I see that most excellent of all ministers, Michael Gove, is preaching the old Conservative gospel of stratification by means of our educational processes. Having engaged in one of the most splendid knee-jerk responses to the GCSE re-sit as a panacea to poor teaching standards by proclaiming that things must change he has now turned his attention to the whole subject of examinations.
What this woefully inept and inadequate little chap has done now is to proclaim that we should return to the GCE for the able students and re-introduce CSEs for the 'less able'. This would fit in well with the current practice which sees those who can achieve GCSE grades A to C being pushed in that direction whilst the 'thickies' are led towards 'less academically strenuous' vocational qualifications.
This is a wonderful return to the days when the eleven-plus segregated children into grammar or secondary schools and by doing so assigned the blue or white collar at an early age. In one scholl we were being told we were the future of the nation whilst down the road our friends were being taught the basic skills to respond to the factory hooter as low aspirational drones.
Education is not about the potential for earning, although once again I have heard so called educators describe it as the means by which earnings can be maximised. Surely education is about realising the potential in a child so that they can be the best person possible in terms of skills, understanding and self-expression.
Not all children fared well with the GCE system whereby all the eggs went into one or two exam papers in the4 Summer term. GCSE is a very valid and valuable system and whilst we do need to raise standards (and stop putting out children into education too early as we do now) we need to have a system that continuously monitors and tests our children without the potential for raising grades unfairly (and this is what resits do - see postscript).
Pax
ps. One of our children was put in for a resit of a GCSE exam as part of a class-wide exercise. The teacher had 'forgotten' to teach certain parts of the syllabus and so, to counter this error the whole class was booked in to take the paper again (at the school's cost). Now ours did well and decided not to take the paper but it is this, not a return to GCE/CSE that Gove should be addressing. But then again that would be corrective not political!
4 comments:
I bitterly resented the streaming in secondary schools, which actually excluded me from taking any examinations at all - I left school at 16 with none. I immediately got a job with the Post Office as a Telegram boy, which I enjoyed, but with little prospect other than progressing to Post Man in due course and than for life.
I left and joined the Army. Within 12 months I had taken an Army Certificate of Education which equated to the O Levels, I was not permitted to take at school, and passed. Further down the career path, I took other examinations and vocational qualifications, which now leaves me at Level 7 in Leadership and Management - the equivalent of a Master's Degree.
Being written off at 12 or 13 in the old system is what Mr Gove is advocating - something which will do enormous harm to thousands of young people, unless they are offered viable alternative routes into higher education and academia.
My spouse achieved about 13 O Levels on the old system, but has worked all of her life in low to middle grade roles. Starting off as a groom, she is now employed in Logistics and has attained serious qualifications in that field. Her GCE's apart from English and Math's have not proven of any real worth in her working life.
I supported the government's aim to concentrate on core GCSE's including science and a foreign language, because I believe these to be key to future success for young people - we mustn't allow the clock to be turned back in the way that conservative propaganda seems to be pointing towards.
I absolutely agree both with you Vic and with UK Viewer.
I too left school having failed the grammar school exam at 11, with no qualifications and having taken no exams.
10 years later I did my English Grammar and English Lit O levels at night school and would have gone on to history and other exams had I not become so heavily involved in music.
There is nothing more guaranteed to give a child low self-esteem for life, than to deem them 'stupid, or slow' at an age when they have not even begun to flower.
Any system which sets pout to segregate one section of society from another has to be intrinsically bad.
The reason. I believe, why so many of my generation and the one directly after it, returned to education later in life was that they had simply been 'written off' early in childhood.
Thanks for the comments guys - seems we have the same set of experiences :-(
V
I'm sorry you had a bad experience with your child's school. At the comp. where I work we take pride in catering for all our children - from those who will take vocational college courses combined with fewer GCSEs from Year 10 to those aspiring to Oxbridge. "Every child matters" as the (no longer fashionable mantra) goes.
Mr Gove is clueless about education, as indeed are most people whose experience was of a different time and a different system. My subject, history, is still challenging at GCSE (and has no tiers and no modules)and certainly involves more thinking than the regurgitation that was expected of us at O Level.
I'm sick and tired of politicians making us jump through different hoops just for the sake of it. Anyone who thinks education needs changing should be forced to teach for six months before making any decisions.
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