I wish they’d scrap GCSE English resits...the November resits, that is.

If, after three months of skills fade and just a few weeks of fresh teaching, you can achieve a higher grade than you did at the end of Year 11, it can surely only mean you were given the wrong grade in the first place.

They’re damaging: many students who enter in November assume they will get an improved grade, ease up on their effort or tune out completely for the next few months, and then if disappointed when their results turn up in January have lost most of the crucial autumn term’s progress.

I wholeheartedly believe in the GCSE resit policy, and national provision is improving, but the November series is a cruel trick.

‘Don’t tend to bother in November’

There are different reasons why students need to resit their English when they arrive in colleges. Some just had a bad day back in June: they had appendicitis, they broke up with their girlfriend, or their cat died.

They are the tiny, tiny, tiny minority that the November resit makes sense for. Many more genuinely need a little bit longer; another year or two to develop their understanding and skills.

Usually, they quite appreciate the opportunity the resits give them and they don’t tend to bother with the November sitting anyway.

‘I don’t know what happened’

Then there’s the third group; those who were not appropriately prepared. I have to stop myself asking resit students: “How are you here?” almost every day when I am confounded by the impressive quality of work they produce.

The unspoken question often ends up being answered anyway: “We had five different teachers in Year 11,” or: “We spent the whole time doing literature,” and sometimes: “I don’t know what happened.”

That last normally precedes a polite request for some past papers to be getting on with, because doing the lesson activities is only necessary for - eyes flick furtively around - the others.

It’s maddening, but you can’t blame an anxious teenager for assuming that endless mindless drilling of past papers is important if they have come from a school that has placed disproportionate value on that exact activity.

‘Fostering enjoyment of the subject became laughably naive’

The toxic culture created by organisations that have convinced schools to incessantly march students in and out of exam halls, reading to them from scripts, has marginalised actual teaching to the point where it seems eccentric.

As a former secondary teacher I saw far too many schools laying waste to key stage 3 through overt deprioritisation and little to no sense of coherent curriculum.

Year 10 was given over entirely to controlled assessment under the previous specification, and now with the 9-1 grade, it’s spent on the literature content.

Then from day one of Year 11, it was the English language exam: practice paper, practice paper, practice paper. Teaching wasn’t part of the plan and the idea of fostering enjoyment of the subject became a laughably naive memory.

They can harm learners

Teachers were held accountable for achievement in mocks, rather than for accurate marking and apt feedback, so students became fatally complacent after successive if inexplicable high grades from their teachers.

Ofsted is absolutely right to rattle the cages of the exam-factories and make the case for a quality curriculum.

But meanwhile, those of us teaching English resits in colleges already have the chance to offer some redress to our students. We can cock a snook at the approaches of schools and offer a truly different and engaging experience that builds their confidence. With a full year.

In addition to the harm they can do to individual learners, the November resits damage the broader perception of post-16 catch-up English.

‘A false early exit’

Sensational news stories of students sitting their GCSEs up to nine times must include every possible November attempt: proof, if it were ever needed, that just doing exam papers over and over doesn’t support progress.

“Not everything is as it seems,” says Mr Miyagi, in the 1984 movie The Karate Kid, when his pupil Daniel questions the tasks he has been set.

Daniel does not immediately understand the application of the seemingly unrelated exercises. Once he’s forced to put them into practice in context, he is silenced by his sudden comprehension.

“Come back tomorrow,” says Mr Miyagi. That’s what we need our English resit students to keep doing too, but November exams are offering a false early exit.

Andrew Otty leads 16-19 English in an FE college. He is an ambassador for education charity SHINE