As a group, further education colleges have a slightly different take from most on GCSE resits, in that we don’t see them as a bad thing,” says Bill Jones, principal of Leeds City College. That’s not to say that Jones believes FE views those resits as an easy process - far from it. But he does think there is an appreciation that the key to helping students succeed lies in changing the mindset that exists around resits.
“The only way we’re going to get students who are retaking GCSEs to engage more is to shift the mindset from one where you fail, and that’s really bad, to one more like the driving test, where you just keep taking it until you pass and you aim to do better each time,” he says.
In more normal circumstances, changing students’ perception of failure in this way is tough but FE colleges regularly manage it. However, Jones says that, during the Covid pandemic, the job has been much harder. Remote learning has made it more difficult to cultivate a personal approach and motivate those students who might be set to take their GCSEs for the third or fourth - or perhaps even eighth or ninth - time, he says.
“In the past, we have had students who’ve come in with a grade 3, and they’ve sat their resit and got a grade 3 again, but they’re upbeat, they don’t feel like they failed and they are happy because they improved on one aspect or they got a better score than last time.
“We can actually analyse what they do within that grade boundary and use it as a positive,” he explains. “But that personal approach has been made quite hard with Covid. I suppose we just need to keep plugging away and keep pushing [students] to try, and to find more innovative ways to engage them.”
So, how much harder has it been in the past 12 months, how have colleges overcome those challenges and will those solutions have a long-term impact on outcomes?
The first thing to make clear is that the problem with resits is a growing one: government funding conditions require students in full-time post-16 education to continue studying English and maths if they have not achieved at least a grade 4 pass.
Those who achieved a grade 3 must continue to study towards a GCSE, making resits effectively compulsory for thousands of students. Those who achieved lower grades usually study towards separate functional skills qualifications.
It all means that the number of students aged 17 and over retaking English and maths has increased significantly in recent years, and has also led to more “serial resitters” - students on the border between grades 3 and 4 - who are having to repeatedly retake their exams.
The issue has been well publicised, but FE colleges were managing to make a difference to these young people’s lives. Two years ago, Tes spoke to Lauren Reid, who, at age 19, had just achieved a grade 4 in maths at the ninth time of trying.
“There was a mix of feelings,” she said at the time. “I found it a lot easier at college than I found it at secondary school but, still, I wasn’t sure. There had been a grade 3 on the sheet every time and now there was a 4. I brought my mum and she was over the moon. I went and found my teacher and we had a hug.”
Reid said she felt “more supported at college” than she had previously. “At school, I really felt that university had to be the next step but, at college, the staff were a lot more relaxed,” she said.
The extra reassurance that Reid received is harder to provide at a distance, according to Jones, who also feels Covid has exacerbated other pre-existing issues for resitters.
“Many of the students who have underachieved at GCSE are bright enough to pass them, it’s just they have often come from homes where they don’t have the same advantages as others may, and Covid has made that worse,” he says. “If you haven’t got a fast internet connection and a good laptop, then you really are going to struggle with remote learning so, in a way, Covid accentuates class differences and socioeconomic differences.
“The more privileged students haven’t been affected as badly because they’ve managed to get online … and they are pushed and assisted by their parents. It’s quiet and it’s stable at home, whereas that’s not the case for all of our students.”
In more ordinary times, the college has found that effective interventions on campus (where it is far easier to speak with individual students face to face) can “remove those barriers and properly motivate and inspire them”, Jones continues.
“When they’re at the college, you can level the playing field but, when they’re at home, that’s much harder.
“If a student is working on a phone with an unstable wi-fi connection, and you are sharing that with siblings and parents, and you’re all having to work in the same room, that’s not a great learning environment.”
Jonny Kay, head of teaching and learning at Newcastle College, agrees that resources have become a huge issue this year for resitters, but he adds that another big factor was the exam chaos of last summer. The cancellation of last summer’s GCSE exams, with students instead receiving whichever grade was the higher of their centre-assessed grade and algorithm-moderated result, has made it harder to assess what level students from this cohort are actually at, he says.
“Those students who have come to us with the qualifications that they got in the summer, they may be a grade 3, but how do we actually check if they are a strong grade 3 or not? And how do we gauge what level they actually are, so that we can identify the best starting points? Because we don’t have enough evidence,” he says.
“After they have missed months of [in-person] education, it can be really tough to identify those starting points, particularly with the other uncertainties that Covid brings.”
Among those other uncertainties are the knock-on effects on the vocational courses that students have elected to take, as opposed to the implications for the compulsory English and maths study, Kay adds.
“You’ve got bricklayers and you’ve got hairdressers who are not able to go into salons, not able to go on a building site, and that’s been really challenging because there are anxieties about whether they will be able to go out and acquire that skill set in the time that is left when lockdown eases,” he explains.
This, in turn, can have repercussions when it comes to getting those students engaged in studying for their maths and English resits, since, when students are progressing well in their chosen disciplines, they are often more motivated in general.
“Lockdown has caused uncertainty for students about how they will get the experience and when.
“It’s been tough - not just in terms of English and maths but also for their other courses which, a lot of the time, are the ones that they are really passionate about,” Kay says.
Colleges are therefore currently facing a substantial list of challenges when it comes to supporting resit students. So, what can staff do to overcome them?
In terms of how best to support those students who may be approaching their third or fourth retake, Jones says his college has done all it can to make sure they can study as effectively as possible during periods of remote learning.
“We’ve worked hard to ensure that our students have devices that are [as effective as possible],” he says. “We’ve given them dongles [to access the internet], not just to help with their maths and English, obviously, but for their whole programmes.”
His college also received more than 2,000 laptops from the Department for Education, which is “absolutely fantastic and a step in the right direction” in terms of reaching students at home, he says.
“We do know that the government recognises the issues that we have here and it’s taken a while, but I know how procurement works. It does take months to order laptops in bulk,” he continues, “and we are seven months into the academic year, but it’s better late than never.”
Kay adds that government communication has been “better this year”, which has also made it easier to concentrate on what can be done to help students in the process of retaking GCSE courses.
“We have been getting much earlier information - and there was the consultation, which wasn’t perfect, but it is an improvement that the government is actually asking people in FE what their concerns are,” he says.
Kay also welcomes the specific funds from government for English and maths in FE - an initial £96 million with a further £102 million announced recently.
“However, there are questions to be asked about whether that funding is sufficient, given the number of students who now need help with their English and maths, whether resitting or taking those exams for the first time,” he adds. “We need more.”
The funding Kay is referring to is being allocated to help colleges provide “small group tutoring” for disadvantaged students whose studies have been disrupted by the pandemic, as part of the government’s Covid catch-up fund. While one-to-one tutoring may indeed be beneficial for some resitters, many of these students will also need additional pastoral support to help them to manage the mental health implications of lockdown. What about the money for that?
Despite the financial challenges here, colleges have been doing their best to provide the wellbeing support that resit students need, and will continue to do so as they eventually begin to return to campus.
However, Jones fears that one long-term impact of the Covid pandemic that colleges cannot address at source could be an increase in the number of students needing to resit GCSEs next year.
“I don’t think we can underestimate the damage that Covid has done throughout the education system - from Reception right through to 16- to 18-year-olds in sixth forms and colleges - and we’re going to have to work very hard over the forthcoming years to put that right,” he says.
“I think we need to recognise that in terms of our approach to all subjects, including English and maths. Young people are going to come in with even poorer maths and English skills than they have done previously, so we’re going to have to work even harder to get them up to the required level.”
Chris Parr is a freelance journalist
This article originally appeared in the 12 March 2021 issue
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