Case study: level 1 Skills to Succeed (S2S) students and the gatekeeping function of GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) at an FE college

Abstract

Introduction:"I was doing Health and Social Care Level 1 last year and then I was going to do Level 2 but I did not get the right GCSEs. So I thought that this course did GCSEs but it didn't…they do Functional Skills…so it was a bit of a thing for me. I don't know….I'm a little bit on and off about the course, really. It's distressing having to do a Level 1 S2S course! It's hard because I could have gone on to Level 2 but now I have to be here for an extra year. I don't want to waste a year here on this course. My English is like a D and my Maths like a F. But I don't understand why I cannot do my GCSE Maths if I don't get a D? I don't understand that! No, the tutors did not explain why I cannot do it. I would have thought that if you did not get the right GCSEs you can re-take them whatever they are? I didn't know it had to be a certain grade for me to be able to re-take them….I need to take my GCSEs but I don't know where to retake them"? (Interview with Zette -Field notes November 2014) Zette is a black student who previously studied a Level 1 Health and Social Care course. Her hope was to progress on to the next Level 2 Health and Social Care course with the view to study social work once she completed her vocational education at college. However, Zette's trajectory within the education system took a diversion when she discovered a key obstacle: she did not have the right GCSEs. She therefore could not progress to do the next Level 2 [Type text]GCSE classes. Consequently, Zette was enrolled on Functional Skills maths and English, missing a fundamental opportunity to do GCSEs, a key requirement nowadays for access to higher levels of study or training within the setting.Zette's concluding remark sets the premise for this article: There is the evident need to retake GCSEs so she could attain higher academic grades with the hope to access higher levels of further study and a subsequent career in social work. However, despite these aspirations and stated need for higher GCSE grades, Zette learnt an important lesson: she was denied access and GCSE provision was firmly placed out of reach. As a consequence, Zette was completely stuck with low GCSE grades at this particular college.

Policy responses to real world challenges associated with NEET youth: a scoping review

“…Also young people in the target group acquired entrepreneurial and vital social competencies, often not accessible to young people, particularly in rural areas and hard to reach in groups (Irwin, 2020;Santini et al, 2020) to prevent young people from falling into NEET status (Maguire, 2015;Jonsson and Goicolea, 2020). In this way, providing a comprehensive and flexible service can improve young people's wellbeing, self-confidence and competencies (Cornish, 2017;Jonsson and Goicolea, 2020), particularly in rural and remote areas (Stain et al, 2019). This mentoring model may work for target groups which experience marginalization was a combination of approaches based on individual, holistic and structured work, which must consist of several levels (Cajic-Seigneur and Hodgson, 2016;Mawn et al, 2017;Simmons, 2017;Tomczyk et al, 2018;Poštrak et al, 2020).…”

‘Core Maths chooses you; you don't choose Core Maths’. The positioning of a new mathematics course within the post‐16 curriculum in England

“…Transition from one educational phase to the next is a process of selection (including self‐selection), not merely of progression. Access to post‐16 courses depends on prior attainment, endowing GCSEs with a gatekeeping role in limiting or opening post‐16 opportunities (Dilnot, 2016; Cornish, 2017). It is known that stratification by prior attainment is, to an extent, stratification by socioeconomic status (Abrahams, 2018; Moulton et al , 2018).…”

“Educated or Warehoused?”: The educational experiences of former NEET and so-called disengaged youth in a Further Education (FE) College in England

“…Contrary to contemporary discourses, the majority of the students that participated in my study held aspirations and voiced an evident need to re-take GCSEs. However, as extensively detailed in one of my previous publications on the gatekeeping function of GCSEs, several student narratives highlighted a fundamental issue -GCSE provision was firmly placed out of reach for students with low or no prior GCSE qualifications; scope to improve upon previous low academic results in reality was diminished (Cornish, 2017a). This particular issue was echoed in several student narratives, illustrated when Zette stated,…”