Schools may opt to skip GCSEs

Monday, 11 August 2003 12:00 AM

Pupils could be able to skip GCSEs if the schools decide they are a waste of time, according to the head of the government's exam watchdog.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) head Ken Boston claims that headteachers should decide whether or not students sit GCSEs or go straight on to the AS exams.

Dr Boston made the remarks in The Times newspaper just days before teenagers are due to collect this year's results.

He stated that pupils were being overburdened, having to sit GCSEs, AS-Levels and A-Level exams.

"If a school wants to offer only a few GCSEs or not take them at all and go straight to A-level and AS then that is perfectly open to them," he said.

"It shows flexibility in the system which is admirable. I am certainly not one who would take the view that young people must take three formal examinations in three consecutive years.

"It is a matter for schools to determine."

He suggested that schools with high pass rates at GCSE could abandon the exams at 16 in favour of a three-year programme of study.
Education Secretary Charles Clarke has asked former chief inspector of schools Mike Tomlinson to review qualifications for 14 to 19-year-olds.

An education department spokesman said: "GCSEs continue to prove their worth and any reform must build on their success."

Leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart, said it "signals the end of the GCSE in the long term".

The Conservatives meanwhile have declared they would make the QCA independent from government.

Shadow education secretary Damian Green told the Daily Telegraph that the QCA needed to be free from politics in order to restore confidence in the exam system after last year's A-level marking fiasco, which led to the sacking of QCA chief William Stubbs and the eventual resignation of education secretary Estelle Morris.

Mr Green said, "When you get to a stage where schools with highly academic pupils are saying that the main exams they take are a waste of time, it is no exaggeration to say that confidence has collapsed."

"If the GCSE is abandoned by the most academic children, it will become a second-class exam. That would be damaging to academically bright children in schools that kept the GCSE"

He was speaking after it was announced that university applications might be delayed until after students receive their A-Level results, in a bid to attract more working class pupils to elite universities.

Government adviser Professor Steven Schwartz believes this would help pupils whose schools do not encourage them to aim high.

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