Behaviourally-Informed Colleges: Translating research into practice
AuthorGeorge KinkeadCategoriesTeaching, Policy and News
The Mathematics GCSE resit: Can we do better post-16?
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Date16th Apr 2024AuthorGeorge KinkeadCategoriesPolicy and News
On the third Thursday in August, year after year, school students receive their GCSE results. This is a positive experience for many; as they slide open their envelopes and take a cursive glance down the column that reads Grade, smiles germinate across flushed cheeks before these faces turn to their friends, nod, do a little jig, and embrace.
For many, this will be in recognition that they passed their mathematics GCSE. If you’re reading this, you were likely among them. However, amid the waves of elation, 40% will stand apart, their expressions sombre and silent. They're faced with a tough message: despite over a decade in school and countless hours of study, they haven't made the grade.
Why this system?
The GCSE brand is important: employers, recruiters, and educators all use it to distinguish between prospective candidates for courses and job placements. Thus, while GCSEs develop students’ subject-specific knowledge and skills, perhaps more importantly they signal capability for moving onto the next level of professional and academic life. In the pantheon of requisite qualifications, none are more important than English and Mathematics GCSE. So much so that, for those that do not pass, a long few years await as they are required to resit, potentially again and again and again.
Since 2014, England's education policy has mandated that 16–18-year-olds without a grade 4 in GCSE Mathematics must continue to study the subject. This translates to about 160,000 students annually retaking their maths GCSE.
This policy was introduced after Professor Alison Wolf's findings that English and Maths GCSEs are critical for young people's job and educational opportunities (Wolf, 2011). Last year Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled a vision to reshape the government's numeracy strategy, ensuring every student in England studies Maths until age 18. This initiative is in response to the eight million adults in the UK with Maths skills below a nine-year-old's level. The goal is to ensure that anyone without a passing grade meets this essential educational benchmark during their post-16 studies.
So, what’s the problem?
Pass rates for mandatory GCSE Maths resits are startlingly low. In 2022, only 21% of students resitting their Maths GCSE passed. 2023 was even worse, with a pass rate of just 16.4%. Moreover, nearly half of disadvantaged young people lack a Level 2 qualification (GCSE or equivalent) in Maths and English by 19, compared to 19% for their wealthier counterparts.
This issue presents a challenge for social policy, causing debate among educators, policymakers, and researchers. The big questions for stakeholders are: how should post-16 education be structured for those who didn't achieve a grade 4? Is the GCSE effective in its dual role as a signalling tool and a means of skill development for those who didn't pass initially? And critically, does the reliance on the GCSE as a measure of capability exacerbate social inequality?
Has the resit policy been a success?
In short, no. As more students have retaken their exams, the proportion of students passing has declined. This pattern ultimately yields the same number of students passing by age 19, with some retaking as many as nine times. Before 2014, those who passed on resits were on the 3/4 borderline or had faced setbacks or illness, alongside a few diligent and motivated souls. Now, with mandatory resits, this small group still passes, but they're joined by a larger contingent who are compelled to retake and often fail.
(Source RS ACME GCSE resits project: background, n.d.)
(Source RS ACME GCSE resits project: background, n.d.)
(Source RS ACME GCSE resits project: background, n.d.)
What’s not working?
A complex set of factors is likely at play, something my research at King’s College London is investigating. The evidence available for educational practices with this age group is limited when compared to secondary school settings. Several significant projects were disrupted or prematurely ended due to the pandemic (Crisp et al., 2023). Adding to the challenge, the post-16 sector in England has experienced a significant influx of students but continues to be underfunded, especially when compared to schools and universities.
Incentives
One key factor behind frequent failure is the disconnect between the goals of mathematics education before and after age 16. You don’t need to be studying for a PhD in psychology to appreciate the potential demotivating impact of asking students to do more of the same when they already lack confidence. Not only does this diminish their engagement in the program, but they can be left with a lasting sense of failure and a reinforced negative attitude toward mathematics.
Furthermore, GCSE pass rates are intentionally capped at around 60%, a system designed to make yearly comparisons easy. Even if all students improve, this will not affect how many can succeed. The GCSE has become an artificially scarce asset, and consequently, this system rewards students with more resources and leaves others behind, creating a socioeconomic disparity in educational achievement.
Now let’s take the perspective of a resit student, bringing these two factors together. They have data confirming that they are in the bottom 40% of students who fail at 16. While some may view retakes as an opportunity to overcome a bad day, many others see an insurmountable obstacle ahead. Success in GCSEs is less about individual learning and more about how one's efforts compare to everyone else's. This situation creates a game-theoretic decision-making process, where students must decide whether the additional effort to pass is worth it. For those with low mathematical self-esteem, the ‘rational’ choice often leads to not putting in the necessary work, resulting in yet another failure.
Irrelevance
Students know they need to be enrolled in the resit to study their main course(s), but that's often where their commitment ends. Facing a high likelihood of failure makes participation feel like a waste of valuable time—time that could be better spent on social activities, building friendships, or other chosen courses. Considerable resources are invested in a system that not only fails to engage students, but also sets many up for inevitable failure. Additionally, as students grow older and more independent, they become increasingly critical of how relevant their studies are to real life. The requirement for all GCSE students to learn trigonometry, for example, doesn't seem to align with their broader life experiences, further distancing them from the subject matter.
