Yesterday, Democratic Life Partners the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) and the Citizenship Foundation attended a meeting with the DFE, Ofqual and Awarding organisations to discuss updating the GCSEs for Citizenship Studies. The meeting was to begin the process of reviewing the subject criteria which are used by Ofqual to ensure the quality and rigour of new qualifications developed by AQA, Edexcel and OCR.
The meeting involved a constructive discussion of the relationship between the new key stage 4 statutory programme of study for Citizenship (which takes effect from September 2014) and updated GCSE qualifications for the subject.
The specific timeframe for the development of the updated GCSEs for Citizenship Studies is as yet undecided but we hope DFE will ensure GCSE Citizenship Studies is in line with the other statutory key stage 4 National Curriculum subjects. It is likely a consultation will be held later in the year on the draft subject criteria.
The GCSE Citizenship Studies can count in school performance tables as part of the ‘best 8’ measure. This together with new rules around ‘no retakes’ should encourage schools to use the qualification to ensure their key stage 4 provision is in line with requirements of the revised National Curriculum and ensures pupil attainment in Citizenship gets the public recgonition it deserves.
For information on current GCSE Citizenship Studies, visit
– See more at: http://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/news/20022014-0819/dfe-preparing-update-gcse-citizenship-studies
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One factor that is often inogred when the government publishes GCSE and A level results and takes credit for any improvements (leaving aside the issue of grade inflation) is that the overall results include all schools including those in the independent sector. The independent sector may educate only around 7% of children, but its results are dramatically better, thus pushing up the average results considerably. Practically all independent school pupils get 5 A*-C GCSEs including English and Maths, even the non-selective ones.It would be interesting to see the overall results minus those of the independent sector.