A-Level reform: 'A sacrifice of personal breadth'
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Your support makes all the difference.Nicky Kemp is an English teacher and assistant head of sixth form at Mark Rutherford Upper School, Bedford
"We went against general advice and examined one unit of the English course in January. We wanted to put our toe in the water, get some results and see what an A candidate looked like, and a B candidate, and so on. It was very scary but our results were good, it gave our students a lot of focus and they had got one exam out of the way; they could also take it again if they needed to get a better result. I'd be sorry if they were going to stop us doing that.
"One good thing is that lower sixth students have had to hit the ground running because of AS-levels. They haven't had time to waste so have had to be more focused.
"But there is evidence that everything has been thrown together terribly, terribly quickly. We were sent a specimen question by the exam board on a Blake poem that asked why the poem ended on the word "wept". The poem didn't finish on the word "wept"; it went on for another two or three verses. Whoever set the question had done it in such a rush that they had failed to turn over the page.
"We're supposed to be teaching a synoptic unit for the A2 course from next September and we have only had one set of sample materials for it; we won't get more information until a meeting at the end of September, by which time we will have started the course.
"The students are supposed to read widely for the synoptic unit but they don't have time to draw breath because they are doing so much else. These new exams are supposed to encourage breadth but we value non academic breadth here too. Our lower sixth used to do lots of community work; it's been much harder for them to find the time. It means they will have less to put on their UCAS personal statement.
"These reforms were not thought through. If we were hoping to get greater breadth in the sixth form, this format has not provided it. We have students taking four subjects rather than three in the lower sixth. If they aren't examined until the second year of the sixth form, they're not much use to universities; they'll look at GCSE results anyway. Meanwhile, personal breadth is sacrificed to academic breadth."
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