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United Kingdow: Prestigious universities edge out rivals in UK’s battle for students

Noticias

Europe/United Kingdow/27.08.18/Source: www.theguardian.com

Less selective institutions bear brunt of demographic decline in number of school leavers

Prestigious universities are squeezing out their rivals in the battle for undergraduates, setting a trend that could continue for several years and place some institutions under greater pressure to attract students to secure their funding.

The shift comes as the university admissions clearing house, Ucas, reported that record numbers had been placed on university courses a day after hundreds of thousands of students received their A-level results across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The competition for places has meant that even medical schools – traditionally among the most competitive courses for entry – still had places on offer, and the Ucas website listed places on more than 25,000 undergraduate courses in England.

Figures released by Ucas show that despite an overall decline in acceptances by UK students, universities that traditionally require higher exam grades are maintaining or even increasing the number of students they admit, thanks to rising numbers of applicants from overseas.

Less selective universities are bearing the brunt of the demographic decline in the number of UK-based school leavers, with a 2% fall in acceptances via Ucas overall translating into fewer prospective undergraduates.

“High-tariff” universities have reported placing nearly 139,000 students, a record number that means they now account for a third of all undergraduates studying in the UK.

Lower-tariff institutions have accepted 5,000 fewer undergraduates compared with last year, with the total dropping to 148,000. Acceptances at mid-tariff universities also declined by more than 2,000.

The higher tariff group includes Oxbridge and the Russell Group of research-intensive universities such as University College London and the University of Birmingham, and others with stringent entry requirements.

Ucas said a record 32,430 international students from outside the EU had been accepted this year, with more than 20,000 going to higher-tariff institutions.

The decline in UK undergraduates is the first recorded since 2012, in the aftermath of the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees. This year’s fall, however, is due to a 3% decline in the number of 18-year-olds, and would have been larger but for a rise in the percentage of school leavers going on to higher education.

The record numbers placed through the clearing process confirms suggestions that this year’s admissions process was a fruitful environment for potential students, with more waiting until the last minute or quickly finding new places after missing out on expected grades.

More than 15,000 applicants have taken up places at UK universities after going through the clearing process, the highest on record and more than three times as many as the same time 10 years ago.

The competition can be seen in the number of universities trying to recruit students by leaving popular courses open so as not to turn away any applicants.

One admissions director said the tactic was to advertise as many courses as possible, even those notionally full, and plan on shifting resources to match where applicants wanted to study.

The Press Association found that 18 of the 24 Russell Group universities were still advertising nearly 3,800 courses through clearing. Overall, 134 institutions were still advertising courses on Friday.

Mark Blakemore, the head of student recruitment at St George’s, University of London, said the medical school was holding interviews on Saturday. “Many students have exceeded the grades that they expected to get and it’s on the back of that that they are calling us,” he said.

The demographic decline among school leavers is forecast to continue until at least 2021, and may be exacerbated by the UK’s exit from the EU, if as expected that leads to fewer EU-based applicants.

Source of the notice: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/17/prestigious-universities-edge-out-rivals-uk-battle-for-students

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When Kids Have Structure for Thinking, Better Learning Emerges

Katrina Schwartz

United States / 26-08-2018 / Author: Katrina Schwartz / Source: KQED

Amidst the discussions about content standards, curriculum and teaching strategies, it’s easy to lose sight of the big goals behind education, like giving students tools to deepen their quantitative and qualitative understanding of the world. Teaching for understanding has always been a challenge, which is why Harvard’s Project Zero has been trying to figure out how great teachers do it.

Some teachers discuss metacognition with students, but they often simplify the concept by describing only one of its parts — thinking about thinking. Teachers are trying to get students to slow down and take note of how and why they are thinking and to see thinking as an action they are taking. But two other core components of metacognition often get left out of these discussions — monitoring thinking and directing thinking. When a student is reading and stops to realize he’s not really understanding the meaning behind the words, that’s monitoring. And most powerfully, directing thinking happens when students can call upon specific thinking strategies to redirect or challenge their own thinking.

 

 

“When we have a rich meta-strategic base for our thinking, that helps us to be more independent learners,” said Project Zero senior research associate Ron Ritchhart at a Learning and the Brain conference. “If we don’t have those strategies, if we aren’t aware of them, then we’re waiting for someone else to direct our thinking.”

