Best Schools - Music and dance GCSEs changed after 'disproportionately severe' marking

Immediate changes will be made to the rules on GCSE, AS and A-level dance and music, after some pupils ended up with no marks last summer because their performances were too short.

Ofqual today confirmed it will allow exam boards to determine how to mark a student’s performance when that performance falls short of the minimum length.

In 2018, the Ofqual rules for music and dance exams stated that “the only evidence which will be admissible” is a performance or performances of a stated minimum duration.

But while students were expected to select pieces that met the minimum length requirements, some fell slightly short.

“While students should meet the minimum performance times and therefore should be penalised if they do not, in some cases, we think it would be disproportionately severe to prevent students from gaining any marks for the performance at all,” Ofqual stated.

Under the new rules, the reference to “the only evidence which will be admissible” will be removed. The rules will now that state that they “require each learner to perform” to the required minimum duration.

GCSE dance rules will also be amended to allow the performance to be of “one or more dances” rather than “a dance”.

The new rules will be in force for this summer’s exams.

Public schoolboys are speaking 'mockney' to hide their privileged education, claims former headmaster

Barnaby Lenon, ex-headmaster of Harrow School, said its pupils, as well as Etonians, kept the habit years after leaving school.

“There has long been a tendency for schoolchildren at private schools to adopt their own language, and certainly with an emphasis on mockney,” he told The Sunday Times.

“It continues into adult life. George Osborne and Tony Blair are both prone to lapse into Estuary English so they resemble the Kray brothers rather more than the private school background they come from.”