Early entry into GCSE

Early entry into GCSE

Education Secretary Michael Gove has written to the chief inspector at Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, to ask him to examine how the practice of early entry to GCSE can be “discouraged”. He says that taking a GCSE early “can be beneficial where it is undertaken as part of a planned programme of accelerated progression through to A level and beyond” but warns it has become a “damaging trend that is harming the interests of many pupils”.

In 2007 2% entered English early and 5% entered Maths early. By 2010 this had risen to 24% for English and 27% for Maths.

“Lower attaining schools are more likely to have early entrants”  and half of the schools below their floor targets “had at least 50% of pupils entering mathematics early”. Selective schools and independent schools tend not to enter pupils early.

In 2010 in Maths 29% of early entrants got A*-B compared with 37% of all entrants. In English the figures were 30% compared to 41%. The DfE interprets this to mean that “in both English and mathematics, early entrants overall perform worse than pupils who do not enter early.”

However if you consider the more common benchmark of A*-C percentage pass rates early entrants achieved 64% pass in Maths compared to 65% for all pupils; in English these figures were 68% and 69%.

These figures include candidates who subsequently retook. 98% of those who got a D retook; 78% of those who got a C retook; 63% who got a B retook.

The DfE research interprets these figures as meaning that “In both English and mathematics, early entrants overall perform worse than pupils who do not enter early.”

Mr Gove infers from these statistics that candidates are being entered before they are ready, and ‘banking’ a C grade rather than continuing to the end or year 11 and achieving a top grade. He sees this as a narrowed curriculum, focused not on sound subject teaching as a basis for successful progression, but on preparation to pass exams.

An alternative view might be that schools are attempting to personalize the curriculum and escape from the viewpoint that “most important thing that children have in common is their date of manufacture” (Sir Ken Robinson, 2011 Out of our Minds).

The most likely explanation is that some schools have a deliberate strategy of entering borderline pupils early in an attempt to boost more pupils over the critical threshold of 5A*-C grades including English and Maths. This measure was introduced in 2006, just before the surge started.

The grade information with the significant improvement in grade Cs at the expense of other grades suggests that this strategy works.

If this is the explanation it would suggest that we may expect an increase in the number of early entries in the EBac subjects. In 2010 only 1% of entrants entered sciences, history and geography early.

If the government wishes to "discourage" the number of early entries there would seem to be three possibilities:

• They could forbid early entries. This would be counter to the avowed philosophy of removing restrictions and would mean that a genius might graduate from university before being allowed to take a GCSE.
• They could upgrade the A*-C measure to A*-B. This is likely to reduce the opportunity for lower achieving schools to play the game but it might encourage early entry in selective and independent schools.
• They could scrap the A*-C threshold measure in favour of an average point score measure which would give a more appropriate weighting to each grade.

The full report is attached to the bottom of this page.