Education Secretary Michael Gove reveals radical rethink on grades in new GCSE revolution

He is planning to scrap the present grading system entirely and replace A* and A grade passes with a one, two, three or four pass.

The new numerical system will make it easier for universities to differentiate between candidates - thus allowing the more selective universities to award provisional places to the brightest candidates for their most popular courses such as law and medicine.

Mr Gove told MPs of the proposal when he addressed members of the Commons select committee on education today, telling: "We have set the bar too low.? We have had a low level of expectations in the past.

"We will change how the exams are graded."

He said it could well be the case that the "band of achievement that is currently A* and A" was replaced by a new one, two, three or four pass. The new-style GCSEs will start to be taught in schools in September 2015.

Mr Gove was accused by Labour MP David Ward of being "quite insulting to thousands and thousands of teachers in many successful schools" by claiming they had low expectations.

Graham Stuart, the Conservative chairman of the committee, also argued that Mr Gove could be "deliberately" paving the way for "grade deflation" in the exam system through the changes.

He said that the pass rate could also go down in the first year of pupils sitting the new exam (2017) - "because schools don't know how to work the system".

Students who previously were awarded an A grade pass could be awarded a four? under the new system (a one or two would be roughly equivalent to an A* while three or four would equate to an A grade). Academics argue a four would not be seen by employers and universities as a top grade pass.? Numbers are likely to replace grades throughout the system so instead of A* to G grade passes students would be awarded one to 10 passes.

However, Mr Gove replied that that the current exam system meant teachers were spending "too much time on exam technique and not enough on content".

He said it was not his aim to reduce the number of pupils awarded top grade passes but he acknowledged that the new system would make it easier to differentiate between pupils.? He admitted also that the pass rate might well go down in the first year of the new system's introduction.

His comments follow research by the Department for Education showing that GCSE results are a marginally better indicator of a student's degree prospects than the AS level - currently taken at the end of the first year of the sixth-form and worth half an A-level.

As part of his exam reforms, Mr Gove plans to uncouple it from A-levels so that universities would not be able to use it to determine who should be awarded places.

In a letter to Labour's schools spokesman Kevin Brennan, Schools Minister David Laws said: "The analysis (by the DfE) showed that knowing GCSE results alone allows a university to correctly predict whether a student will receive a 2:1 in 69.5 per cent of cases.

"This means that GCSE results are a slightly better predictor than AS results alone, which correctly predict the outcome in 69.5 per cent of cases."

He added: "Knowing AS levels as well as GCSEs does not add, significantly, to an admission officer's ability to predict outcomes.

"Once you know a student's exam results in one set of these exams, you learn little by knowing the results in the other sets of exams."

During his grilling by MPs, Mr Gove also defended his decision to criticise a website which suggested pupils could learn about the Third Reich by creating Mr Men characters based on leading Nazis such as Adolf Hitler.

He admitted he had done the research for his claim himself and added: "The striking thing about it is that while there have been some people who've been offended or who've disagreed with the thrust of the argument, no-one has disputed that it's a popular resource, no-one's disputed that it was material aimed at 15 to 16-year-olds sand opinion divides on whether or not it's appropriate."

Russell Tarr, the teacher who proposed the idea, said it had been given to IGCSE students to teach to primary school pupils to help them understand about the Nazis.

The history of grading

1951: O-levels first introduced with no grades - just a pass or fail.

1963: Some boards introduced a 1 to 6 pass system while others adopted an A to E grade system

1965: GCSE’s offered as a lower tier qualification to O-level as a vocational alternative and adopts a 1 to 5 pass system.

1975: All boards offering O-levels move to A to E grade system

1988: GCSEs (combining O-levels and CSE’s) introduced offering A to G grade passes (A to C were deemed to be the equivalent of an old O-level pass).

1994: A* grade introduced for the first time.

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Hove vs Gove: Education Secretary Michael Gove accused of ignoring local wishes with plans to build new free school on playing fields

Now he has a new nemesis: the city of Brighton and Hove. A Department for Education (DfE) plan to concrete over playing fields to make way for a new free school has residents, teachers and even a local Conservative MP up in arms. Under the banner of “Hove vs Gove”, a group of campaigners has vowed to save their “village green” – known as Bhasvic Field – and has accused Mr Gove of once again riding roughshod over a community’s wishes in pursuit of his free schools policy.

“We have already had three offers for people to climb the trees and refuse to be moved,” says Lou McCurdy, who leads the Friends of the Field community group. “All I’d say to him is: don’t underestimate us, Mr Gove.”

The saga began in September when Mr Gove declared his approval for a new free school in Brighton and Hove: the King’s Church of England School, set up by the Russell Education Trust, which is sympathetic to Mr Gove’s focus on traditional subjects in schools.

