What if there was a Higher Tier GCSE English Language?

That may not be a question anyone wants to answer at the moment.  Sure enough, the Higher Tier has existed before, but to be honest I shed no tears (little play on words there) when it was abandoned in favour of a unified single tier.  

I think the thing I disliked most about the old system of Higher and Foundation Tier was the yearly disputes that would arise when students were entered for the Foundation Papers. Many truly considered themselves if not Shakespeare reincarnate then certainly his heir, and insisted (or tried to) that they were put in for the Higher. The associated gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands by teachers when this decision had to be made was a sight to behold.  Now we're in the staffroom, there were also the endless debates along the lines of was it "easier" to get a C (the old marking system was A, B, C and so on) on the Foundation Paper than it was on the Higher?  

Don't even get me started on the 20% of the grade being made up of four controlled assessments (and marked by the teachers, therefore saving the examining bodies a stack of dosh).  I sometimes see (on teacher forums) educational professionals making an argument for the return of controlled assessments to contribute to the final grade awarded to candidates.  I think these people are, frankly, bonkers - or they are too young to remember the hell that was controlled assessment - or they have forgotten the hell that was controlled assessment - or they are management thinking of controlled assessment as the usual grass is always greener panacea it won't be, but willing (in their desperation to raise achievement) to deliver their staff into... the hell that controlled assessments would be.

Why am I so dead against? To begin with, there were (and I know this only by anecdote) shenanigans in some/many classrooms to say the least - this was where the controlled assessments were conducted. The amount of invigilation would vary wildly from one institution to another - so much so that one would be inclined to put inverted commas around the word.  One friend of the family put their hand up and admitted to writing their kid's controlled assessments (years after the fact) as the school they went to let them take "notes" into the CA with them and this ultimately became a competition in parental onecheatmanship. So, for me in an institution where things were done by the book, my own personal aspersions were easily cast as to the use of controlled assessments.  This was particularly true as kids who got a C for their CAs used to usually end up with a C overall – and so on.  There was so little point in these things and now in the age of AI I shudder to think what escapades might occur should we return to a (partially) controlled assessment based course.

Then there was the marking. If you were responsible for teaching 100 or more students GCSE English (not at all unusual then or now) then you would have over 400 pieces of work to mark in great detail.  This, as you can imagine, took an age - and destroyed many a holiday.  On top of that, there would be interminable rounds of internal verification for each controlled assessment. Why? Well, once the grades were collated and sent off to the exam board there would be external verification to suffer through and woe betide you if your institution had been too generous in the marking of the sample requested.

So the decision to move to a tierless and fully examined system was music to my ears. After all, you can ask everyone the same questions in English and you can rest assured that there will be such a variety of quality in the answers that it’s straightforward to separate the (grade) 9s from the 1s.

Or is it?  A number of my students each year make such light work of past papers that I sometimes have to cast around for extra things for them to do while the others play catch up - or give them harder "past papers" that I have put together myself.  As such, I do keep an eye out for more challenging texts and a recent revisit to Herman Melville’s Billy Budd presented me with an extract that immediately struck me as a text that could be used to stretch and challenge my more able students in “mock” situations.  Below gives you an idea of the work I have put into creating this "past paper".  There's an extensive mark scheme too - more information here.

Billy Budd wasn’t published until the 1920s although it was written in 1891.  Indeed, it didn’t get a fully “authorised and restored” version until the 1960s when Melville’s original notes were discovered.  Despite its rather strange history as a novel (or novelette to be more precise), Billy’s story has engaged readers since its first publication – it seems to hit a nerve with people and has been compared in greatness to Moby Dick (I have to disagree there).  Regardless, using a Melville text does present challenges to students.  While not as dense as Dickens (in terms of descriptive passages) by any means, the vocabulary used shows no deference to struggling readers – and neither do the literary and writing techniques employed. Melville certainly did not believe in dumbing anything down.

The passage I came upon centres around the accusations against Billy of mutiny, made by Claggart, the ship’s sinister master-at-arms.  This leads to tragic consequences for all involved.  The passage very neatly fits into the rhythm of a GCSE paper in terms of the questions and their order – to such an extent that one might think it was specifically written for this purpose. 

I have used this text a number of times and yes, the students do find it more challenging than the usual papers (they also get a bit of a surprise with Q1 which is now “explain” rather than “list”!). However, they do appreciate something that they can get their teeth into – and throw in an accidental “murder” and you have something which is fairly acceptable as a non-boring text to even the most bloodthirsty of boys. Win-win.

This “Higher Tier” paper for GCSE English Language is available here.

The picture is from the movie starring Terrence Stamp and has been put through an AI filter at fotor.com - used for educational and illustrative purposes only.