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Teenagers are being given limited GCSE options and forced to switch courses midway as schools try to boost their scores in the new English baccalaureate (Ebacc), it has been claimed. In some cases, youngsters are being asked to change a year or less before they are due to sit exams, it was suggested. And almost half of schools have put in place plans to restrict pupils' GCSE choices as a direct result of the Ebacc's introduction. The education secretary, Michael Gove, introduced the Ebacc at the end of last year, and the measure is now included in league tables – allowing schools to be rated on the proportion of their pupils achieving the benchmark. To achieve the Ebacc, pupils must score at least a C grade in English, maths, science, a foreign language and either history or geography. But a seminar on the Ebacc and the national curriculum has heard that other subjects such as art, drama, music and religious education are being squeezed out, with more pressure being put on pupils to take those that are included. David Peck, director of the Curriculum Foundation, said that while some schools have opted to stick with their curriculum, others are changing it to fit with the Ebacc. "Some will change GCSEs mid-year. That's certainly happening in a number of schools," he said. He added that choices for pupils year 10 (the first year of GCSE study) are changing "very late", while the options available for those starting GCSE courses this year have also altered. Speaking after the seminar, Peck added: "Some of the current year 11s [second year of GCSE study] have had to switch GCSE courses in some schools, that's true." In many cases, pupils have been asked to change so that they can take a language. Asked how long these pupils then have to study the course, Peck said: "A year or less in many cases." Other schools are laying on "twilight" courses after school. Shadow schools secretary Andy Burnham, who arranged the seminar, said afterwards: "The danger is it puts the interests of the school above the interests of the individual." In a survey of more than 2,400 teachers, conducted by the NASUWT teaching union, 43% say their school had planned to restrict the degree of choice 14-year-olds have over their GCSE options as a direct result of the Ebacc being introduced. NASUWT spokesman Chris Weavers told the seminar that those questioned had at the same time seen reductions in time spent on subjects not included in the Ebacc. In design and technology 17% had seen a reduction, 15% in information and computer technology, 13% each in art, music and drama, 12% in citizenship, 11% in personal, social, health and economic education, and 10% in religious education. "Schools are either stopping subjects or reducing curriculum time," Weavers said. "There's very clear evidence that it's distorting the offer." Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of the Accord Coalition, said: "We have got a policy of freedom of choice, but in reality it's a diminution of choice." Peter Hall Jones, chief executive of the Curriculum Foundation, said: "It's a bad Bacc." Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the union had heard of pupils being asked to switch courses. "We are extremely concerned about it, " he said. "It's an inevitable consequence of creating a new performance indicator and judging schools against it. "What schools should be doing is considering what's the most appropriate curriculum for their pupils. But, unfortunately, the nature of the high stakes accountability culture that we have at the moment is putting schools under enormous pressure to meet targets." Lightman added: "There seems to be a worrying trend towards removing choice from young people at 14. I think that's very dangerous in terms of motivating young people to choose subjects that play to their own strengths." According to official figures, 15.6% of pupils in England, around one in six, achieved the Ebacc last summer.

Pupils forced to switch GCSE courses as schools chase Ebacc results | Education | guardian.co.uk

So, let me get this straight... Pupils who are capable of getting good marks are being encouraged to take useful, high-demand academic subjects, and you're pissed off about this?

These idiots are precisely what's wrong with the education system today. Fuck science and languages and anything else remotely aspirational, everyone must spend at least five hours a week learning what to do when you catch the clap and how to be nice to Muslims.

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Because after all, our only destiny is to be unthinking worker-drones slaving away for our corporate masters.

Because we have finite resources with which to feed our school system, and thus it is best to spend them on boring-but-useful things that people will not learn elsewhere than on things that they will.