Helping students to “learn how to learn” or in Ritchhart’s terminology, become “meta-strategic thinkers” is crucial for understanding and becoming a life-long learner. To discover how aware students are of their thinking at different ages, Ritchhart has been working with schools to build “cultures of thinking.” His theory is that if educators can make thinking more visible, and help students develop routines around thinking, then their thinking about everything will deepen.

His research shows that when fourth graders are asked to develop a concept map about thinking, most of their brainstorming centers around what they think and where they think it. “When students don’t have strategies about thinking, that’s how they respond – what they think and where they think,” Richhart said. Many fifth graders start to include broad categories of thinking on their concept maps like “problem solving” or “understanding.” Those things are associated with thinking, but fifth graders often haven’t quite hit on the process of thinking.

By sixth grade a few students are starting to include some strategies for thinking in their maps, such as “concentrate” or “don’t get caught up in things that aren’t relevant.” But by ninth grade many students include specific strategies for thinking on their concept maps, including “making connections,” “comparing” and “breaking things down.”

Ritchhart studied 400 students at a school focusing on cultivating a culture of thinking. The study had no control group, but Ritchhart could chart development of metacognition from 4th-11th grades.

“Students basically made a two-and-a-half year gain from what would be expected just from teachers trying to create that culture of thinking,” Ritchhart said. He admits that the study isn’t definitive, but to him it’s proof that when teachers focus on these ideas they do see improvement.

HOW CAN EDUCATORS HELP?

In a culture of thinking, students recognize that collective and individual thinking is valued, visible and actively promoted as part of the regular day-to-day experience of all group members. This type of culture can exist in any place where learning is part of the experience including school, after school programming or museum programs.

To help make these ideas more concrete, Ritchhart and his colleagues have been working to hone in on a short list of “thinking moves” related to understanding. To test whether these moves were really crucial, researchers asked themselves: could a student say she really understood something if she hadn’t engaged in these activities? They believe the important “thinking moves” that lead to understanding are:

  • Naming: being able to identify the parts and pieces of a thing
  • Inquiry: questioning should drive the process throughout
  • Looking at different perspectives and viewpoints
  • Reasoning with evidence
  • Making connections to prior knowledge, across subject areas, even into personal lives
  • Uncovering complexity
  • Capture the heart and make firm conclusions
  • Building explanations, interpretations and theories.

These thinking moves all point to the conclusion that learning doesn’t happen through the mere delivery of information. “Learning only occurs when the learner does something with that information,” Ritchhart said. “So as teachers we need to think not only about how we will deliver that content, but also what we will have students do with that content.”

One easy way to start asking students to be more metacognitive is to build in reflection time about thinking. Ask students to think about the lesson and identify the kinds of thinking they used throughout. That not only builds vocabulary around thinking, but it often gives kids confidence to name specific thinking strategies they used. Taking this time to reflect also reminds students that they did real work during the lesson.

THINKING ROUTINES

To get at how teachers make thinking visible, Ritchhart studied teachers who were very effective at helping student dive below surface level retention of information into really understanding material as it connects to the rest of their studies and their lives. He noticed none of them taught a lesson on thinking.

“They had routines and structures that scaffolded and supported student thinking,” Ritchhart said. This discovery led him and colleagues at Project Zero to develop “thinking routines” that all teachers can use to help students develop the habits of mind that lead to more understanding.

One way to develop a culture of thinking is to pick one of the thinking routines Project Zero has designed and use it over and over in a variety of contexts. Rather than trying each routine once, applying one routine in multiple ways will help make thinking in that way habitual. It becomes almost an expectation in a classroom, like other class norms.

One example of this that goes beyond the K-12 classroom comes from Harvard Medical School, where instructors were struggling to train students to listen to patients and make strong diagnoses based on the symptoms they heard. As an experiment, the medical school offered an elective module to students, where once a week they would join a fine arts class using the “See, Think, Wonder” thinking routine to observe art. After 10 weeks, all the medical students were assessed on clinical diagnosing and the students who had done “See, Think, Wonder” had improved much more than those who had not participated.

