Completed petition Remove the compulsory aspect of Welsh Baccalaureate
We call on the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh Government to remove the compulsory aspect of the Welsh Baccalaureate and review the structure of the course to ensure it is fit for purpose. Currently it includes a task that encourages underage gambling and fiscal irresponsibility.
Our children deserve the right to excel in a global arena. Around 70% of their studies are already compulsory subjects and the Welsh Baccalaureate takes away opportunities from them as they cannot study all the subjects they want to pursue. This 'qualification' may cater to box ticking exercises but does not help Welsh students achieve their potential (please see excerpt from a WG report that follows). This will have a detrimental effect on the rest of their lives and future career prospects. Give children studying in Welsh schools the same opportunities as those from the other home nations and make Welsh education something to be proud of again.
More details
The following is taken from The Welsh Governments own report into the WBQ (The Welsh Baccalaureate Qualification, January 2015) states - The findings of WISERD’s report were primarily two-fold. It concluded that the WBQ was enormously valuable in preparing young people for higher education, quite possibly due to the weighting given to it by the UCAS tariff. At the same time, the report supported a previous finding in a 2011 report specifically on Cardiff University that the WBQ Core was not equivalent to an A grade at A-level. Furthermore, it concluded that students with the WBQ were more likely to withdraw from university and less likely to achieve a ‘good degree’ which is defined as a First Class or Upper Second Class.
The report argues that these two findings may be related. It concludes that having the WBQ seems to improve the probability of getting in to university, all other things being equal; but this advantage seems to come at the expense of successful university outcomes.
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