7th October 2013 Dear Parent / Carer,
November GCSE Entries
As you may be aware from press coverage, the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has made an unexpected announcement on ‘early entry’ for GCSE exams. With immediate effect only the first entry of candidates for GCSE exams will be counted towards the results of the school. This replaces the system until now, where the highest grade of the student was counted. This does not apply to any exams taken last year, where if re-sat the best grade will still count. As you will be aware, we had planned for your child to sit exams in November of this year in either Maths or English and in some cases both. At the time of our planning, this made perfect sense as it provided real ‘live’ experience of sitting the exam and created more than one opportunity for your child to achieve their best grade in the subject. The Government has suggested that this constitutes an attempt to ‘game’ the system; we would refute this and argue that our strategy was about supporting all of our students to achieve the very best outcome by the age of 16. After consultation with the English and Maths department and members of the Governing body, I have decided that we will not now be entering Year 11 students for November exams. We will do our upmost to support all of our students to achieve their potential in Maths and English by the end of Year 11. We intend to offer the November papers at a later stage in the year as a practice exam, marked by qualified examiners and to use the results to identify strengths and areas for development for each student. We will use the funds released by not entering the November series of exams to fund further intervention and support strategies above and beyond those already planned. We are confident that this approach will support our Year 11 students as they work for these important qualifications and we expect to achieve extremely good results by the end of the year. I would like to apologise to our students and to you for altering our approach to these exams at such a late stage. I hope you will understand that the changes are the result of Government policy which was announced on 28th September and that we have carefully considered our actions in the best interests of your child and the wider school community. If you require further information or wish to discuss this, please contact me at school. Yours sincerely,
A. McGlown Headteacher