“One of the reasons we call them thinking routines is that through their use it is the thinking that becomes routine,” Ritchhart said. Project Zero is working with teachers around the country to apply thinking routines in the classroom and many have reported that after doing the routines in a structured way several times students naturally start using the protocols for everything.

Source of Article:

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/44227/when-kids-have-structure-for-thinking-better-learning-emerges

ove/mahv

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Children losing out on education in EU migration deal

Noticias

By: hrw.org/Bill Van Esveld/ 22-08-2018

«I get depressed here. I want to go to a good school to study,» said a bright, 12-year-old girl from Afghanistan, who’s been stuck for six months in the grim Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. «If we don’t study we won’t have a future and we won’t become successful.»

The European Commission’s humanitarian agency agrees: «education is crucial» for girls and boys affected by crises, and is «one of the best tools to invest in their long-term future.»

So one might expect that the European Union would demand to see educational results for its money in Greece, where by some counts it has spent over $14,000 [€12,100] in aid for every migrant and asylum seeker.

One would be wrong, especially when it comes to asylum-seeking and migrant children stuck on the Aegean islands.

The importance of children having an education seems to have been trumped by a Greek government policy, backed by the EU, of keeping most asylum seekers who arrive by sea from Turkey confined to the islands until their asylum claims are adjudicated, rather than transferring them to the mainland where services are better.

Human Rights Watch research has found that on the Aegean islands, where at any given time there are more than 3,000 school-age asylum-seeking children, fewer than 400 are in school.

In Syria, which many of the refugees are fleeing, net primary school enrollment was 63 percent in 2013 (the latest available figures), two years after the war erupted.

Greece has opened pre-school classes for some children in the government-run camps on the islands. But the other children in those camps – unlike children in camps on the mainland – have no access to formal education.

Overcrowded camps

The Greek education ministry has opened formal classes tailored to children who do not speak Greek and who have been out of school, but they serve only a small number who were allowed to leave the government camps for shelters or subsidised housing.

Right now the Greek authorities are trying to close a volunteer shelter that was the first on the islands to help asylum seeking children enrol in public schools.

The Greek government has claimed it is impractical to provide access to education to children in the island camps, since they are «on the move.» In reality, new arrivals to the islands continue to outpace deportations to Turkey and transfers to the mainland.

Colleagues and I met children who had been stuck in the overcrowded, unsanitary, dangerous camps for up to 11 months without even the respite that going to school could provide.

Greek law makes education compulsory from ages five to 15 and provides that all children have the right to go to school, including asylum seekers without all their papers.

So it was welcome news in April 2018 when Greece’s highest court ruled that there was no basis in law for containing new arrivals on the Aegean islands. But while the government has transferred over 10,000 people since November to the mainland, where there are more educational resources, it refused to implement the ruling and instead adopted a law to reinstate the policy.

Wishful thinking

The Greek ministry for migration policy has also played an opaque and at times unhelpful role, blocking the education ministry from opening more classes on the islands in 2017.

Education is critical to refugee children’s ability to integrate and contribute in Europe. And investing in education more than pays for itself; every dollar spent on education reaps two in earnings and health benefits.

Despite all that EU money, Greece seems to do a worse job educating asylum seeker children than countries like Jordan and Turkey, which have lower gross national incomes per capita and vastly more refugee children, and enrolment rates above 60 percent.

By one count, enrollment in Greece was 55 percent – and that only counted the minority of children outside camps across the country, not the majority who are in camps.

Despite the wishful thinking of some European politicians, there is little prospect that most asylum-seeking children in Greece will go to Turkey any time soon. Greece faces a choice between squandering the talents and harming the integration and future of thousands of children or doing the right thing and making sure they can go to school.

*Fuente: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/08/06/children-losing-out-education-eu-migration-deal

*image information: A child in the Moria “hotspot” camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, December 2017. Parents in the camp said their children cannot access adequate healthcare. © Bill Van Esveld / Human Rights Watch, 2017.





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					Brazil’s FazGame Is Using Serious Games to Reach At-Risk Students
				

									

						Reseñas																	

							


							

											
By Cait Etherington


Not unlike the United States, Brazil is a country of great contrast. While a majority of the nation’s children and youth have access to education, in some of Brazil’s poorest neighborhoods, dropout rates remain high. FazGame, a Brazilian-based edtech company has discovered that serious games may be one way to increase engagement and decrease the dropout rate in the nation’s most at-risk school districts. eLearning Inside News recently talked to Carla Seltzer, the founder of FazGame, about her company’s educational solution and about the edtech startup scene in Brazil.


