the [personal] statements section of the application would probably help."

Suffice to say I'm also rather sceptical that similar year-on-year increases in the GCSE results imply that either student performance or teaching methods have dramatically increased in the last twenty years. But I thought I ought to have a look at some examples of exam papers before I comment further.

A quick Google search leads me to a free service from Edexcel, offering a selection of past question papers and mark schemes for their General Qualifications for download - both Alternative Ordinary Level (O-Level) and GCSE - in a variety of subjects. The web-page doesn't ask for a password, but only a five digit centre number. The copyright statement places constraints on how schools and colleges can use them for internal purposes, but doesn't mention the general public. Now I'm not totally sure whether this is supposed to be a public service, but I think it's legitimate to download a paper or two to get a feel for the standard of examinations.

I'm having a quick look at the Maths paper at both O-Level and GCSE to see what I can make of it.

Or then again I might have a go at "Leisure & Tourism", which is only available at GCSE.