OK, part 1 of my omni post
A) The study I referred to in my link/quote was from 2006, you showed one from 2008 (I didn't post a link to your resource
). The latter one claims grades/difficulty hasn't changed much since 2002 so I haven't revisited the 2006 study yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gazbarber  |
Proof or as good as it gets that not all GCSE's are of equivalent standard/difficulty.
B)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pecker One last, and in bold for the hard of understanding:
RS SHORT COURSE IS MORE ACADEMICALLY DEMANDING THAN EITHER HISTORY OR GEOGRAPHY.
The INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION AGREES.
THE NAHT AGREES.
THE SSAT AGREES.
GOVE AGRESS! |
You asked me before why these institutions could be biased.
Independent schools do better at both RS and (significantly better) RS short course than state schools, that covers number 1 and to some extent 3 (SSAT).
For 2 NAHT is going to voice its concern for two reasons, the now well known coordinated effort by RE teachers to rally/lobby head teachers. Secondly RE on average gives a better (ebac counted) grade than either Geography or History as previously shown.
As for Grove, as far as I know he provided rather standard political fob off answer, certainly nothing committal (unless you have a quote where he agrees RE is more academically demanding than the other two).
C) It is true RE does have a higher A*-C pass rate than either Geography or History, those are the ones that will count towards the ebac as already posted. The pure pass rate doesn't really come into,
naughty as you know that not what we're talking about.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pecker So, you've posted a link showing the pass rate for RS is lower than for history.
Which shows that RS is a 'soft' subject incomparison to history. 
You really must try harder, Gaz. |
D) RE in it's non compulsury form is no more popular than other topics, counter to a claim you make multiple times (depending on the short vs full course issue), all from official raw stats for 2010 GCSE's as posted previously.
2010:
188,704 pupils took RS GCSE
194,599 pupils took Geography
221,281 pupils took History
Including its somewhat compulsory short course option it is a very popular subject
468,658 (279,954 + 188,704) RS short course + full course.
Only English Lit: 513,523
English: 705,240
Maths: 762,792
Have a bigger uptake. I believe they are all compulsory? (and without the variant types the sciences have, each on their own being smaller than this)
If it was truly optional it would be extremely successful subject (although I'd only suspect this level of attendance in some sort of a religious state).
Specifically on the short course shenanigans:
I'm not sure I agree with your assumption that most RE is actually 2x short courses as that seems rather odd, can you confirm that for me?
Back when I was doing RE, the kids who weren't seen as being fit to do the full paper were made to do the short course exam, everyone had to do an RE exam in my school being a RC one (ages ago now though).
If the double short is done (seems rather strange to me) why would some schools teach full course and some teach 2x short and presumably a fair few exams are 1 x short where kids are put in for it anyway.
Additionally would this mean than 2 x short is a double count in the stats?
This peculiarity of RS exams is all very confusing