The Founding of FazGame


Cait Etherington: What motivated you to start FazGame? Also, did you have a background working for other edtech companies?


Carla Seltzer: I worked for another startup, and we developed off-line and online methodologies for entrepreneurship education for kids, based on practical activities to develop skills such as communication, collaboration, and creativity. We were working on two projects at the same time: a point-and-click entrepreneurship education game and an eLearning for teachers. The eLearning tool had a very simple interface where authors could create their content. The first part of the game was validated–the learning process, student engagement, and impact on their motivation to learn. We needed additional funding to develop the other part of this project. Then, I had the idea of FazGame–to develop a platform where anyone could create point-and-click games with educational content to help spread the use of games in schools.


FazGame’s Interventions in At-Risk School Districts


CE: Brazil still has quite a high drop out rate. Would you agree that “serious games” or educational video games are especially useful when working with students who are at risk of dropping out? Why is this?


CZ: The biggest project we have run here in Brazil is in a Rio de Janeiro municipality in public schools in high-risk areas. These schools generally have students with lower grades and higher dropout rates, but if these students receive additional and engaging activities, they are more inclined to stay at school and succeed. Games motivate students because they are an interactive activity, where they can be proactive and make decisions. FazGame also uses language that students are used to and that they enjoy–game language. When we include the creation component–with FazGame, students learn while they create their games we empower these students. Generally, in the beginning, students think they are not able to create a game. Then, they start using the platform and discussing the project with their groups, and they even don’t notice when the class time is finished as they are so engaged in the creation process. We have an example of a group of 12-14 years old students from a public school from Rio Grande do Sul that created a fiscal education game . The result was so positive that they were invited to present their concept to the biggest congress on game science hosted in Brazil.


CE: So, how do you respond to critics–those people who continue to dismiss the potential impact of educational games? Beyond the above anecdote, what evidence have you found of their impact since launching FazGame?


CZ: In Brazil, I think this vision of games as just “playing” is being demystified. This is mainly because parents are increasingly noticing how engaged their kids are by games and how much games do teach them. We need to continue to work on teachers’ and parents’ worries, especially concerns about how much time kids spend online and whether the games they like to play are educational. Measuring the results and impact of games certainly helps to respond to critics. At FazGame, we measure technically the development of skills such as collaboration, creativity, logical reasoning, and problem solving that are all critical 21th-century skills. FazGame is a tool for schools that want to change the ways students learn in the class–it turns learning into a proactive event. We also measure impact on a qualitative level by assessing the interest levels of the students and any notable changes in students’ grades. Our research shows that for 100% of students, learning with games makes the class more fun and more interesting. We also found 100% attendance on days when FazGame was being used in classes.


Future Plans and the EdTech Startup Scene in Brazil


CE: Is there an edtech startup scene in Brazil? Also, what’s next for FazGame?


CZ: We have a few programs, incubators or accelerators), in Brazil that are focused on EdTech. We’re also working toward future change as big educational groups are starting to create a relationship with EdTechs startups here. I have taken part in a Social Entrepreneurship Acceleration and a Government Acceleration Program here in Brazil and a Global Impact Acceleration Program in Finland (Slush GIA). Our growth plans include explanding our sales to public schools in Brazil. We already have 100.000 schools in Brazil and more than 85% of the market is of public schools. We are also negotiating with educational groups to sell FazGame integrated with their learning systems in order to grow in the private school market. We plan to invest in a sales team to sell directly to schools here, and we also have a roadmap for FazGame development, which includes mobile portability, new game creation features, development of lesson plans integrated into different curriculum content, and development of artificial intellingence engines to measure and guide students’ learning process. FazGame is translated into Spanish and English, and we also want to launch it in U.S. market soon. Our first initiative is the integration with the platform Desk from TeacherGaming, which is where teachers and students from U.S. schools can access FazGame. We are also planning to develop curriculum content for U.S. schools, with some specific focus areas, such as Spanish. It’s also in our plan to take part in an U.S.-based Acceleration Program to implement our internationalization strategy over the next few years.




