I can understand
why various Sec States for Education keep harking back to O Levels. GCSEs in their
current form no longer work (if only because so many children now achieve the
highest possible grades that the exams become valueless as a means for
employers to sift between candidates) and O Levels marked a golden age in
education.
Except that it
really wasn’t anything of the sort, of course.
O Levels (or
GCEs) were for the already academically minded. Mainly exam based, they
favoured boys over girls; the former were more suited to a cramming style exam
rigour while the latter have traditionally been better at coursework based
assessment (so, unsurprisingly, the change from O Levels to GCSEs meant that
suddenly girls were beating boys in pretty much all subjects, including the
previously male dominated sciences and PE). Anyone for whom (the school
decided) GCEs might be too rigorous would be diverted to CSEs. CSEs were
introduced to ensure that even the less able student achieved a qualification on
leaving school - before their introduction the majority of less able students simply
didn't take GCEs and so left school without any qualifications at all. But CSEs
were the death knell for any ambition to the professions; yes, I know that
people could, and sometimes did, go from a few CSEs to night school, further
qualifications, into a polytechnic and into a profession, but... it was
difficult, it was time consuming, and required a considerable force of will.
The whole ethos
of 70s and 80s education was about splitting children into those who would, and
those who wouldn’t. Clever ones in this pile, not so clever ones in this pile.
The more able took GCEs and went to university, the less able took CSEs (often
in a vocational subject like car maintenance) and went on to work. To a certain
extent, I confess, I don’t disagree with the principle: of course there’s room
for a more vocational path, why should everyone by necessity have to aim to
become a doctor or a lawyer? But not enough was done at the time to ensure that
those who ended up down a vocational path were doing so because it was right
for them, rather than, say, because they were simply a personality type that
didn’t do well at exams and who, if given the right opportunity, could shine by
another method. And we're not just talking about those with a high learning
potential, who of course often tend to underachieve; how many girls ended up forced
down the wrong path simply because of their natural predisposition to do better
with coursework rather than exams? Even now in 2013 we've yet to achieve real
equality in the workplace between men and women. Prevailing sexual attitudes at
the time, and since, have their part to play, but how far did this natural aid
to discrimination push back the cause?
GCSEs were
intended to fix that. Everybody would have their chance, they would be partly
exam based, partly coursework based, cue an era of inclusivity and opportunity.
Except that didn’t work either. For whatever reason more children get higher
marks more regularly than ever before, and it really doesn’t matter whether
it’s because children are getting better at passing them or the exams are
getting easier. The fact is that as a measure of ability they now don’t tell
employers enough to make any sort of judgement.
So, we need
something different. Gove, bless his cotton socks, thinks that the answer is to
introduce rigour. Hark back to the glory days, he says, when we could all
recite Henry VIII’s wives in order and do complex trig on the back of a napkin
when we needed to split the bill. But the glory days weren’t actually
particularly glorious, and he’s fixing the wrong problem.
Let's leave
aside for a moment the fact that learning by rote (a) doesn’t work and (b)
isn’t necessary (any lawyer will tell you that he doesn't know the law any
better than anyone else, he simply knows where to look for the answer), and equally
let's ignore the fact that the current education system was designed to prepare
children for a world that no longer exists. We need a system that can cope with
children who may be very clever indeed but just not good at exams. Employers
are already educated in this – if I interview someone the last thing I’m
interested in is their GCSEs; how well do they cope with my questions? how do
they interact with others? would I want to share an office with them? can they
do the job? – and for most professions there's far less importance placed on academic
qualifications and far more on analytical skills, interpersonal skills, problem
solving abilities. Employers, who more and more need to prove their social mobility
credentials, are looking at increasingly novel ways to ensure that there are no
barriers to entry. A return to the good ol' days of GCEs and CSEs seems to be a
move in the wrong direction.
Lest I should be accused of thinking there should be some
sort of free for all, a great release of entirely untested workers into the
market, that's not what I'm getting at. Of course children need to be tested to
see whether they have learned the skills necessary to enable them to go forth
and become productive members of society. But Mr Gove, this isn't the way to do
it.
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