27th August 2009.
Last week I spent most of the time in our area, holding Advice Centres and making various local visits.
However, on Thursday I had to return to Westminster for the day to be available to comment on this year’s GCSE results.
I would like to congratulate all those pupils in our area who have worked so hard and who have secured the grades which they deserved, and I would also like to thank our local schools for all of their hard work and dedication – which has contributed so significantly to the results.
As I write this article, I have not yet been able to check the overall results for each of the schools in our area, but I have seen the national statistics – and these show that the proportion of pupils securing 5 or more A*-C GCSEs has risen again this year from 64.8% to 67.1%. This figure has, indeed, seen very big rises over the last 10 years or so, and this should be welcomed.
When I was at school (in the 1970s and 1980s!) we still had an education system which was designed around the needs of an educational elite – the top 20% or so. In the 1950s and 1960s the majority of young people left school with no national educational qualifications at all! None! In the 1970s and 1980s the focus was still on getting the top 20% or so into universities.
An education system designed around the needs of a minority is not fit for purpose in the 21st century, and particularly now that so many jobs require such high skills. So we ought to welcome the fact that more young people now take GCSEs and A Levels, and go on to university, college or into apprenticeships.
And some of the changes have been dramatic. In 1997 just 45.1% of young people achieved 5 good GCSEs, but this is now up to 67.1%. The numbers going on to university and college, and taking A levels, have surged.
But there are still two big problems with our education system. Firstly, although more students are doing well, a large number continue to fail.
Around half of all students fail to achieve 5 good GCSEs (A*-C), including both English and Maths. And in the poorest areas of the country, as many as 75% of pupils fail to attain that level.
It is staggering that in a rich and developed country such as Britain, we are still failing to get half of our pupils to this level of performance – after over 10 years of formal education.
It is also unacceptable that in Britain success in education and in life continues to be more dominated by family income than in almost any other developed country.
We really must do better. In my view that must mean: smaller class sizes in primary schools, more funding targeted on the most challenging youngsters; attracting more high quality teachers; giving more freedoms to schools to innovate; and improving school leadership and discipline.
The second issue is that there is a lot of controversy over whether the increase in exam results is about educational standards rising or about exams being “dumbed down”. Every year, when the exams results come out, there is a big political row over whether the improved results are due to higher standards being achieved or whether exams are being made easier.
Predictably, Government Ministers defend all signs of success as a vindication of their policies, while the Conservatives usually claim that better results are just a result of making exams easier to pass. The hard working students get caught up in the middle of this endless, depressing, debate.
Some politicians have suggested ways to end the confusion of the standards debate. For example, Michael Gove – the Conservative Spokesman – has suggested that vocational qualifications should not even be counted when drawing up league tables. In my view this is completely dotty. We should not be trying to dissuade students who want to do vocational qualifications from taking these up.
The Conservative view of the desirable curriculum seems to be based on that of Eton College in around 1850 – all Greek, Latin, algebra and a bit of Chaucer! If young people want to do courses in IT, engineering, or other subjects, then why not? We shouldn’t get hung up on academic education being the only education which has any status.
It should also not be for “here today, gone tomorrow” politicians to attempt to pass judgement on education standards. This is a recipe for endless doubt and confusion.
In my view we should establish a completely independent “Educational Standards Authority” to oversee standards and to provide serious analysis of results and why they are changing. The conclusions will often be far more complicated than the simple slogans of politicians. For example, evidence from Durham University suggests that some of the improvement in grades IS based on higher standards, while some does NOT reflect this. But it is then a more complicated question to understand why students of a lower general ability today are likely to achieve higher grades – this could be based on easier exams, better “teaching to the test”, more pressure on schools to get candidates through exams, or a host of factors to do with coursework and other changes in exams.
It really is crucial for us to be able to understand what is happening to our education standards – if we don’t know this then how can we have any serious debate about which policies need to be implemented and which are working?
It is time for a more informed debate about education, and not a lot of silly party political point-scoring.
Ever,
David.