Source of the review: https://news.elearninginside.com/brazils-fazgame-is-using-serious-games-to-reach-at-risk-students/




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					We can’t retool U.S. schools based on Finland or China
				

									

						Maureen Downey																	

							


							

											
By Maureen Downey






Get Schooled recently ran an essay about Chinese education, in which “the goals are excellence, diligence and compliance.” This approach was valorized in the narrative provided by Amy Chua in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” in which she argues on behalf of highly disciplined, harsh, authoritarian schooling and parenting.


The Get Schooled essay challenged readers to consider whether U.S. schools should become more like Chinese schools, and U.S. parents more like Chinese parents, in order for the U.S. to challenge the Chinese in their performance on international standardized tests.


The specter of falling behind has motivated school reform many times. When I was in first grade in 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, and we fell behind in the space race, prompting massive efforts to overhaul schools under the assumption our STEM education was inadequate.


By 1983 I was a high school English teacher in Illinois. That year A Nation at Risk was published by President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education, opening with “Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world …the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people…others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.”


Around that time, it was common for Americans to lament our failures relative to Japan and its culture of worker compliance and loyalty, and academic excellence. I taught some Japanese exchange students back then, and they talked about how their teachers would hit them if they got too interested in someone of the opposite sex, which would take their attention from their studies. Further, suicide notes of Japanese teens often identified pressure to succeed in school as the cause of their decision to end their lives. But their tests scores were impressive.


It probably helped that Japan did not have a military and its enormous costs, and so could focus its resources and attention largely on commerce, education, infrastructure, and other domestic investments. That fact was mostly absent from appeals for the U.S. to be more like Japan, even though at the time we were still recovering from the costs of Vietnam and beginning the Reagan-era military buildup.


More recently, Finland has been set as the model for U.S. schools, again because of their comparative scores on international tests, and their unusually happy teachers.


It’s always tempting to see greener grass on the other side of the ocean, without getting close enough to notice how much manure lies at ground level or how different the weather might be to green up what’s visible. I think that looking longingly at other nations can be deceiving, and for a variety of reasons.


First, the nations we are encouraged to emulate tend to be culturally and racially homogeneous. Having a monoculture helps to focus on and perpetuate national goals and ways of being. I don’t say that to argue against cultural diversity of the sort we have in the United States. I think the multiplicity of perspectives across the social spectrum is healthy and invigorating, if often difficult to put into harmony. Diversity does work against common cause, however, including agreeing on the purpose and process of education.


Trying to be more like Finland, or China, or Japan, or the next shiny distraction overseas overlooks the critical issue that context matters in how social institutions function, and matters a great deal.


Let’s take Finland, a monocultural nation with a strong socialistic economic system. Schools are well funded, and children are protected by a range of social services that make them relatively healthy and school-ready. If you want U.S. schools to be like Finland’s, by all means vote to increase your taxes, because you can’t get their schools with our financing. If you want the U.S. to have schools like Finland’s, then you have to make the U.S. more like Finland.


If you want us to be more like China, then you have to reconceive a lot of American values. The Get Schooled essay includes the acknowledgement that the Chinese system produces “homogeneous and driven graduates” based on a “narrow and rigid approach [that] doesn’t yield a diverse, independent-thinking and inventive workforce…The Chinese system kills curiosity from a very early age…The Chinese [rely] on coercion and intimidation to establish order and routine.” They also have a culture in which test scores are indicators of both ability and character, and are highly prized as valid measures of success.


Within nations, there are local cultures that don’t often mix well. A few years ago, football star Adrian Peterson nearly lost his career when he disciplined his son by punishing him with a licking with a switch. That’s the way he’d been brought up in Texas, with the switch not spared. Culturally, Peterson was subjecting his son to a form of discipline that had been administered in his own family for generations. He thought he was being a good parent for doing what his parents had done to shape him up. But corporal punishment of children had become unacceptable to families working from other assumptions, and his career and public reputation were in tatters.