Isolation
Feedback from students at further education colleges highlights how a lack of social support can significantly hinder their progress (Hume et al., 2018). Students often find themselves at a loss on how to navigate challenges independently, unsure of whom to approach for help. This experience aligns with findings that students draw motivation from feeling connected to others (Ryan and Deci, 2017). The absence of a supportive network leaves students in the dark about the effort needed to succeed, peer performance, resource locations, and effective study strategies. Moreover, the social environment may promote negative learning behaviours for fear of looking ‘stupid’ in front of tutors and peers (Hume et al., 2018).
What can be done?
Not wanting to paint too gloomy a picture, it is important to evaluate the state of education policy in its entirety, the bad with the very bad. While the current state of GCSE resits might seem bleak, especially with so many students alienated from Maths, there are viable steps forward. Here are a few actionable recommendations for policymakers, teachers, and researchers:
- Leverage social networks: Research on network-based approaches to social influence suggests that open interactions with others in a network can form channels for social influence (Zingora et al., 2020). Therefore, social networks could support with isolation and loneliness. My research looks exclusively at creating supportive networks on group messaging platforms like WhatsApp where students can ask questions, respond to one another, and receive course information and resources. Spears (2020) suggests that group identities in virtual spaces can powerfully influence individuals towards group norms. Online anonymity shifts focus from personal characteristics to group identity, reducing individuality and promoting group cohesion and norm enforcement. Online forums might bridge the gap between school/college expectations and students' perceptions of peer conformity.
- Adopt a systems thinking approach: Understanding student behaviour requires viewing it within the wider context of human motivation. Merely mandating that a student must sit in a room to be funded for another course does not mean they will learn, engage, and achieve in that room. Students bring their sense of social identity to learning spaces. If students perceive themselves as failures only in the ‘resit room’, their desire to avoid cognitive dissonance will likely lead them to shun situations that might confirm this self-view. Systems thinking helps recognise the various factors influencing behaviour, suggesting that the choice environment should be designed to make study easy and attractive, reducing barriers and frictions, and capitalising on social influences. When and where resit classes are timetabled, for example, will have large effects on who turns up.
- Invest in resources and research: Finally, addressing the resource and expertise gap in post-16 education is crucial. Enhancing evidence-based practice among educators and supporting continuous professional development can help. Adapting successful pedagogical strategies from Key Stage 4 for post-16 resit students and leveraging the expertise of those who have succeeded with lower-achieving groups could also prove beneficial. Initiatives should focus on testing and integrating a small set of interventions to see how they collectively support better outcomes. Funding is pivotal for these efforts to succeed, enabling the creation of collaborative, community-focused hubs to develop and implement evidence-based strategies. Without adequate investment, GCSE resit students will remain overlooked and undervalued and so will their love/acceptance of mathematics. Government funding for the Education Endowment Foundation to look into resit strategies is a key first step.
George Kinkead is a PhD student at King's College London studying the application of behavioural science to improve outcomes for GCSE mathematics resit students​. He is a former maths teacher and deputy head of sixth form.
References
Crisp, B., Hallgarten, J., Joshua, V., Morris, R., Perry, T. and Wardle, L. (2023). Post-16 GCSE Resit Practice Review. [online] Available at: https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/production/documents/Post-16-GCSE-Resit-Practice-Review.pdf?v=1712498725 [Accessed 9 Apr. 2024].
Educationhub.blog.gov.uk. (n.d.). Maths to 18: Is maths A Level being made compulsory for 16 to 18-year-olds? - The Education Hub. [online] Available at: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2023/04/17/is-maths-a-level-being-made-compulsory-for-16-to-18-year-olds/.
Hume, S., O'Reilly, F., Groot, B., Chande, R., Sanders, M., Hollingsworth, A., Meer, J., Barnes, J., Booth, S., Kozman, E. and Soon, X.-Z. (2018). Improving engagement and attainment in maths and English courses: insights from behavioural research. [online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b8e65b240f0b67d9a6fe660/Improving_engagement_and_attainment_in_maths_and_English-courses.pdf.
Impetus. (n.d.). Thousands of young people are facing an endless cycle of GCSE resits. [online] Available at: https://www.impetus.org.uk/news-and-views/2018/thousands-of-young-people-are-facing-an-endless-cycle-of-gcse-resits [Accessed 27 Oct. 2023].
JCQ Joint Council for Qualifications. (n.d.). Examination results. [online] Available at: https://www.jcq.org.uk/examination-results/.
RS ACME GCSE resits project: background. (n.d.). Available at: https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/topics/education-skills/gcseresits/GCSE-resits-project-background.pdf [Accessed 24 Oct. 2023].
Ryan, R. M., and Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. The Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10.1521/978.14625/28806
Spears, R. (2020). Social Influence and Group Identity. Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1). Doi: HTTPs://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-070620-111818.
Wolf, A. (2011). Review of Vocational Education - The Wolf Report Contents. [online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7a38c4ed915d1fb3cd6520/DFE-00031-2011.pdf.
Zingora, T., Stark, T.H. and Flache, A. (2019). Who is most influential? Adolescents’ intergroup attitudes and peer influence within a social network. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 23(5), p.136843021986946. Doi: HTTPs://doi.org/10.1177/1368430219869460.