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According to my deluded lefty step mother Michael Gove is a wicked and useless man for trying (and failing) to change the exam system. The lefty belief is that there has been enough tampering and teachers and schoolchildren should just be left with some stability and to get on with it. Underpinning this is the assumption that ever improving A level and GSCE grades reflect the efforts of hard working teachers and students. If grades do not improve in any year it is a scandal, the exam boards must be investigated and it is remarks all round. It is hard to know where to start with this grade bubble.
My step mum should start by reading the excellent “All Must Have Prizes” by Melanie Phillips which charts as no other book does the sad decline of British education over 50 years. It is a superb book – you can pick up HERE.
I happen to think Gove is also useless for not accepting that wholesale reform of education is needed. We might start by accepting that student loans are a balance sheet liability waiting to happen (as I explain here) – they merely disguise the rate at which the UK is going bust. Britain cannot afford to send 50% of kids to university and many kids are frankly not up to completing even the duff courses at Mickey mouse Universities now on offer. Accept that and reforming education is simple.
1. Scrap 50% of UK Universities. Provide free funding for students at the rest.
2. With fewer university places on offer A-Levels need to be a real test. So no A stars all round. Exam boards compete of offer the simplest A levels and GCSE’s so they gain market share so they should all be scrapped and replaced by one national exam board (will save on admin costs) and A levels should be marked as they used to be – the top 10% get As, next 20% B’s etc with a good 30% failing each exam. Yes, exams should be hard (with absolute standards needed to pass) and those who are not academic should fail and know they have missed the cut early on. No more chasing expensive pipe dreams for them.
3. As the funnel narrows from the top it would be pointless giving all kids A* at GCSE and so encouraging a lot of low grade candidates onto A level to waste two years ending in disappointment. So GCSE’s need to be harder with 30% or so failing and facing up to reality and leaving school to get a job at an appropriate time.
4. It goes without saying that the way to give working class kids a chance is to bring back grammar schools at once. It is no coincidence that the highest year of state school entrance to Oxford was 1965. As grammar schools were scrapped fewer working class kids got that break they deserved and Oxford ( and the other place we do not need to mention) became more, not less, socially elitist.
5. Stand up to the teacher unions and make it far easier for teachers who fail to get sacked.
That would do for starters. Oddly, my father, an academic is with me on this one. He is not 100% deluded lefty. The chances of Gove – or any politician – doing as we suggest are nil. The political class is in denial; it dare not speak the truth about ever falling standards in our schools and would rather talk about better results, hard working kids etc. Very sad.
Tom Winnifrith
This article first appeared in Tom Winnifrith’s bi-weekly newsletter The Tomograph. It is sent out twice a week with links to all the articles I have published on 10 UK and US websites that week plus a couple of exclusive articles such as this one and on the Wednesday edition a free share tip is thrown in for good. To sign up to this free newsletter register HERE
