Big jump in top GCSE exam grades
There has been the biggest annual rise since 1990 in the proportion of GCSE exam entries awarded the best grades.
This year 65.7% of the exams taken were awarded A* to C grades, a rise of 2.4 percentage points from 63.3% last year, the exam boards reported.
As hundreds of thousands of teenagers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland received their results, the pass rate rose again, to 98.4%.
More than a fifth – 20.7% – were awarded either A* or A grades.
The number of entries fell to a five-year low of 5.7 million entries this summer compared with 5.8 million in 2007, down 2.7%.
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GCSE RESULTS SUMMER 2008
Overall pass rate 98.4%
Overall A*-C grades: 65.7%
Northern Ireland A*-C: 74.5%
England A*-C: 65.5%
Wales A*-C: 65.0%
Source: JCQ
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The provisional statistics were published by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which said the decline was bigger than would be expected from the drop in the number of 16-year-olds in the population.
The director general of the AQA exam board, Dr Mike Cresswell, said: “Some young people are focusing their efforts on fewer GCSEs.
“That has been a trend that has been happening since 2003.”
He said the average number of GCSEs taken per student had fallen from just over eight in 2003 to just under eight this year.
Another factor was that more students had taken English and maths exams early, in November, and these were not included in these summer results.
National and regional variations
As usual entries from Northern Ireland outperformed the rest. There, 26.4% were awarded A* or A grades and 74.5% A* to C.
In England, 20.6% achieved A*/A and 65.5% A* to C. In Wales the figures were 18.9% and 65%.
Scotland’s exam results were released two weeks ago.
Luke, Ryan and Becky open their results
A Welsh Assembly Government spokesperson said their results compared very favourably with England’s.
“Our overall pass rates are identical, the increase in pass rates is identical and the difference in proportion of A*-C grades is less than one percentage point – these figures do not constitute a gap in performance let alone a widening one.
“We have different assessment policies to those in place in England, this is true, but the results published today prove that Wales makes positive and consistent progress without the sometimes divisive influence of onerous testing regimes, league tables and tightly defined targets.”
It will be another couple of months before statistics are available on how well students have done, such as what percentage achieved five or more good grades.
In England, confirmed results for each school will be published in the annual “league tables” in January as usual, though some may publicise their own results. Other parts of the UK do not publish such tables.
This year for the first time the JCQ has published a regional breakdown of results within England, which accounts for the bulk of the exam entries.
Why are people always talking about how exams are getting easier and not congratulating people for actually doing well? Has it never occurred to them that maybe students are just doing better?
This showed that the improvement in A grades between 2002 and 2008 was greatest in London – from 18% to 23.4% (up 5.4 percentage points) – and the North East, from 11.7% to 17% (up 5.3).
London’s improvement is telling because schools there have been put under the spotlight in a “challenge” programme now being applied nationally.
English education ministers want at least 30% of pupils in each school to attain five A*-C grades, including maths and English, by 2011.
They regard 638 schools as under-performing and have made them subject to their “National Challenge”, with extra funding to improve their results.
Tory education spokesperson Maria Miller says too many students leave without ‘good’ GCSEs
The general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Dr John Dunford, says the programme has put extra pressure on schools.
He also warned against judging schools on one year’s results.
“The GCSE results are most significant for the pupils themselves,” he said.
“We have got to be reasonable because it takes time to turn schools around.”
Congratulating students on their results, Schools Minister Andrew Adonis said: “Our message to young people is to stay on in education or training, whatever your results, and go on to fulfil your full potential.”
he said almost half of all young people who stayed on would qualify for the Education Maintenance Allowance, a weekly payment of up to £30.
Pre-school ‘gives maths boost’
Going to a good pre-school nursery boosts a child’s chances of achieving in maths at the age of 10, experts say.
A long-term UK study by academics found the biggest influence on a child’s achievement in maths at 10 was the education of their mother.
But they found that going to a good pre-school or primary school and playing word and number games at home also had a big effect.
They say what they call a good “home learning environment” is crucial.
The research – led by Professor Edward Melhuish from Birkbeck, University of London – is published in the journal Science.
The academics looked at the progress of children in the UK from the age of three or four up to 10, and measured it against various factors.
