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GCSE Case Study

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If the students have failed their GCSE resits as 77% of them do (Wolf, 2011), the students also have to take another vocational course in order to retake their GCSEs. As there is no Government funding available to take GCSE as a stand alone qualification and most students cannot pay for it themselves or do not want to take out a student loan in order to study, this forces students to take courses that they are not necessarily interested in, just so that they can retake their GCSEs. This obviously has an impact on the vocational classes in which they enrol.

I believe a major struggle for the current level 2 learners was being unsure of the entry requirements are for level 3 in childcare. The criteria last year was Maths and English GCSE …show more content…

They are confident that they can achieve this level as they have done so before. This gives them experience in different subjects and settings, but does not move them on to the next stage, For example, we have five childcare students who have completed their introduction to early years level 2, but cannot move onto level 3 in childcare due to their poor GCSE results; so they have therefore applied for Health and Social Care level 2. This would give them experience in youth work and adult care and some additional experience in special needs work, but as they want to work with children some of this knowledge, although interesting, is not relevant to their chosen career. However, although they can retake their GCSEs again whilst undertaking the course, in the hope that they will pass the GCSE with a grade C the next time they take it and can then get onto a level 3 qualification. Of course, this means that very often the learner has run out of funding and cannot take a level 3 course because they spent two or three years trying to achieve their Maths or English GCSE at grade C.

The students who take qualifications at the same level as before face another year of not being in the workforce earning money, potentially frustrated by repetition.

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