{"id":13,"date":"2007-05-11T18:13:53","date_gmt":"2007-05-11T17:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=13"},"modified":"2009-06-12T16:46:18","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T16:46:18","slug":"welcome-for-the-new-a-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"Welcome for the new A Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now that the exam boards in England and Wales have published their draft specifications it&#8217;s possible to begin making comparisons. In alphabetical order, they are: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aqa.org.uk\/qual\/gce.php\">AQA<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/developments.edexcel.org.uk\/gce2008\/\">Edexcel<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ocr.org.uk\/qualifications\/1419changes\/alevels\/index.html\">OCR<\/a> <em>and <\/em><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wjec.co.uk\/\">WJEC<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That only leaves <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccea.org.uk\/spec-changes\/\">CCEA<\/a> in Northern Ireland, which is waiting till September. <\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tes.co.uk\/\">Times Ed<\/a> seems surprised that NATE&#8217;s John Hodgson has &#8216;taken the unusual step of welcoming as &#8220;very positive&#8221; changes which will require students to read more books and write creatively&#8217;. The journalist seems to be making out that NATE is a bunch of grumpy contrarians who hate it when students read books! No, Warwick, you were at the Conference &#8211; we <em>love<\/em> books, it&#8217;s the SATs we hate!<\/p>\n<p>Of course there are concerns about the changes. The same <em>TES<\/em> item quotes a teacher who&#8217;ll &#8216;teach brutally to the exam&#8217; &#8211; which sounds horrible! And the &#8216;creative&#8217; aspect seems to worry some &#8211; though many see this (which is a QCA requirement) as stimulating. AQA, for example, define this as &#8216;personal \/ original interpretation or creative \/ transformational writing&#8217;, which seems to me to allow plenty of scope. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that the exam boards in England and Wales have published their draft specifications it&#8217;s possible to begin making comparisons. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-examining"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}