Anglonautes > English vocabulary / words > School, Education > UK

Thursday 25 August 2011
09.30 BST
Guardian.co.uk
Jeevan Vasagar, education editor
This article was published
on guardian.co.uk at 09.30 BST
on Thursday 25 August 2011.

Nearly one in four GCSE entries has been awarded an A or an A* grade in results published on Thursday, which show a further decline in the number of pupils taking French and other foreign languages.

Entries for French have fallen since languages were made optional at GCSE seven years ago. This year, they were down to just over 154,000 from around 170,000 last year, and compared with more than 300,000 in 2004.

French fell out of the top 10 most popular subjects last year, with more pupils choosing to study geography or art for GCSE. Religious studies has grown in popularity for the 13th year running, with nearly 222,000 entries, up from 188,704 last year.

About 650,000 children receive their GCSE results today in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, a smaller group than in 2010. The number of 16-year-olds in the population has been declining since 2004.

The overall pass rate at grades A* to C has increased to 69.8%, while the percentage getting an A or A* has risen from 22.6% last year to 23.2% this summer.

The decline in French has been accompanied by falls in popularity for other languages, in a pattern that appears likely to cement Britain's reputation as a monolingual country. Entries for German are down to below 70,000 while Spanish has dipped to around 66,000.

Geography has also waned in popularity.

This year's A-level results showed year-on-year rises in entries for maths, biology, chemistry and physics. And this year's GCSE results also show an increase in entries for physics, chemistry and biology. Physics is up 16.4%, chemistry 16.2% and biology 14.2%.

The number of pupils taking single sciences at GCSE surged in the previous year. Entries for chemistry and physics GCSEs rose by 32%, while those for biology were up 28%. Biology was the most popular of the three in last summer's results, with 129,000 taking the subject. This year there were nearly 148,000 entries for biology.

In last summer's results, Spanish appeared poised to overtake German at GCSE, with the numbers taking it rising to more than 67,000, while German entries fell to around 70,000 in 2010. The numbers taking Mandarin, Portuguese and Polish also rose last year, with the last of these thought to be fuelled by an increase in the number of pupils who are children of recent Polish migrants.

Last year's results showed that private school pupils were disproportionately likely to do languages and single sciences. The independent sector accounted for just 7.7% of all GCSE entries, but 15.4% of chemistry, 15.1% of biology and 14.8% of physics entries.

Last year's GCSE results showed that thousands more teenagers were sitting the exams at least one year early. Last summer, 11% of maths GCSE entries were taken early and 9.5% of English GCSE entries. In 2010, boys beat girls at GCSE maths for the second year in a row, following a decision to drop coursework in the subject. The proportion of boys getting grades A* to C in maths has risen again this year from 57.6% to 58.6%. The proportion of girls passing has also risen, from 56.8% to 58.3%.

Boys have also done better than girls in biology, where the male pass rate is 93% compared with 92.7% for girls, and in physics, where 93.9% of boys have passed compared with 93.4% of girls.

In last year's results, economics saw a higher pass rate for boys, though only around 3,000 candidates of either sex entered.

Ministers have announced plans to overhaul GCSEs in the future. From September 2012, pupils will sit all their exams at the end of the two-year courses, rather than throughout the course.

Pupils will also be marked on their spelling, punctuation and grammar in subjects that have a high "written English" element, such as history, geography, religious studies and English literature. Further reforms to GCSEs are expected to be announced after the review of the national curriculum is published.

GCSE results 2011:
One in four entries gets A or A*,
G,
25.8.2011,
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/aug/25/
gcse-results-one-in-four-get-a

On This Day — September 8, 1969

From The Times archive

Public and prepatory school heads
objected to an examination
which they thought too difficult
for the average 13-year-old

TROUBLES surrounding the introduction of the new common entrance examination for the public schools emerged over the weekend at the annual conference in Cambridge of the Incorporated Association of Preparatory Schools.

Mr William Stewart, Master of Haileybury and chairman of the Common Entrance Board, told the conference that the papers set in June, sat by nearly 6,000 pupils aged 13, were too difficult for many of the average candidates.

He also disclosed that the board agreed that the passage set for English comprehension was too difficult and too long, and that it had led to a drop of 15 per cent in the average mark.

Some of the marks on the total examination were so low, according to one headmaster, that standards of entry to the public schools would have appeared “ludicrously” low if they had been disclosed.

Mr Stewart said that the troubles had undermined confidence at a psychological moment and had caused the doubters to conclude that the new examination would never compare with the old as a selection test. The doubts were shared both by the preparatory schools and the Headmasters’ Conference.

He had even heard it said that if the marks were going to be so low, more schools would be forced to follow Winchester and Westminster in setting their own examination.

He added: “In my opinion, we have merely encountered a temporary setback. I think too much has happened too quickly . . . I am sure the direction is right and that the examination as established can do all the things we require of it.”

From The Times archives > On This Day — September 8, 1969,
Ts,
8.9.2005,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
article/0,,61-1769641,00.html - broken link

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