Blog

Making the best of the autumn term for GCSE and A-level  I can’t believe there are roughly just six teaching weeks left before the Christmas break. This is the longest term of the academic year and many young people are just getting into the nitty-gritty of the year group they are in. It is particularly more important for those who are sitting major exams in the summer – such as Y11 and students in the final year of A-level. These […]

Private tuition at GCSE and A-level – Is it really the Hidden Secret of Britain’s Educational Arm Race? This headline has a rather strong “educational arm race” tone, but it has been used on media platforms such as the BBC and the TES – Times Educational Supplement – and so on. This is following a quote by Sir Peter Lampl – the chairman of Sutton Educational Trust, in which, a couple of years ago, he said, that ‘Private Tuition is […]

The other side of GCSE success in English and Maths – The Forgotten Third of sixteen year olds! It was reported in newspapers, just before the GCSE results were released last month, that one third – about 170,000 of young people in England and Wales, are still falling short of securing good pass grades in both English and Maths at GCSE. While it is good to celebrate the 837  youngsters who achieved straight Grade 9 (equivalent to the very top […]

This is a follow-up on my last blogpost titled “Almost 40% of degree courses are offered unconditionally – what a scandal” The fact that Manchester University and one or two other universities, as reported in the Sunday Times of 4th August, 2019, will, from 2020, remove Chemistry as a compulsory subject for gaining admission to medical school is one that I view with suspicion. However, despite my slight pessimism about this decision, there are two arguments in support of this […]

Here comes the summer holiday again – what do I do with the teenagers! As the summer holiday begins in earnest, for most parents, the conversation that started in their head a little while ago may still be going on, despite the fact that they may have one or two short holidays planned. Those young people who finished their GCSEs and A-level back in June have already had about four or so weeks of lying-in and some parents are a […]

Elitist Britain – are private schools to blame? I was listening to “Any Questions” yesterday on BBC Radio 4 and the issue of “elitist Britain” came up again. Irrespective of which side of the border you are or to which social class you think you belong, if you are a parent, you can’t help but to immediately think about your child/children – thinking, what they are likely to end up as later in life. Radio 4 was quoting from a […]

KS3 students – as they look forward to the first full year of your GCSEs For KS3 students, many of them are looking forward to subject selection, whereby they will be doing only certain subjects from Y10 and be able to drop some subjects they do not particularly enjoy studying. A lot is being said about the importance of GCSEs, and many people interpret that to mean that the GCSE is a lot more demanding than KS3. GCSE is certainly […]