(I've somehow managed to get this post featured on the Student Room's twitter - my claim to fame!)
Now that I have finished my GCSE courses (so crazy, I know right!), I thought I may as well reflect back on the subjects I have been studying the last two years, while it's still fresh in my mind. I'm going to discuss what I actually thought of the course, as well as my own school's teachers and how they run the course - I realise I probably shouldn't publish all this stuff on the internet, but hey, I'm entitled to my own opinion.
BEFORE WE START, I'd just like to state that I've spent literally a month putting this post together. I got really bored of writing this post about half way through, thus what I write might not make grammatical sense as my brain was getting so tired of writing this never ending post!
ALSO like to mention that whenever I talk about GCSEs and academics and whatnot, people always seem to get offended. Lots of people don't understand that I often use my blog(s) to vent about life and write whatever comes into my head. This is often quite hyperbolic and is definitely stuff I would never say in real life, so please don't take it like that. I like to have my blogs as a creative outlet where I can write anything and I don't feel like I have to censor anything in order to not offend anyone, so if it offends you that I do that, please click away.
I can also honestly say that this post is not me bragging about how easy I found GCSEs. I've written this post as an honest reaction to what I thought of my GCSEs and this will probably annoy alot of people, so if you start feeling anger towards myself, please click away. I wrote this post for something that I could read back on when I am older. This is just how I personally found my GCSEs and is definitely not a reflection of how OTHER PEOPLE found their GCSEs and I am not suggesting this is how you should've found your GCSEs. I pretty much wrote this post only for myself, and since so little people actually read this blog, I might as well publish it here as it will then be easier for myself to find it in the future.
With that out the way,
COMMENCE THE RAMBLE!
Maths - AQA linear
GCSE maths, in my opinion, is a bit of a joke. I know I'm probably jinxing myself by saying this as I haven't even got the results to my exam yet, but I feel like it could be far harder, as I know of 11 year olds who are taking this exam and passing it.
Because we did a linear course, i.e. only two exams at the end of the two year course, this meant no modules, so over the two years, so maths was pretty much my relaxing lesson. I really liked my class and teacher and we have had some hilarious times of us five fighting for the four spaces on the same row of tables.
All in all, GCSE maths was a relaxing lesson, where I didn't have to work to strenuously, even though that is going to change now that I am taking double maths for A level. I just wish that in my school that they would have the GCSE exam after only one year, as that is very achievable, considering we finished the GCSE syllabus within this time span.
Additional Maths - OCR
Additional maths isn't a GCSE - it is a free standing qualification which we managed to squeeze into year 11. This is definitely something I had a love/hate relationship with, as when I we were covering it in class, I would get so emotional and frustrated with myself. This was because I did find it quite hard since it introduced many new concepts such as calculus.
However, looking back at it, I did quite enjoy learning it as it was a challenge and ultimately very interesting. I reckon if we only did GCSE maths for the entire two years, our entire class would've gotten incredibly bored. I just wish we had spent less time doing stupid GCSE maths and more time on add maths, since we only managed to skim through the syllabus of add maths very quickly, hence why so many people got confused and lost along the way. I also wish I had done some more of my own practise with add maths, so I was more prepared for the exam, but in the end, it was not a priority as it's not a GCSE.
English Literature - AQA
English lit is a subject I have always hated, as I am not much of a reader, nor a fan of literature and it is probably my weakest subject. However, I think this has been the subject that I have learnt the most in and improved my own personal skills in. Yes, I still find writing essays utterly mind-numbingly boring, but towards the end of the course, I did start looking forward to the lessons, which is pretty crazy.
I've already touched upon this on my other post, but the harder I work at English Lit, the more I enjoy it, and I think that English Literature has been one of the subjects have have worked hardest at, as I know I'm not great at it, but I feel I have gotten the most out of it, thus being very rewarding. I think I even slightly enjoyed the exam at the end of year 11?! As for the lessons, we had mixed ability classes, which I think worked quite well and my teacher was very good. With all of that said, I am still so glad that I have dropped this subject forever.
English Language - AQA
The same goes for English lang as it was for English lit as we did both of these GCSEs in the same class. However, out of the two, I enjoyed English language far more, to the extent that I was even considering taking it for A level and is something that still is at the back of my mind. This is because I find it so fascinating why some people talk the way they do, and the impact it has on others, and I do quite enjoy public speaking. Also, I feel like I have so much more to learn when it comes to English Language; this is my principal language in life, yet I feel like I could have a far greater command of it. It is a skill while is literally so vital to everyday life. I feel sad that I'm never going to have a similar opportunity in life to develop this vital skill as I really do want to improve my English, since I always have trouble with precisly expressing what I truly want to convey with words. I yearn to be that wordsmith wizard who can craft and manipulate their sentences into beautiful, articulate works of art.