Consultants from the centrally funded Education Funding Agency (EFA) were brought in to look for appropriate sites for the school, which would cater for 1,050 students aged 11 to 18. After “a thorough search over nine months”, they came up with their solution two weeks ago: to build the new school on playing fields already used by four existing schools and described as a “village green” by nearby residents.

“We were shocked and outraged,” said Dr James Kilmartin, the acting headteacher of Cardinal Newman School, which owns part of the playing field, on a site shared with Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College (Bhasvic) and Stanford Junior and Infants Schools. “There was no consultation. We use that field every day – for cricket, rounders, athletics, football. Nobody locally was consulted. The powers of national government under the Education Act (2011) are immense and we find ourselves having to resist them.”

Last week, the four schools issued a joint statement warning that the plan would leave them unable to deliver their sports curriculum and would “permanently remove a vital green space in the heart of a densely populated city”.

Civic leaders of all stripes have spoken out against the plan – creating yet another headache for Mr Gove’s department, which is fresh from a clash with the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, over its reluctance to make public information on the groups setting up free schools. The DfE is also embroiled in bitter rows with communities in Croydon, in south London, and Brent, in north-west London, over plans to turn schools into academies against the wishes of many parents and staff.

The DfE, not Brighton and Hove? City Council, will have the final say on the location of the King’s Church of England Free School.

“It undermines the role of local councils if they aren’t able to make? decisions on things like this,” said Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. “The idea that this Government can preach localism, then rule that they can come here and commandeer a piece of land against the wishes of the local community is just wrong.”

Anger at Mr Gove and the DfE is running so high that even the Conservative MP Mike Weatherley, whose Hove and Portslade constituency includes the playing fields site, has decided to take on the Education Secretary, highlighting that the plan flies in the face of the Government’s responsibility for the Olympic Games legacy and preserving playing fields.

“It’s a green space of which there are precious few in Brighton and Hove,” he said. Although claiming that the Green-led council had not done enough to find alternatives because of its “ideological opposition” to free schools, he said he wanted to be told the full extent of the site surveys undertaken by the DfE.

“If they haven’t looked at all the possibilities, I want to make sure they do more,” he said. “It might mean I’m against the DfE – if I am, so be it.”

Officials at the DfE have sought to play down fears that the new school would destroy one of the community’s last remaining green spaces, pointing out that it would take up just 3.6 acres of a 22-acre site, and claiming that the amount of “open space” remaining would be “equal to around 17 full-sized football pitches”. They said any final decision would be made in “consultation with the community and the agreement of the council”.

However, locals are dubious. Councillor Ruth Buckley, of the Green? Party group on Brighton and Hove City Council, queried the Government’s figures, and said the main school field locals were trying to save was only five acres.

School leaders also fear that the impact of placing another school so close to three others will lead to serious overcrowding in the area. The EFA is also considering plans for a three-form primary school on the site for an extra 630 children. “There are 2,000 pupils at Bhasvic and 2,200 here at Cardinal Newman’s,” said Dr Kilmartin. “Now they are talking about 1,600 or 1,800 more – that’s the best part of 6,000 students in a very small space.”

For his part, Steve Flavin, the headteacher of the new free school, was as surprised as anyone with the EFA’s decision– but is hoping that the plan can go ahead amicably. “We didn’t know in advance that the EFA had identified this site, presumably in close liaison with the local authority,” he said. “No one at King’s or within its sponsor, the Russell Education Trust, was involved in this choice of permanent site.”

The school will open at a temporary site in Portslade Old Village, with its first intake of 125 year seven pupils arriving in September, and the school is expecting to remain there for the next three years, before a possible move to the Bhasvic Field site.

Heads at the four schools say they are not opposed to the idea of a new school in the area. “We have no objection whatsoever to the free school,” said Dr Kilmartin. “It’s just that they want to build it on our school playing field.”

... East Durham

The Education Secretary won no friends in the North-east when he said: “There is a real problem of ambition in certain traditional communities, like East Durham, which needs to change.

“It is the case that there’s no choice, the local council has been one party for many years and when you go into those schools you can smell the sense of defeatism.” The local MP, Phil Wilson, called it an “outrageous statement”.

... Sandwell

Mr Gove apologised for a “terrible mistake” over the “clumsy” announcement that nine schools in the West Midlands borough had won funding for a rebuilding programme, only to be told a day later that the information was wrong and none would get any money after all. The council was one of six to later win a High Court battle over the cancelled funds, which was judged to be an “abuse of power”.

... Haringey

Attacking parents and headteachers opposed to schools being taken out of local authority control to become academies, Mr Gove described them as “ideologues happy with failure”.

He singled out the? London borough of Haringey, where the Downhills Primary School in Tottenham eventually lost a High Court battle to resist conversion, despite parents opposing the plan and saying they felt “ignored, ridiculed,? and insulted”.

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