An interesting story in the TES yesterday related to a proposed joint Geography-History GCSE. Plans for this have been discussed for a while now, but have now been made public.
History and Geography are part of the new EBac. The idea is to offer a joint GCSE. This has polarised opinion, as one might expect....
Here's a taster from the article:
History and Geography are part of the new EBac. The idea is to offer a joint GCSE. This has polarised opinion, as one might expect....
Here's a taster from the article:
Fearing that schools will force students to choose between the humanities subjects and not give them the opportunity to take both, the Geographical Association (GA) and the Better History Group think-tank have joined forces to propose the combined GCSE.
But the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the professional body for geographers, believes the joint GCSE amounts to "substantially watering down" both subjects.
RGS director Rita Gardner said the proposal was "untested, likely to restrict rather broaden opportunities and have the potential to undermine the positive impact of the EBac on geography and history".
She added: "A combined, single GCSE can only be achieved by substantially watering down the range and depth of content, neither allowing pupils to get to grips with the subject nor preparing them for separate study at A-level."
The GA, however, is keen to pursue the joint qualification as an alternative to the existing humanities GCSE, which it says is "lacking rigour".
It proposes that all students take a history module - Parliament and democracy - and a geography module - people and environment - in Year 9, and then decide whether to "major" in one of the subjects or "minor" in both.
GA chief executive David Lambert said: "Realistically, most students will have to choose between the two subjects. Very few schools can offer both, which is a shame.
"We are being bold and opening up a discussion on whether there's an alternative. The outcome we want is to have more children studying both history and geography."
The GA described the humanities GCSE as the "worst solution", characterised by "poor" teaching and with "the level of intellectual challenge diluted".
Read the whole article, and let me know what you think.
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