As for the course, I hated the exam and found the fact we had to complete a billion pieces (slight use of hyperbole) of coursework for it, which each accounted for a tiny fraction of the entire GCSE, quite ridiculous.
Sciences (Biology, Chemistry and Physics) - AQA modular
I grouped all three of these GCSEs together, since they were all so similar. I have so much to say about these GCSEs, but I'll keep it short. They were all pretty much a walk in the park (not being cocky) as the GCSE syllabus is so fact based - memorise the facts, ace the exam. That is probably why I am so compelled to continue them onto A level; I am simply not satisfied with what I have learnt at GCSE. I want to why this material has these properties, and why this happens when you apply a force, rather than just learning the fact that it does.
I would like to say, I really did enjoy my science lessons, not only because they are my favourite subjects, but also because of our science set. I loved our set as there are no mean girls, and the guys are pretty hilarious. Plus there are no complete dumbasses as everyone seems to have a brain. Our teachers ranged from great to absolutely horrible (an incompetent teacher who would copy stuff off Wikipedia, onto a PowerPoint, for us to copy into our books, without even removing the hyperlinks), but to be honest, the syllabus was straight forward enough to just memorise yourself, regardless of the caliber of teaching that you have been subjected to.
French - AQA
I have never really enjoyed French as a subject as a whole since I do not see myself as a linguist at all. I only started learning French in year 7, and the only occasions I would ever practise it would be in the 2.5hrs of lessons we had of it every week, so I am not surprised that even after finishing the GCSE French course, I feel like my command of the language is pretty infantile.
I think the minuscule amount of French I managed to learn is pretty feeble (nowhere near enough to communicate sufficiently with a native French speaker), yet hopefully it is enough to get a good qualification. I think this is because of the general national, ignorant attitude of "If everyone can speak English, why do I need to learn their languages?", hence why there is very little emphasis on MFL on the school curriculum.
As for the actual GCSE course, even though it was beneficial to myself and made my life alot easier. All the controlled assessments seemed to be rather tedious, considering they were pretty much no test of your language ability. Instead, they were just tests of your memory, which was good as I find that not too hard.
Geography - AQA A
This is a subject which I had a love/hate relationship with. Sometimes I would love the lessons, such as when we would do group activities, but other times we would just do mundane and tedious exercises straight out of the text book. I really liked our geography class and our trip to Snowdonia was one of the best school trips I've been on. I feel like geography has been a course that I have worked hard in, so I hope it is reflected in my exam results.
Something that is quite frustrating about the geography GCSE is that so much of the knowledge needed is pretty much common sense. For example, it is obvious that congestion charge would reduce traffic, but in order to achieve high marks in the exam, you have to state that congestion charge discourages commuters from travelling in their own private cars, thus reducing traffic, which to someone like me would seem rather obvious. Apart from exam technique, another aspect of the course that I didn't like was that some of the topics that were covered were so boring. It's just my personal opinion, but I found that topics such as urbanisation to be so pointless. We covered such trivial knowledge and memorised numerous pointless case studies, when there are topics which are far more relevant in the world of today, such as globalisation and population change.
However overall, I'm glad that I took geography as I could not have imagined how I would've coped with history.
Music - Edexcel
Ah, music, where do I start? There is honestly so much I can say about this subject. Let's start with the course. The exam was pretty straight forward and easy in my eyes - it's not just me being arrogant or anything, but the only new content I learnt doing GCSE content was about world music and what the words "melismatic" and "syllabic" meant as I pretty much knew everything else from grade 5 theory/Saturday morning music school. It was pretty much just memorising facts and dates, such as structure, time and key signatures etc. They say it's a "listening" exam, but about 80% of the questions could be completed prior to hearing the music, which shows how similarly to science exams, its just a matter of memorise all the facts and then acing the exam. The performing aspect of the GCSE is a bit ridiculous considering it is not possible for grade 8+ violinists to get full marks when it is far easier to get full marks on an "easier" instrument such as the clarinet or something. It seems that the only way that one could achieve full marks is to play a really simple grade 5 piece to perfection as obviously coursework moderators cannot be knowledgeable about all instruments, so the method for gaining good marks is to play something that is easy and sounds impressive, rather than playing something that is technically challenging, but losing marks as it doesn't sound like you're making it easy as it isn't easy. Does that make any sense? (Probably doesn't).
Lastly for the composing, there is so much wrong with this aspect of the course! The problem with this is that every single music teacher in the country feels like they have to tamper with student's compositions as they feel everyone else's compositions in the countries are so good, but that's only because their teacher's have the same mentality, so they make their student's composition better and thus it continues in a vicious circle. I can honestly say that almost everyone I know who has done music GCSE has had some help of some sort of help with their composition. No one's work is their own, thus that is why it is so hard to have a really good composition.
