The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has published guidance on how it will fund legacy GCSEs in English, English language and maths in 2016/17.
Existing GCSEs are now referred to as “legacy” courses by the government and are due to be replaced by supposedly tougher reformed GCSEs, after pupils have sat the last exams this academic year.
But it has now been confirmed that colleges will still be able to receive funding to teach resits for these GCSEs until the summer of 2017, if they take on students from September who have missed out on a C grade in English or maths this summer.
The SFA announced today how it will fund this in its weekly online Update bulletin.
Linked guidance explained: “For the 2016 to 2017 academic year only, we will fund those learners aged 16 and above who meet Ofqual’s criteria to study the legacy GCSEs in English, English language and mathematics.
“We will not fund learners who are only sitting the exams.
“From August 1, 2017, we will not fund learners to study or continue to study with the legacy maths and English GCSEs. After this date, all learners must undertake the reformed GCSEs graded 9-1.”
It comes after Ofqual announced in March that pupils who do not pass English or maths GCSE at the end of this academic year will have two resit chances — a decision which was implemented through formal rules published on the gov.uk website today.
They will be in November 2016 and summer 2017.
But concerns had been raised by assessment organisations, including OCR, over whether providers would be able to secure the funding to continue teaching the old GCSE syllabus, if these courses were being replaced by the new system.
It is understood that today’s announcement was intended to ally those fears.
Working in FE we attract adult learners returning to study to try and achieve a C or better (for access to HE or career development). These learners will have done GCSE before, but not in 2016, how does this announcement impact on them? We have been advised by both Edexcel and AQA that as they are resits the legacy still applies and they can sit the old spec in June17. Is this correct?
I have the same question as Rob.