The fact is that 95% of all students blow at music, drama and art, and are taking them at GCSE level because it's a cushy option. Meanwhile, the rare students that do have a gift for the subject will learn far better outside school than in it. Theology is an interesting subject, and I'd be happy to have my tax money pay for kids to learn it; RE is dumbed down to the extent that it's entirely meaningless. Even if you intend to take theology at university and go on to be a priest, GCSE RE is entirely useless. Same for IT. Don't even get me started on PSE and citizenship.

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And I would say that we havebecuase we have finite resources with which to feed our school system, we'd be much better off teaching people to think and be fully rounded human beings than on duplicating training an employer can provide.

Call me a snob, but for me GCSE drama and citizenship classes =/= fully rounded human being.

You're trying to force me into a position that isn't mine; if schools were teaching Latin, cookery, art history and any number of other seemingly economically useless subjects I'd be overjoyed. No doubt the end product would be a bunch of fully rounded human beings, rather than bored, contemptuous teenagers who've spent the golden hours of their youth colouring in posters for a hypothetical Maya Angelou festival.

I doubt many employers will be overjoyed to provide remedial maths classes either. They'll just go to India or some place where kids are happy to be educated in difficult subjects.

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Well OK, that's not my intention, but thats how condemnationn of "useless" subjects seems to me. There are two points to this: the first being that students are being forced to take subjects for which they are arguably insufficiently prepared for the sake of the schools rating, and the second being whether the subjets they are doing are worthwhile. I don't think the first point is defensible. However much might prefer students to take different subjects demanding they take exams on things for which they are not properly prepared is not a good thing.

The second issue is much more debatable. I would ask, in the first instance, why we would even expect people to pursue careers in the hard sciences when we are supposedly becoming a "service economy", in which manufacturing and the like is old fashioned, and in which "fame" is an end to itself. Surely, if purposeless celebrity is the goal, and more and more so it is, you'd expect to see people taking art courses, because what more is there to life than managing perceptions, presenting yourtself as a brand, and knowing how to handle it when you eventually win Pop Idol? That is what our society rewards, why are we surprised to see students respond to it? From the mouths of babes, as it were.

It's not like people are walking on the moon, and being lionised for it. It's not like we have great inventors on TV. Why would anyone study something hard when the pinnacle of achievement is to be part of manufactured pop band?

Last, corporations have shown some willingness to train their employees in remedial math, if only at despair at the quality of recruits they recieve. But that is in their interest, and it will not be in their interest to train people in "what to do when you catch the clap " or " being nice to Muslims". So that is something we can do in the education system that won't get done outside it.

It may well be true that it's mostly shitty and worthless, after all I never went through this system, but I'm not at all sympathetic to the idea that being in "high demand" makes a subject worthy. It may well be that the could and should be done better, but I insist that the commercial opportunities offered - not that there really are many for math and physics - don't in themselves justify their appearance in the curriculum. Even less so students being shoehorned into them for the sake of their schools' OFSTED assesment.

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Well OK, that's not my intention, but thats how condemnationn of "useless" subjects seems to me. There are two points to this: the first being that students are being forced to take subjects for which they are arguably insufficiently prepared for the sake of the schools rating, and the second being whether the subjets they are doing are worthwhile. I don't think the first point is defensible. However much might prefer students to take different subjects demanding they take exams on things for which they are not properly prepared is not a good thing.

If they're capable of getting C and above then they obviously are prepared.

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The second issue is much more debatable. I would ask, in the first instance, why we would even expect people to pursue careers in the hard sciences when we are supposedly becoming a "service economy", in which manufacturing and the like is old fashioned, and in which "fame" is an end to itself. Surely, if purposeless celebrity is the goal, and more and more so it is, you'd expect to see people taking art courses, because what more is there to life than managing perceptions, presenting yourtself as a brand, and knowing how to handle it when you eventually win Pop Idol? That is what our society rewards, why are we surprised to see students respond to it? From the mouths of babes, as it were. It's not like people are walking on the moon, and being lionised for it. It's not like we have great inventors on TV. Why would anyone study something hard when the pinnacle of achievement is to be part of manufactured pop band?

Cos even if you fail as a celebrity you've still got to live.