They ranked the children’s “home learning environments” after interviewing their parents about how often they did various activities, such as reading stories, singing nursery rhymes and playing games involving numbers and shapes.
They included other possible factors which could influence a child’s development such as gender and parents’ income, occupation and education.
Strongest effect
“The results indicated that home learning environment, pre-school effectiveness and primary school effectiveness all make separate, significant impacts,” said Professor Melhuish.
“The mother’s educational attainment is the strongest effect, there’s no doubt about that, but home and school and pre-school environments are also important.”
He said that the researchers found many examples where a mother’s lower level of education was more than made up for by parents creating a good home learning environment through the activities they did with their children.
“And there are quite a few well-educated people who do not provide a good home learning environment,” he added.
The report’s authors – from four institutions – pointed to the way China is investing in pre-school education for all in efforts to achieve its economic goals.
In England, all three- and four-year-olds are entitled to a part-time place at nursery school. The Westminster government sees early years education as a vital step in lifting children out of poverty.
Professor Melhuish said although a mother’s education and the family’s socio-economic status were key factors, the study showed how focussing on aspects of a child’s life which could be changed – such as access to good nursery and primary schools – could improve their education and chances in life.
Bellevue teachers prepare to strike
Bellevue teachers picketed outside school-district headquarters Wednesday night as negotiations over a new contract showed no signs of resolution before the scheduled start of school Tuesday.
Teachers in the 16,000-student district say they’re still far from agreement with the Bellevue School District over salary and their concerns about the district’s centrally mandated curriculum. In June, teachers authorized a strike for the start of school if a new contract wasn’t in place. The current three-year contract is set to expire Sunday.
About 500 teachers chanted “No contract? No school!” as the School Board had its regularly scheduled meeting inside.
Middle-school teacher Julie Tzucker said the district curriculum is a major issue for teachers.
“We’d like the freedom to design lessons and not have a scripted curriculum. Every classroom is unique; every student is unique.”
On its Web site, the district is warning parents that unless a contract is signed by Monday, classes may not start Tuesday. Negotiations are scheduled through the Labor Day weekend.
Meanwhile, teachers in the Snoqualmie Valley and Northshore school districts avoided potential strikes by approving new contracts Wednesday.
Northshore School District teachers ratified a three-year deal that includes raises, more resources for teacher training and an agreement to try to reduce class sizes. The district serves Bothell, Kenmore and Woodinville.
The new contract includes a 4.4 percent cost-of-living adjustment for this school year, as approved by the state Legislature, according to a district news release. The contract also will give Northshore teachers additional modest raises to maintain competitive salaries with nearby districts. Some parts of the agreement depend on the passage of a technology levy in 2010.
The Snoqualmie Education Association, which also had authorized a strike in June, also ratified a new contract on Wednesday. The union said the three-year agreement struck a good balance between the Snoqualmie Valley School District’s financial responsibilities and its ability to attract and retain quality teachers.
Curriculum an issue
Bellevue is widely considered one of the state’s best school districts, with high test scores and a high level of college participation. But under the leadership of former Superintendent Mike Riley, the increased academic rigor over the past decade was accompanied by increasing district control over curriculum, including standardizing what is taught from classroom to classroom and, teachers say, even how they must teach it.
“The district’s micromanagement shows a tremendous lack of confidence in teachers’ professional abilities,” said Dale Folkerts, spokesman for the Bellevue Education Association.
School-district spokeswoman Ann Oxrieder said the district presented teachers with a memorandum of understanding Monday that says teachers may use their professional judgment to modify or supplement the standardized curriculum.
But Michele Miller, president of the Bellevue Education Association, said the district still would require teachers to submit alternative plans in advance for approval. Teachers say that leaves them without the flexibility to modify lessons to meet the needs of individual students or to adapt instruction to the interests of different classes.
The district argues that the common curriculum helps ensure that students in every classroom receive the same education.
Former superintendent Riley left in November. Karen Clark, the district’s former finance director, is serving as acting superintendent.
Dispute over raises
On the salary issue, Bellevue teachers say that while they’re among the region’s highest paid, their salaries haven’t kept up with raises in other districts.
