How are you preparing for the upcoming changes to the GCSE exams?

Staff at Kings’ have prepared extensively for the changes in GCSEs by attending courses offered by external providers, such as examination bodies, working in partnership with schools both locally and in the UK and running systematic and rigorous in-house training.

Do you think these changes are a good/bad thing? Can you explain your answer?

Whilst there have been some challenges, the reforms have been embraced at Kings’.The reforms of GCSEs have led to the most significant changes in education, since the replacement of O’levels, 30 years ago. The fundamental shift has been to meet the needs of learners in the 21st century and to ensure that the standards of the National Curriculum of England remain on par with the top performing countries in the world.

What are your thoughts on the new grading system? What do you see as the pros and cons of changing to numerical grades?

The introduction of a grade 9 which is indicative of attainment beyond A* has enabled Kings’ to really recognise our most gifted students and continue to raise our students aspirations of themselves as learners.

Many commentators believe the children sitting the exams during the 'change-over-period' will face difficulties with their mix of alphabetical and numerical grades, what are your thoughts?

Any change or transition brings concern and this is an inevitable part of the examination reforms, however, at Kings’ we have worked extremely hard prior to this change to ensure that the staff delivering the courses, and the students, are well informed of the new requirements.

In your opinion, do you think the new exam format will be more difficult than the old? Can you explain why/where?

The new format to examinations has led to a return to final examination as the sole measure of a pupil's success at the end of a two-year GCSE course – with the exception of science, which retains a small assessed practical element. The content of the revised examinations is pitched at a more sophisticated level than legacy GCSEs, especially in sciences and maths. By making GCSEs more demanding, more fulfilling, and more stretching will ensure that young learners will receive a broad, deep and balanced education. The old style of GCSEs and their reliance on coursework assessment has been removed as they were open to abuse. Resits are also discouraged under the new system, enabling results to more accurately reflect a young person’s performance in an exam.

Do you think Progress 8 is a better method of calculating how both the school and individual student performs?

The old measure used in the UK ranked secondary schools on the proportion of pupils gaining C grades or higher in five GCSE subjects including English and maths. It has been replaced by a new value-added metric known as Progress 8. The end of the old measure means schools can finally be rid of the C/D borderline in which schools placed disproportionate amount of focus on getting borderline students to a C grade so they could move up the performance league tables. More and less able students suffered under the old measure, since it gave no reward to schools that improved their pupils once they were likely to get a C. The progress 8 is far better indicator of a school’s performance as it measures the progress of learners in their 8 best GCSE results in relation to their starting point , which is determined by their key stage 2 results from primary school. The Key Stage 2 results are used to forecast GCSE results. If a learner achieves higher than their forecast grades, the school is deemed to have done well.

Will your school calculate and publish its Progress 8 score?

At Kings’ we feel it is vital that the performance of learners are constantly monitored and reviewed to ensure that effective intervention is put in place to support learners, to not only meet but exceed their forecast grades. To support this, we use the leading performance tracking software to generate detailed reports on a learner performance against a range of measures, including attainment 8 and progress 8. To ensure compliance, Kings will report performance measures set out by the local authorities,as well as ensuring that key headline figures are also published in our marketing materials.