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Last, corporations have shown some willingness to train their employees in remedial math, if only at despair at the quality of recruits they recieve. But that is in their interest, and it will not be in their interest to train people in "what to do when you catch the clap " or " being nice to Muslims". So that is something we can do in the education system that won't get done outside it.

They've shown far more willingness to move their operations abroad to countries where people know how to do useful things.

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It may well be true that it's mostly shitty and worthless, after all I never went through this system, but I'm not at all sympathetic to the idea that being in "high demand" makes a subject worthy. It may well be that the could and should be done better, but I insist that the commercial opportunities offered - not that there really are many for math and physics - don't in themselves justify their appearance in the curriculum. Even less so students being shoehorned into them for the sake of their schools' OFSTED assesment.

It's not some big, Bordieu-esque conspiracy to make a bunch of snobby subjects that only posh kids can do the valuable ones. It's just a fact of life that maths is a widely transferable skill, while putting a condom on a banana isn't. It'll be exactly the same in an ideal communist society.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

If they're capable of getting C and above then they obviously are prepared.

That's the threshold, there is no statement in the piece to the effect that people are getting it.

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Cos even if you fail as a celebrity you've still got to live.

Apparently you do that by eating wood. Who needs information, huh?

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They've shown far more willingness to move their operations abroad to countries where people know how to do useful things.

Sounds like a good reason to start seizing their assets to me.

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It's not some big, Bordieu-esque conspiracy to make a bunch of snobby subjects that only posh kids can do the valuable ones. It's just a fact of life that maths is a widely transferable skill, while putting a condom on a banana isn't. It'll be exactly the same in an ideal communist society.

Beyond basic arithmetic, how is it a trasferable skill? Cliche as it is, at no point in my life have I ever been called upon to calculate the square of the hypotenuse, let alone anything more complicated. Unless you go into a pretty small number of fields it is an arcane specialty. And much as I would like people to study it, it's hardly the case that 5 minutes in a sex ed class is going to displace it.

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That's the threshold, there is no statement in the piece to the effect that people are getting it.

If the kids weren't capable of getting it then forcing them to switch wouldn't bring the school any benefits.

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Apparently you do that by eating wood. Who needs information, huh?

Which you buy with money you earnt doing a job that requires some skills.

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Sounds like a good reason to start seizing their assets to me.

They'll be long gone by the time that bill makes it through parliament.

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Beyond basic arithmetic, how is it a trasferable skill? Cliche as it is, at no point in my life have I ever been called upon to calculate the square of the hypotenuse, let alone anything more complicated. Unless you go into a pretty small number of fields it is an arcane specialty. And much as I would like people to study it, it's hardly the case that 5 minutes in a sex ed class is going to displace it.

Calculating the square of the hypotenuse helps you keep you practice even if you don't wind up in one of the professions where you'll use that particular formula. And we're not talking about 5 minutes sex ed, we're talking about dropping maths and doing sex ed instead.

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Originally Posted by Zichao

If the kids weren't capable of getting it then forcing them to switch wouldn't bring the school any benefits.

What do they care, really? If it works it works, if it doesn't, well their rating is not as high as it might be.

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Which you buy with money you earnt doing a job that requires some skills.

Mostly, "customer service" skills, not math or physics. Thats the "service economy", don'tchaknow, "a nation of waitresses and waiters". We're all "post industrial" now, ain't it cool?

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They'll be long gone by the time that bill makes it through parliament.

But their assets may not.

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Calculating the square of the hypotenuse helps you keep you practice even if you don't wind up in one of the professions where you'll use that particular formula. And we're not talking about 5 minutes sex ed, we're talking about dropping maths and doing sex ed instead.

Absolutely true; it's undoubtedly the case that my math skills peaked at the end of highschool and have rusted since. But the point remains that there are very few jobs that require it.

Has anyone ever replaced a multi-year math course with sex ed? Because if so, that's news to me. Straw man, I think.