GCSE modules will be scrapped in campaign to raise standards

Education Secretary Michael Gove, who confirmed the move yesterday, said the module system created a “culture of resits” resulting from allowing students to keep taking modules until they achieved the desired grade.

He claimed that courses were not giving students a “deep and rounded” knowledge of subjects and that pupils would now sit final exams taking in all the modules of a course.

Mr Gove also announced that would-be teachers will be banned from taking unlimited resits in basic English and maths tests in a shake-up of training and trainee teachers would now be given just three attempts to meet basic skill standards.

The Education Secretary said that other countries had more rigorous examination regimes and schools here needed to catch up. The change comes just days after he unveiled tough new Government targets which will demand that every secondary gets more than half of its pupils passing five good GCSEs – including English and maths – within four years alongside plans to convert the country’s worst 200 performing primary schools into academies.

Yesterday he said: “We have to look at what’s happening to exams and to curricula across the globe.

One of the things that’s happened, unfortunately, over the last 10 years is that other countries have had more rigorous exams, they have had curricula more relevant to the 21st century and we’ve got to catch up.

“In the last few weeks we have seen the exam boards make a number of mistakes which I think are heartbreaking for the students who are sitting exams and who are given the wrong questions or the wrong facts.

“One particular change which we are going to implement this week, which will start in 2012, is we are going to change the way GCSEs operate.”

He attacked the breakdown of courses into “bite-sized pieces”, saying: “The problem that we had is that instead of sitting every part of a GCSE at the end of a course, bits of it were taken along the way.

“Those bits could be resat. That meant instead of concentrating on teaching and learning you had people who were being trained again and again to clear the hurdle of the examination along the way.

“That meant that unfortunately less time was being spent developing a deep and rounded knowledge of the subject.”

He added: “I think it’s a mistake and I think the culture of resits is wrong. I think that what we need to do is make sure, certainly at GCSE, that you have a clear two-year run.”

Exams watchdog Ofqual has recommended that all the individual modules that would be taken before the end of the course should now be sat together, he said.

“It won’t start in September of this year because obviously we don’t want to disrupt things in mid-flow.

“But from September 2012 all new courses will be taught in a way which means all the modules will be taken at the end.”

Spelling, punctuation and grammar will also be marked in courses with a “sustained section of writing” including geography and history “to ensure that we prepare people for real life and university”.

Mr Gove also announced reforms to improve trainee teachers’ basic skills.

Under the current system, trainees who have started their course have to sit tests in literacy, numeracy and information technology.

If they fail, they are allowed an unlimited number of resits.

Official figures show that one in five candidates fails either the maths or the literacy test the first time, with one in 10 taking the numeracy paper more than three time.

From September next year, would-be teachers who fail the tests the first time will only be allowed two resits.

The tests will also have to be taken, and passed, before a trainee can begin their course.