The district says its offer of a 1.5 percent pay increase for this school year, combined with a state cost-of-living raise, would give teachers a 6.6 percent salary increase for 2008-09. Oxrieder noted that the salary offer comes as the district is cutting $4.8 million from its budget.
High school sports suffer for glory of a few
Green Bay Packers legend Vince Lombardi said that “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”
When he caught heat for that now-famous comment’s apparent harshness, Lombardi offered a half-funny reprise: “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”
Yes, winning is a worthy goal, and, yes, we do keep score. But is winning at all costs a worthy goal?
I don’t think so, especially when winning involves young people.
This subject is the subtext of “Grass is greener on another field,” an Aug. 26 article by St. Petersburg Times reporter Eduardo A. Encina about high school football players who switch schools to showcase their athletic abilities and to increase their value in the eyes of college scouts.
After all, why play football if you don’t dream of a college scholarship? The best way to get the scouts, especially those from prestigious Division I-A, to notice you is to play for an established powerhouse.
A player’s desire for a scholarship, a parent’s hope of seeing his or her son score big on television on Saturday afternoons and a coach’s demand for a superior team and bragging rights often produce unsavory practices.
The most obvious of these practices is that of outstanding players transferring from one school to another. Although Encina’s article identifies only the 22 most notable transfers in the Tampa Bay area, many other players transfer. When these players switch schools, they boost their new teams’ winning edge while diminishing that of their old teams. In other words, the established teams get better, and the less-established, often smaller ones get worse.
“It’s gotten to the point where something’s got to be done,” Robinson High’s coach Mike DePue said in the Times article. “Everybody isn’t playing with the same deck. I’m just dumbfounded. It’s a battle for the have-nots.” (Robinson is the smallest public high school in Hillsborough County.)
DePue is not alone. Many other coaches statewide also complain that their best talent is being raided by their more powerful peers. The dirty secret is that these raiders are engaging in the unsportsmanlike conduct of recruiting players. They telephone these youngsters and their parents at home. They exchange text messages with players. The boldest coaches visit players’ homes or meet the players elsewhere.
“It’s detrimental to high school sports,” Hillsborough County athletic director Lanness Robinson told the Times. “In a way that free agency has been to professional sports, high school sports have moved in the same direction. It deteriorates the concept of team.”
Parents share a lot of the blame in these recruiting wars. Heeding the advice of coaches, many families move to new addresses to make their sons eligible to play at select schools. According to the Times article, one highly skilled player was ruled ineligible for his senior year after officials discovered that the player’s father had falsified his address.
Many high school sports officials and coaches say that in trying to get their sons into the right schools, parents have become agents. A casualty is loyalty to a team and a school. Loyalty is a thing of the past.
I go further and argue “student” has been taken out of the “student athlete” equation in high-powered football communities. We have nothing more than “pure athletes” preparing for the next level in their sport.
The Florida High School Athletic Association, in 2006, attempted to implement a rule that would require players who switched schools to sit out a year. This effort was killed by the Legislature after widespread public opposition.
In contrast to Florida, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association voted in March, by an overwhelming majority, to force athletes who switch schools after the start of 10th grade to sit out for an entire year unless their families move.
The new rule took effect immediately, and it permits only a few exceptions, such as “financial hardship” and transfers for “educational necessities.” Under the state’s old system, transfers were forced to sit out the first 30 days of the season.
Florida won’t be following New Jersey’s lead any time soon. Here in the football-crazy Sunshine State, football is king. Players are meat on the hoof, and far too many of our coaches and parents believe that “winning is the only thing.” If it weren’t, we wouldn’t keep score.
Taliban Violently Campaigns Against Girls’ Education in Northwest Pakistan
SWAT DISTRICT, Pakistan — The Swat valley, a picturesque region in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, was once a tourist destination. Two years ago, however, it became a Taliban haven when Maulana Fazlullah, a hardline cleric turned militant Taliban commander, launched a vicious campaign against the education of girls.
Unlike much of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to the east, along the 1,400-mile border with Afghanistan, the Swat valley has historically been known for the relatively liberal values and traditions of its people, as well as its mesmerizing natural scenery.
