Now that the specifications have been accredited and are about to arrive in schools, you are probably getting to the stage of wanting to firm up your choice.
In this blog we will be considering some common concerns and how they have been addressed by the different Awarding Bodies. We’ll be doing this by posing some questions you might like to ask as you consider which specification might best suit your department and your students.
Some questions you might ask to help you to choose your specification…
The non-fiction reading exam: do my candidates struggle with the non-fiction comprehension?
- Edexcel is the only spec with non-fiction in controlled assessment with tasks set on pre-release materials (so no unseen element).
- AQA signals a predictable questioning pattern, making it easier to ‘coach’ students.
- OCR does not ask students to compare texts in the non-fiction reading exam.
The non-fiction writing exam: do my candidates tend to spend too long on the reading and not enough time on the writing?
- WJEC has reading and writing in separate, 1 hour exam papers.
- AQA say their new structure (2 pieces of writing in the exam – one shorter) has helped with this in the pilot GCSE.
Would we like our candidates to have the opportunity to make a multimodal response to reading?
- This is allowed by both AQA and Edexcel.
Would our candidates cope better with Shakespeare in controlled assessment or exam?
- In English, Shakespeare is in controlled assessment for all specs except Edexcel.
- In literature, Shakespeare is in controlled assessment for AQA Route A, OCR, WJEC and Edexcel.
Does our department want a lot of flexibility to ‘customise’ the controlled assessment tasks or would we prefer to have specific tasks set by the Awarding Body?
- The degree of flexibility varies from task to task.
- Overall, AQA and WJEC have the most scope for customising but do also give example tasks, which you could choose to use.
- Edexcel’s tasks are generic. You then match one of these tasks with the text you have chosen.
- OCR sets a few generic tasks, which may be applied to any text (including a set text) and a specific question for each of the set texts.
Would our candidates do well on unseen poetry in an exam?
You may like to take a skills based approach to poetry which is well-suited to helping students approach an unseen poem. All the Awarding Bodies have unseen poetry either as a compulsory element or as an option.
If you would prefer to avoid unseen poetry:
- AQA route B avoids unseen poetry but puts Shakespeare in exam.
- OCR has an unseen poetry as an option, but you can opt to do contemporary poetry set text instead.
Does our department like to make a lot of use of the film when studying Shakespeare?
- All Awarding Bodies welcome this but OCR and Edexcel controlled assessment tasks explicitly ask students to link their reading to an audio/film version.
Is it important to us to have a lot of flexibility in the choice of texts and genres?
- AQA and OCR offer a little more flexibility in how you cover the National Curriculum requirements, for example whether your literary heritage text is prose or poetry.
We hope these questions will be of help as you narrow down your choices. We’d be interested in hearing from you about your own ‘deal-makers’ and ‘deal-breakers’.
Next time we’ll be looking in more detail at controlled assessment as we know this is an area of concern for people.
2 comments:
Contrary to what this blog says, Shakespeare is controlled assessment in WJEC GCSE English Literature, as well as GCSE English (it's the same task!).
As we’ve said, in English Shakespeare is in controlled assessment in all specs except Edexcel. In Literature, Shakespeare is in both controlled assessment and in exam for WJEC. You’re quite right, however, to say that you could avoid Shakespeare in exam by choosing an alternative Literary Heritage drama text. At the moment the choice is between: Othello; Much Ado; An Inspector Calls; Hobson’s Choice;Taste of Honey. Thanks for pointing this out! We've now amended the offending paragraph.
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