Peterson sounds as though he’d be a good fit in China, where according to the Get Schooled essay, “when 3-year-old Rainey begins an elite preschool refusing to eat eggs, his teachers force-feed him. When he balks at napping, teachers warn him the police will take him away. Other willful acts by children are met with threats their mothers will not return to pick them up at the end of the day.” But not in Minnesota, where his football career had taken him to, and where it nearly ended because of the severe disciplinary methods he used in his home.


I’m not here to attack or defend whipping kids with switches, being a Tiger Mom, or raising your taxes. (Well, I’d defend the last one, and I’m sure many of you would attack.) My point is simply to say that you can’t take something out of its national or cultural context, deposit it neatly into one that’s quite different, and expect it to work the same.


We may well have something to learn from how other nations educate their children. But ignoring why those practices work there will have consequences here. If you have Finland Envy, or China Envy, or Japan Envy, make sure that you envy the whole country and how it is structured and populated before you isolate a schooling practice and insist we should institute it here.


Source of the article: https://www.myajc.com/blog/get-schooled/opinion-can-retool-schools-based-finland-china/ZcqxE1BJcpUunJkMUdKXaK/


 
































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					New GCSEs put pupils under more pressure, say school leaders
				

									

						Noticias																	

							


							

											
Europe/United Kingdow/21.08.18/Source: www.theguardian.com.


Students to receive results with grades 9-1 after changes initiated by Michael Gove


The tougher standards demanded by the new style of GCSEs being awarded for the first time this year have put pupils under a great deal of additional pressure, according to school leaders.


Hundreds of thousands of pupils in England will receive their results this week, with grades from 9 to 1 replacing the familiar A* to G.


Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the “bar has deliberately been set at a higher level” as a result of changes initiated by the former education secretary Michael Gove.


“The new exams are harder, contain more content, and involve sitting more papers,” Barton said. “We are worried about the impact on the mental health and wellbeing of young people caused by these reforms and it is our view that such a substantial set of changes as this should have been introduced in a more managed and considered manner.


“It is to the credit of schools that they have responded to this situation by providing their students with extensive pastoral support in order to alleviate stress and anxiety despite severe funding pressures.”


Hailed as the most significant change in the examination system since O-levels were replaced 30 years ago, the “more demanding, more fulfilling and more stretching” exams were introduced to help the UK better compete internationally, Gove said in 2013.


The fruits of that effort will be seen on Thursday when the results of 20 of the new GCSEs are published, including those in biology, history and Spanish.


Gove’s changes stripped out assessed work that had accounted for a substantial proportion of marks towards the final grades. In chemistry and biology, for example, non-exam assessments accounted for a quarter of a candidate’s marks, but in the new GCSEs everything depends on the final exams.


Assessment remains in some subjects, such as dance and foreign languages, but even then the proportion of non-exam marks awarded has been cut substantially, from 60% to 25% in the case of German and French.


Ofqual, which regulates public examinations in England, has pledged to maintain continuity in the proportion of grades awarded. Cath Jadhav, the director of standards at Ofqual, said exam boards would use statistics to counteract any dip in results caused by teachers being less familiar with the content and pupils having less support material.


“Across all subjects, grade boundaries will be set this summer to ensure that students this summer are treated fairly and are not disadvantaged by being the first to sit new GCSEs,” Jadhav wrote in a blogpost explaining the way grades would be set.


According to Ofqual, the new grade 7 will start at the same standard as the former A grade, meaning 9, 8 and 7 grades replace the old A* and A. The 9 is equivalent to the top half of A* awards, while an 8 encompasses the bottom portion of A* and the top part of an A, making comparisons with the old grades difficult.


“Grade 9 is not the same as the old A* grade. It’s a new grade designed to recognise the very best performance. So in every subject there will be fewer grade 9s awarded than A*s in the old GCSEs,” Jadhav said.


Last year maths, English language and English literature were the firstsubjects to be examined under the new system. About 2,000 pupils gained 9s in all three subjects. As few as 200 pupils have been forecast to achieve a full set of 9s in eight or more subjects this year.


“It was already very hard to achieve the top grade of A* under the old system, and it is even harder to achieve the top grade of a 9 under the new system,” Barton said. “Young people striving for those top grades may therefore feel disappointed if they do not achieve them, even though they have done exceptionally well in the grades they do achieve.”


Because a number of courses, including economics and design and technology, will not offer the reformed exams until next summer, parents will be confronted with children holding a mixture of numbered and lettered grades.


