GCSE

Reading the Runes

No doubt anyone with an interest in GCSE exam results will have followed the stories emerging from this year’s data set. This was always going to be a more complicated picture with the impact of revised specifications and the new grading system. Furthermore, this year, being a transition year with… Read More

A message for us all from Dickens

Dickens – and the message of A Christmas Carol is everywhere – even though the season of goodwill is over four months away. He was on the lips of Labour MP David Lammy in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, repurposing the title of A Tale of Two Cities… Read More

Using Twitter as a resource for Sociology

Love it or loath it, there is no doubt that Twitter is a hugely effective resource for teachers of sociology, whether it is advice on exam content, sharing teaching materials, useful videos, social and political news or just a tweet to raise a smile, there are… Read More

AQA GCSE Sociology: new specification, a sensible approach to change

So we have reached that time of year again, the year 11s have finally realised how important the exams are that teachers have been going on about for eternity, we can finally enjoy a sunny drive to work, we are even getting home to catch the last of the sunshine… Read More

GCSE RS: Responding to new challenges

Knowing Religion is a new series of nine Key Stage 3 RE textbooks. In this blog, we discuss the books with Series Editor and author of Islam, Christianity and Biblical Literacy, Robert Orme. The new GCSE RS specifications first examined in 2018 offer teachers an exciting opportunity to… Read More

The Power of the Motif: How to Ace Descriptive Writing

After reading many torturous stories (‘and then… and then… and then…), I think that most of us have been steering our students towards the Descriptive rather than the Narrative task in the GCSE English Language Paper. The focus on one place or situation frees up many students to concentrate on… Read More

Preparing students for GCSE English Language resits – A Q&A with Jo Heathcote

With exams for the new AQA specification looming, we sat down with teacher, coach, and former AQA principal examiner Jo Heathcote to get her advice on how to best help post-16 GCSE English Language students achieve grade 5. Q. Is it possible, do you think, to keep young… Read More

We’re in here for the long haul

One of the issues that’s exercising quite a few minds in science education at the moment is how to cover the content in the new GCSE specifications in the time available. Many people are, very understandably, flipping through not only the amount but thinking about the depth of the material… Read More

Ed Walsh: Name the Prequel

One of the games I used to play with my children was suggesting the (imaginary) movie prequel. As they got older, and better, we had to give points and you got more for being less obvious.  ‘Prince Kong’ wouldn’t do well, for example but ‘Reservoir Puppies’ was better and ‘Humming… Read More

Did you know? Notes from the history of Maths

By Don Hoyle “A man and his dad put a bomb in the sink” Abstract: This article outlines some of the work of Matthew Stewart who was born 300 years ago. In particular, Stewart’s theorem, for which the title is a mnemonic.   Early in 2017, on January 15th,… Read More