The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) has this month announced plans for changes to GCSE qualifications – including psychology GCSE.

Teaching of the new criteria will begin in 2009 (if you are teaching the course over two years) and the first awards will be given in 2011.

The awarding bodies will have to produce a subject criteria that explains the general aims of studying the subject at GCSE, outline the core material that should be present in all specifications irrespective of the awarding body, and indicate the assessment objectives and the scheme of assessment.

This will have to be submitted to the regulators in spring 2008, with the majority of these being accredited by August 2008. The specifications will be available from September 2008, with first teaching from September 2009.

Currently OCR and AQA offer GCSE psychology although Edexcel is proposing to offer GCSE psychology.

For psychology, coursework will be dropped, the content will be updated, be more consistent and comparable between the different awarding bodies, and inline with current 14-19 curriculum developments, the assessment arrangements will provide stretch and challenge for all learners and make assessment less formulaic and predictable.

Commenting on the new changes, the chief executive of the QCA Dr Ken Boston said, ‘The revised GCSE qualification and subject criteria will ensure that public confidence is maintained in the qualification for the future.’ He added that it will also help to stretch and challenge young people by setting them ‘extended writing tasks and more varied question types’.

Here is the new GCSE subject criteria for psychology.

One of the requirements of the new GCSE psychology specifications is that the GCSE specifications in psychology must require learners to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in the following core areas of psychology:

Biological
Social
Cognitive
Developmental
Individual differences

Advanced Extension Awards (AEAs) were introduced in summer 2002 and were designed to challenge the most able A level students and to provide opportunities for students to show a greater depth of understanding than required at A level.

The AEA is available in 19 subjects. The subjects offered for AEA have been shared across the awarding bodies. There are two pass grades – Distinction and Merit. Those not reaching the award of Merit are reported as ‘Unclassified’.

Last year there were 11,099 entries for the 19 different AEAs. The pass rate was almost 50% with 18% of entries gaining a Distinction and 31.8% gaining a merit.

The Psychology AEA was introduced in 2005 by AQA and has been running for three years. In June 2005, 903 candidates sat the exam. This rose to 1163 in 2006 and in 2007 dropped to 995. The pass rate for psychology in 2007 was only 28.6% with only 6.3% distinctions and 22.3% merits.

At the time of writing this blog QCA have not yet announced whether the AEA awards will be scrapped when the new A levels are introduced in 2008. As the new A levels are to incorporate a ‘stretch and challenge’ theme it is likely that the AEA award will not be with us for very long.

As the results above show, many psychology teachers have not had a great experience of the psychology AEA and will not be sad to see it disappear.