It’s time to stop the madness of GCSE resits for all

For many young people finishing school, GCSE results day is a cause for much celebration.

But each year, around 30 per cent do not achieve the minimum “standard” (grade 4) pass. Most of these pupils will enrol into FE Colleges, although too many will end up not in any form of education, employment or training (NEET). There will always be roughly 30 per cent who don’t achieve that all important set of grade 4 passes because that’s how the exam system works: there must be “winners” and “losers”.

For the hundreds of thousands of young people forced to re-sit GCSE maths and English classes, the outlook is grim. Only one in five are successful in their resits, and the results this summer are even slightly worse than that, especially for maths. Despite numerous calls for the sector to do better and intense scrutiny from Ofsted, the success rate will never be much better than one in five: If you a “loser” first time around, you’re much more likely to be a “loser” second time around when you are pitted in a system predicated on sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, this time of year always brings people like me out to criticise the GCSE resits policy. The DfE responds with its defence, and it all goes quiet until the next set of depressing results. Perhaps this year there is a slight shift. The noise of opposition gets louder. A UCL research report outlines the impact of the GCSE resits policy on young people’s mental health. The new Secretary of State talks about the effects of the cycle of failure and it is welcome that there is now a renewed commitment to review the policy. Perhaps we stand at last on the cusp of change. It is a moment and opportunity the sector must grasp.

Yet we mustn’t be complacent. The counter responses so far have included that the system is being reformed to bring in new “stepping stone” qualifications at level 1. But these won’t be available until the end of the decade, and the clue is in their designation: stepping stone. The expectation is that young people will still sit the GCSE before the end of their post-16 study. Then there is the argument that young people now have at least 100 hours of tuition in each subject. That has no impact on the large numbers who were so demoralised the first time around that getting them to attend ten hours is an achievement.

The defence trotted out that the DfE do not require us to enter young people each year for the exam and we should in fact only enter them when they are ready, which might not be for two years, also doesn’t hold water. This is thinking based on a simplistic understanding that every young person in an FE college is studying a neat two-year programme.

The reality is far more complex. It’s a brave college that will chance this given the risks to their data if a young person leaves after a one-year course. The perverse incentives in the performance and accountability system means the stakes are too high.

None of these things are adequate solutions to a policy that should have been scrapped the moment the current government took office.

We also need to ask about the policy: what is it fundamentally trying to achieve? GCSEs are essentially based on content supporting progression to A Levels, which in turn are based on supporting progression to university education. They don’t necessarily guarantee progression into work – although it must be conceded that having them on your CV does open doors.

In all my many conversations with employers, I have yet to find one that fully supports the GCSE re-sit policy. Yes, they want their employees to be reliable, punctual, numerate, good communicators, think on their feet, work well with others, not be welded to a mobile phone and so on. But adept at quadratic equations? Nineteenth century texts? Nope.

The stark reality is that for all the time, effort, cost, tears and regulatory reprisals for only one in five young people being successful in GCSE re-sits, we have over a million NEETs. The recent Alan Milburn review points out how the requirements also “further constrain limited FE capacity”, and how the system “risks locking out a significant minority of young people from taking meaningful steps towards work at a critical age”.

In a system of finite resource, wouldn’t it make much more sense to put more effort in supporting young people into work rather than a policy that guarantees failure for 80 per cent? I do believe we should still provide GCSE re-sits for every young person who wants them. But this madness of forcing everyone to do them must end.