The government is inviting bids for contracts worth up to £1 million from organisations to deliver training that increases “student and teacher confidence and ability” in GCSE maths and English resits.
The Department for Education put out feelers last October to gauge market interest in extra teacher training for FE resit staff.
Results for GCSE English and maths resits have struggled to improve, with less than a third of students passing the exams in post-16 education.
Last week, the DfE launched a tender, which runs until mid-April, for bids to deliver continuing professional development to “support the provision of English, maths and wider organisational working” for FE staff.
The DfE did not clarify the overall total of the grant pot, but it encouraged multiple organisations to bid for contracts between £200,000 and £1 million.
Bidders will have to propose how much they want for a two-year financial period starting June 1, 2025, and ending March 31, 2027.
However, funding for the second year will be subject to contractors supplying evidence that they are fulfilling the objectives and “ensuring value for money”.
Students must resit GCSE English and maths in post-16 education as a condition of their places being funded if they fail to achieve a grade 4 pass at school.
The DfE has funded multiple resit CPD programmes in the past, including through the Education and Training Foundation, White Rose Education, Lexonik and Mathematics Education Innovation
Tender documents show that for this round, the department twill accept applications from organisations able to cover multiple regions in England or nationwide.
But bidders have been encouraged to “prioritise regions with lower attainment rates for level 2 English and maths and/or high vacancy rates for English and maths teachers”.
The CPD will be online or in-person and could involve subject-specific training in topics such as improving algebra knowledge and developing reading comprehension.
The DfE will measure the success of the initiative across four areas, including requiring contractors to demonstrate 80 per cent increases in student and teacher confidence and ability in maths and English.
The GCSE results come out TOO LATE in the summer and resit students have only six weeks effectively to raise attainment. Using ON SCREEN tests for ONE of the papers in English and Maths, could give results INSTANTLY – as in the Pearson centres for UCAT and other aptitude tests. Learners therfore would have 4 MONTHS+ to raise their grades.
Pearson have also moved the January series of IGCSE back to November, crucially depriving learners of another opportunity with more time to improve.
Or, at least run reliable pre GCSE mock exams to give learners a heads up as to likely outcomes.
*Switching off* for 2.5 months until results helps no one – learners deserve to know results much much closer to the time of tests.
My first advice to learners facing exams is 1. To use as many resources as possible in revision to develop the ability to mark your own homework! This means for instance using a dictionary online or paper to check unfamiliar words (!) – to realise what you may not know ..and .or carefully using mark schemes and Examiners reports publicly available on the Internet.
2. Be honest with themselves immediately after exams – if you consider you may have underperformed, START IMMEDIATELY to go over the areas which created most difficulty.
3. The Foundation Tiers are a CON – a legacy of the 1970s CSE invention – the relative attainment levels in Maths are ridiculously wide at Grade 4 – fooling Foundation candidates into thinking they might have passed at Grade 4+ …
4. Develop new couses out of Computer Science that recognise the existence of Large Language Models and A.I. use – this could cross over with Business GCSE as an option. They could share a paper.
Literacy and Numeracy take time to develop – habits can change quickly, but expecting learners to raise attainment levels without sufficient time to establish better learning patterns is LUNACY.
Why not put money into getting the gcse right 1st time so there is no need for resits