When Buddhism was the primary influence in the area, from about the 1st century B.C. to the the 9th century A.D., the Swat valley was a regional seat of learning, a destination for knowledge-seekers from central Asia and China.
Under Miangul Abdul Haq Jehanzeb, the last Wali (ruler) of the princely state of Swat, then part of India, who ruled from 1949 until the Swat state was dissolved and became part of Pakistan in 1969, special attention was paid to education in general and the education of girls in particular.
In fact, Fazlullah himself received his intermediate education at the Government Post Graduate Jehanzeb College in Mingwara, an institution established by the benevolent Wali in 1952.
The last Wali of Swat considered girls’ education essential for socioeconomic development, and he introduced co-education in all state schools, according to local history professor Sultan-e-Room.
Almost 50 years after the end of the progressive Wali’s rule, however, Islamist militant groups in the region appear bent on denying an education to thousands of young girls in Swat and neighboring districts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Fazlullah’s campaign against girls’ schools, which he has fostered via broadcasts on a pirate FM radio station, is among the most damaging.
North West Frontier Province (Shaheen Buneri)
At the outset of his crusade, in 2006, Fazlullah decreed that women should remain within the four walls of their homes and refrain from attending school. He also discouraged female health workers from performing their duties in nearby health facilities, and interfered with a polio vaccination campaign in the Swat valley. He claimed that the vaccination effort was “a Western conspiracy to make Muslims infertile so that their numbers could not grow,” according to the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Focus.
During his nightly radio broadcasts, Fazlullah routinely announced the names of female students who had stopped attending school and promised them a high place in paradise.
“Girls’ education leads to obscenity and vulgarity in the society. This is a conspiracy of the United States and other ‘infidel’ nations to deviate our younger generations from the right path of Islam,” he said in one of his many radio sermons, which can be heard within a 40-kilometer radius of his base of operations.
In November 2007, then-Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf sent 25,000 security forces to fight Fazlullah’s militants in Swat. The military action achieved partial success by dislodging militants from Fazlullah’s headquarters in Mamdheri. Subsequently, the militant leader established bases in the towns of Matta and Kabal and opened Shariah courts in Gat Peuchar, in upper Swat.
Earlier this year, Pakistan military officials claimed that the area had been cleared of Fazlullah’s influence and that a number of his militants had been killed. However, Fazlullah subsequently launched a new campaign and began targeting girls schools in different parts of the valley.
According to government officials, more than 90 girls’ schools have been either burned or bombed by militants associated with Fazlullah. Other independent sources claim that a total of 135 girls’ schools have been destroyed since July 2006.
In a mid-July telephone interview from the Mingawara Press Club, Fazlullah spokesman Muslim Khan, contradicting earlier denials, admitted his group’s involvement in attacking girls’ schools.
“These schools were used by the security forces as bunkers. That’s why we attacked them,” he said.
In the wake of Pakistan’s Feb. 18 general elections, the Awami National Party, a Pashtun nationalist party, came to power in the NWFP. As part of a changed anti-terror policy, the new government signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants in the Swat valley on May 21, 2008.
The peace agreement failed to restore peace to the volatile region, and many believe that it strengthened the militants’ hand. Khadim Hussain Amir, an Islamabad-based political analyst, says the agreement gave the militants the time and opportunity they needed to regroup and strengthen their positions against government security forces.
“The peace agreement emboldened militants to re-establish their contacts with militant groups in Pakistan’s chaotic tribal areas and to challenge government authority in the adjoining districts of Buner, Dir and Shangla,” Amir explained. He added that Fazlullah attacks schools as a way to guarantee future recruits for his movement.
The prevailing fear in the Swat valley has forced thousands of girls and young women to become prisoners in their homes and has put an end to their educational careers, though some brave parents have shifted their children to other schools in the province.
Zia-ud-Din Yousafzai, secretary of the Swat Schools Association, says that the education of the area’s girls is the main casualty in the conflict between the Taliban and Pakistan security forces. She estimates that 80,000 girls have been affected by the Taliban “jihad” against female education.
“The majority of the children are suffering from acute psychological trauma and they have lost interest in their studies,” Yousafzai said.
Shaheen Buneri is a freelance journalist based in Peshawar, Pakistan.
