A Life in Education
by
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Finally, we come to the administrators of education. These include Government
ministers, local councillors, Education Officers and Inspectors. Their job is to ensure that there is an effective overall system of education which will fairly deliver education to the young of this country. To use another, well known phrase, their job is to devise and run a system which is “fit for purpose”. To judge how effective the system is, it is necessary to devise a measure that will fairly assess whether schools and authorities are fulfilling their purpose. Many of the aims of education are very difficult to measure successfully or fairly. Exam results are simple to measure and compare – and so have been used as a tool. The immediate problem was that they are a very blunt tool, and so the concept of “value added”, which I explained earlier, was added into the tables. However, to measure this, you need to establish a base line from which to start. The previous public examination is used for this. We now have a target grade for every student who comes into Year 7 – based on what he or she did at age 11. His or her success, and the school’s success in teaching him or her, is then measured against that target when their GCSE results are published in August of Year 11. A child’s fate is decreed before he or she has even entered Secondary School! Results are published in order to “hold schools accountable” to the public. Inspectors seem unable to understand that schools can exist and do their work without the rigid exam structure and publication of results that accompanies it in England. So too, it appears, do Cabinet Ministers! The most blatant recent example of this was the statement by Secretary of State, Ed Balls, that schools achieving less than 30% of candidates with 5 GCSEs (including English and Maths) at A* to C were failing schools, and had two years to improve, or else….! They all hold to the new orthodoxy that public exams drive up standards. This is wrong – public exams drive up exam grades achieved – they do not improve standards. The two things are different! In fact, of late, they have not even driven up exam grades. The simple fact is that you can not continually improve examination results. From year to year the cohort remains much the same nationally. Teaching has not improved significantly. What has happened is that examination results have been massaged to produce the desired effect – but even this has probably gone as far as it can. Also, of course, we have got much better at teaching the exams, and squeezing the last mark out of a candidate.
So, what do we need to do about examinations? Most obviously we need to rescue the examinations taken by our students, and introduce some uniformity in the system. We need to recognise that the whole examination system in UK is hopelessly compromised. The first thing to do is probably to scrap the existing system. It is probably beyond repair. There was an attempt made a few years ago, in the Tomlinson Report, but this was thwarted when Ruth Kelly, then Secretary of State, insisted on defending “A” Level. This proposal, a new diploma for ages 14 to 19, is being introduced in September 2008. It will exist alongside the other qualifications, but is a complex combination of subjects and elements, all of which will have to be passed by candidates. One exam board has warned of the danger of candidates dropping out of the exam, and ending up with nothing. We will have to see what happens with this new qualification, and whether it does replace the widely discredited current GCSE and A Levels. However, there needs to be two additional points – to stop the new system following the old. First, the old method of allocating grades on a relative basis should be restored. Second, Government should stop the micromanagement of education that it has been embarked on ever since Shirley Williams. The setting of targets should stop. School results in England should follow the practice of the rest of the country and not be published, except in the school’s own reports to parents. SATS exams should be scrapped. They have no value and there is no need for them. Instead there should be regular teacher assessment. For this, teacher need to be trained, and this should be the role of Local Education Authority (or education providers like the Learning Trust in Hackney) advisors to provide and ensure it is carried out rigorously. The examination boards should perhaps be reduced further. I believe there should be a single Board, with regional offices, but administering common examination papers. This would cut out the competition element between Examination Boards which I believe has helped fuel grade inflation. Finally, let everyone remember that examinations, although important, are not the only measure of a school’s or a pupil’s progress, and seek to take the other aims of education into account, like fitting a student to take his or her full place in adult society, and enabling him or her to become a productive member of that society in all the possible meanings of the word “productive”.
Formats Book Details The book draws on the author's experiences to look at the state of British education at the turn of the Millenia. David writes as a classroom teacher, rather than as an educational theorist. His judgements are often radical and may make uncomfortable reading for those who have created the present educational consensus. he does not pull any punches and exposes the failings in currently fashionable educational policies. The book examines a range of educational issues, including examinations, discipline, finance, outside pressures and even issues like food. David is not afraid to criticise and suggest improvements. One thing is sure, many establishment figures will be upset by this book. David Britton was a teacher for forty years, during which he saw huge changes in British education. He spent years preparing students for GCSE and A level, while, as an examiner, witnessing the decline in standards in British public examinations. As a local Councillor, he saw some of the political processes which contributed to that decline. His experience, however, ranged beyond British education, and he is able to draw on his experiences in two African countries in his contribution to the debate about the future of British education. His experiences give him a unique insight into British education in the first decade of the 21st Century.
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