The previous C grade will be fixed to the same boundaries as the new grade 4, but both a 4 and a 5 will be regarded as a pass grade in the same way as a C, with the Department for Education describing a 5 as a “strong pass”.


The new combined science GCSE will be awarded as a double grade, to reflect the greater amount of content being taught. As a result, candidates will be awarded double grades ranging from 9-9, 9-8 and so on, down to the lowest 1-1 grade.


The changes do not affect Wales and Northern Ireland, which are retaining the old GCSE grades. Scottish students sit exams under a separate system.


Source of the notice: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/20/new-gcses-put-pupils-under-more-pressure-say-school-leaders


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					A-level results are out, but what about those not going to university?
				

									

						Fiona Millar																	

							


							

											
By Fiona Millar


A significant number of young people are turned off by traditional higher education. They should have a decent alternative


This year’s A-level results day saw grades down slightly, universities awash with places, and signs that young people might be starting to vote with their feet, and not in the direction successive governments have predicted. What is going on? For the past 20 years, encouraging more young people into higher education has been a central aim of education policy. Until now there was no real reason to think this plan wasn’t working.


Around a third of all school-leavers go on to higher education at 18, and that figure rises to almost 50% by the age of 30. But a survey tracking aspirations for a university education among pre-GCSE pupils released on Thursday by a social mobility charity, the Sutton Trust, suggests that the wind might now be blowing in a different direction. The trust has been monitoring aspirations for the past 15 years and reports a falling proportion of young people who think university matters. The survey also shows there is still a marked difference in attitudes towards higher education between students from different social backgrounds.


A blip or a worrying straw in the wind? We should fear the latter as it would point to a growing and glaring omission at the heart of our education system – the failure to cater adequately for those for whom university may not be the right choice. One obvious reason for disenchantment (reflected in the survey) is the high cost of tuition fees and living expenses. A degree generally leads to higher wages, and employers increasingly seek this level of education when recruiting – even for non-graduate jobs. Up to a third of graduates may now be working in low-skilled jobs.


But the survey also reveals that of those not planning to attend university, 58% cite not enjoying “that type of learning”. We need to understand why this is, what we might do about it. The assumption that everyone can and should enjoy an academic education is almost certainly flawed. Like many other graduates from a Russell Group university – in my case at a time when only 10% of the population went to university and were fully funded to boot – I believe every young person should have the chance I had. Not just of an academic education and a route into professional work, but also the opportunity to learn and develop socially and emotionally, preferably away from home, without the pressure of having to earn a living.


However, as a parent and a school governor I also know this path isn’t right for everyone. The over-academisation of the school curriculum and the devaluation of any sort of assessment that doesn’t involve a high-stakes exam may now be demoralising many young people, in particular those who most need to see the point of education.


There have been signs throughout this academic year that the latest incarnation of the GCSE – increased content, no coursework and lengthy exam papers – might be a massive switch-off to key groups of pupils. And the failure over decades to develop alternatives to academic study, in the form of high-status technical education and apprenticeships, is starting to look like a criminal act, especially in the run-up to Brexit when skilled workers from elsewhere may not be readily available. Over the past 50 years, a series of vocational qualifications have come and gone and never garnered the kudos of O-levels, GCSEs or A-levels. So we should not be surprised that traditional qualifications still reign supreme, that university still sits at the pinnacle of the education system and that growing numbers of students see no realistic alternative routes into fulfilling work.


Most people probably haven’t even heard of the new T-levels – the current government’s answer to this endemic English problem. These apparently “world-class” qualifications won’t even come on stream until 2020; and they will have to be delivered in woefully underfunded further education colleges. Even worse – there are barely 100 degree apprenticeships on offer, a drop in the ocean compared with thousands of more conventional courses. So for the growing number of young people who feel university is not for them there really isn’t anything concrete to aspire to.


The Sutton Trust is right: more maintenance grants and apprenticeships would probably help. But what is really needed is a huge culture shift, away from the assumption that academic is best and towards a broader vision of what makes a real education. A vision that should include what might be seen as “that other type of education”: practical, creative, technical, engaging – and, above all, of equal status to a university degree.


Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/16/a-levels-results-higher-education-alternatives


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