As for our lessons, they were bloody amazing. We would spend about 15 minutes of each 1 hour lesson learning, and the rest just jamming on the keyboards or gossiping with the teacher, yet we still managed to cover all the syllabus for the exam several weeks before the lesson! Even though looking back, this wasn't a very hard GCSE for someone who has spent most of their life doing music but my compositions and recordings made me so very stressed at the time. I really did regret taking Music GCSE at times too, but I suppose it was all worth it in the end.
Design and Technology (Resistant Materials) - Edexcel
This is personally one of my favourite subjects, hence why I am doing it for A level and why I did quite enjoy the course. I didn't find it too stressful as I managed to meet all the deadlines and our entire class managed to complete all our coursework a few weeks early. It also really helped that we did the exam in year 10, as that was a lot of stress off our shoulders. I personally really enjoyed doing the folder work as it's something that doesn't require too much brain power and I love drawing.
Our class was relatively small with only 2 girls (including myself), and I think I preferred having this class dynamic as none of my really good friends were in my class, so I had no choice but to really focus on my learning. For our final make project, we made a clock which was quite fun. I just really didn't like how we had to use different wood veneers to cover the outside of the clock, which kept chipping off when sanding, thus ruining the quality of the finish.
All in all, I think res mat is a great subject. The teaching was very average in this lesson, but I did enjoy the course. Some of the course work seemed a bit tedious and long winded, but none of it was all easily handled and it didn't take up too much time.
PRE (philosophy, religion and ethics) - OCR
This was beyond a shambles since only had one hour of this every 2 weeks. Moreover, it also seemed like all our PRE lessons would coincidentally be on INSET days etc, so we had even less lessons than that. Over the two years, pregnancy and cover teachers plagued our PRE education- it appears that our school didn't actually have a specialised PRE teacher for quite a while which is quite ridiculous.
Thus I can positively say that I had learnt NOTHING substantial before the exam. I reckon about 90% of the knowledge that I had acquired for the exam was from my own individual revision. Year upon year they lecture us about how we should have a high percentage of As and A*s, when they did close to nothing in helping us actually achieve the qualification. Yes, it's only half course, but surely it is the school's obligation to teach us the syllabus! Yes, it's compulsory, so most student's attitudes to the subject is pretty unenthusiastic, but this is not helped when the teachers are equally unenthusiastic!
As for the actual lessons, they were hilarious as they were with our science class. It seemed to appear that most of our class was extremely atheist and anything our teacher would try to teach us about would end up in a cacophonous uproar. The syllabus was also terrible as we only learnt about Christianity. Yes, it is the official religion of the UK, but only learning about one religion feels very narrow minded considering the fact that we live in such a modern multi-cultural society.
ICT - (I don't even know... Something Irish)
Basically, we started this "Functional Skills" qualification in year 10, but then the coalition government came into power and thus it was deemed that this qualification was a load of rubbish, so we had to change half way through the year into short-course GCSE. They say everything we had covered in Functional Skills hadn't gone to waste as it was required in the short course GCSE, but I am not so sure.
We managed to finish the course work pretty early on, so that wasn't really a problem. Something that I had/have a huge problem was my teacher's attitude towards teaching the exam material to us. He effectively refused to teach us any of the knowledge required for the exam as he deemed it so easy and straight forward that we could learn it all ourselves, when in fact, that was not the case. He set up these tedious revision grids to do (which he said were "tried and tested", but by who?...) and these stupid revision websites to go on to "revise" the topics for the exam, when in fact, we had not even covered them for the first time. Yes, it some of the facts for the exam were pretty much common sense, but this was no means the bulk of the knowledge required for the exam. Later on the course, he said that if we were getting really confused about something, we could ask him a question. However, his answer would always been extremely patronising towards us, as he would either respond to us saying that we should look it up ourselves in a textbook or via the internet, or he would explain it in a way which personally made me feel uncomfortable with his condescending tone because I asked such question in the first place. He pretty much alienated us students from his teaching, which discouraged most of us from actually learning in these lessons and I am pretty sure that almost everyone in my class wasted weeks in ICT just sitting there, not knowing what to do, as that is definitely what happened to myself. In other words, he pretty much neglected us and did no actual teaching to us for months. This is not the way I would expect a teacher to act, if he/she were to wish for his/her students to all achieve good grades.
POST EDIT: I have received all my GCSE results now! And low and behold, the two subjects where I had pretty much no support in (ICT and PRE) ended up being the two subjects I got A in, rather than A* like my other subjects. What I find quite interesting is that I managed to get an A* in my ICT exam, which was all my own hard work as the teacher taught us nothing in class, when I only got B in the coursework, which was marked and done with the help of the teacher. Needless to say, I am pleased with my results, but my school really needs to sort out the problems in some certain departments in my school *cough* short course ICT and PRE *cough*.
