A modular GCSE in English and maths should be introduced to better support adults and, in particular, learners in prisons, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges has said.
Speaking in front of the Commons Education Select Committee about prison education this morning, David Hughes said: “A modular GCSE should exist, not just for those in prisons but for adults generally.”
He added that bitesize modules of learning would allow more prisoners to achieve qualifications and to continue their learning seamlessly once they are released.
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Simon Ashworth, chief policy officer at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said he agreed on the importance of bite-sized learning: “Portability is key, modularity and unitisation and bite-sized learning.”
Modular GCSE ‘would help adults and prison education’
The committee heard that many prisoners were unable to complete qualifications because of the length of their sentence or moves to other prisons. Many, Mr Ashworth said, had to repeat their initial assessment numerous times.
The idea of a modular GCSE in English and maths was first suggested by Dame Sally Coates in her review of prison education in 2016. Later that year, Robert Halfon, who was then the apprenticeships and skills minister and is now chair of the education select committee, said he was “open-minded” about proposals to create a modular “adult GCSE” in English and maths.
There have long been suggestions that adult learners might be better served by an alternative to the “traditional” GCSE. In 2019, Baroness Wolf told a Commons Education Select Committee inquiry into adult skills and lifelong learning that the government should remove “regulatory roadblocks” that prevent a post-16 alternative to GCSE maths being introduced.
She said that there was a huge demand for adults to return to education and improve their maths - but when they did, they were faced with a single curriculum.
As the author of the seminal 2011 Wolf report on vocational education, Baroness Wolf was the architect of the GCSE English and maths resits policy that means students who achieve a grade 3 in either subject are required to retake the qualification, while those with a grade 2 or lower can take a functional skills qualifications instead.
Last year, the Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI) charity set out its plans for a modular GCSE, outlining a curriculum focused on developing fluency and confidence with mathematical knowledge and skills.
