So we’re now into the traditional period of the summer where the exam results are published – GCSE, A-Level and SATs – and the media runs endless negative stories. In fact you can actually write the news items ahead of the results, all you need is a “Falling Standards” article for if the pass rates go down, and an “Exams are getting easier” article for if they go up.
Having said that, yesterdays SATs results did both, with English and Science going up, but Maths falling – so guess which one is the headline…
The TV News, alongside the Daily Telegraph have also run headlines about “Four in 10 pupils ‘failing basics” (although the news went for 40%) based on a combined “3R’s” (although the Daily Telegraph writer doesn’t seem to be able to grasp counting to three as elsewhere in the article he says it is “made up of results in reading and writing”) – however when you look at it alongside the other figures there is something odd going on, as all of the individual categories are between 71% and 76%, and yet the combined result is 60% – needless to say the media organisations aren’t bothering to explain how this combined total is calculated…
The bottom line is that invariably the results are used by politicians as a stick to beat each other with – the current party in power will argue that standards are improving, the opposition that they are falling. They were doing it twenty years ago when I was going through the education system, and they are still doing it now. The only difference is that when I was at school the party in power was different.
So how do the politicians deal with improving standards? They change the curriculum, and it’s not that they change the curriculum for new pupils either, it gets changed for pupils who are already going through the process. For example when I was at school the History curriculum changed several times, putting different periods at different points, so I did some periods of history three times, and others not at all.
The whole increasing standards is crazy anyway, as by increasing the numbers of pupils achieving top grades, it has now resulted in needing A+ and A++ grades to differentiate pupils. Isn’t that just like McDonald’s renaming their drinks sizes from small, medium and large to medium, large and extra-large? The universities are interested in the top performing students, so are requiring comparison with the other pupils taking an exam – essentially they want bell curve grading – the politicians want to see rising standards, but using a simplistic measure that is easy to understand, so they go for the numbers achieving A-C grades – however the bell curve is steadily being shifted by the simplistic indication of rising standards, so in the A+ and A++ suggestion means that there would be five grade levels in the recorded band rather than the three there were when I was at school.
Wouldn’t it be easier to keep a consistent curriculum and consistent exam system? Probably, but since one of the stated aims of the National Curriculum is to “prepare all pupils for the … experiences of life” going through an education system where the rules are continuously being changed by politicians is going to be one of the most valuable lessons for life experience!