Research sheds light on pupils' GCSE choices

Citation

(2005), "Research sheds light on pupils' GCSE choices", Education + Training, Vol. 47 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2005.00447cab.006

Research sheds light on pupils' GCSE choices

There is no such thing as a “bog-standard comprehensive” when it comes to deciding which students are entered for GCSE examinations such as French, geography or history, according to an Economic and Social Research Council-funded study Researchers from Staffordshire University and the University of Durham found that there were big variations between and within schools in the extent to which students are entered for different GCSE subjects. Those differences had little to do with whether the school was a comprehensive. The factors that mattered most were the extent to which subject departments within a school competed with each other and the social background of a student's schoolmates.

The study looked at the different patterns of GCSE entries at 664 schools in 1998, in a sample that involved more than 112,000 students. Seven subjects were examined: history, geography, French, German, Spanish, business studies and home economics. The researchers found big variations in the proportion of 15-year-old students entered for different subjects in GCSE examinations – from 16 to 46 per cent of 15-year olds in history and from 26 to 73 per cent in French, for example. Three important factors affected GCSE entries.

• •

  The first, but least significant, was socio-economic status. Students from better-off families were more likely to be entered for GCSE examinations in history, French and German. Those from poorer families were more likely to be entered for business studies or home economics.

• •

  The second was a student's peer group. Entry for GCSE geography was not dependent on an individual's social background, but was higher where schools had a low proportion of pupils receiving free school meals. There were big differences between the proportions of boys and girls in mixed schools who were entered for different subjects, particularly home economics.

• •

  The third related to the performance of different subject departments. Departments that actively discourage lower-achieving students from enrolling or entering a GCSE examination are able to report higher rates of achievement. This happens most in French and German. But when departments – such as history and geography – are directly competing with each other, perhaps because of timetabling, a department attracts more students when it is seen as adding more value, by improving a student's chance of getting a good grade.