Category: News and Views
As is my wont, what I am about to say is going to be somewhat controversial and certainly not considered the fashionable view, particularly by the disciples of the Blair spin Machine, but I'm afraid it has to be said: Mike Tomlinson's report into exam reforms came out on Monday and there was a lot of praise for it. In summary, he recommends the scrapping of GCSE's and A-levels, replacing them with a diploma so that youngsters' work in other fields such as more skilled work can be recognised. It is modeled along the lines of the French Bacalaureat system. Herein lies the first difficulty: how is it going to raise standards? I'll be honest with you, during my year in Paris studying French law as part of my degree, I was shocked and stunned by how little our etudiants francais had picked up in school during their supposedly demanding qualification. Indeed, the drop-out rate in french universities in the first year is some 80 percent. To have this diploma over here is, therefore, surely asking for trouble as it lowers the standards even more!
But what then? do we do nothing? No, this is not the Lawlord solution, far from it! My solution, however, is that instead of doing away with exam-based qualifications, we actually make the exams harder, like the old O-levels and A-levels used to be. That way, the universities would find it easier to pick the best candidates, and those who were truly not cut out for academia would not waste their own time and resources being pushed in a direction they clearly had no interest in going in. True, fewer people would go to university, fewer people would take A-levels, fewer people would pass! But what's so bad about that? For one thing, instead of wasting everyone's resources by doing degrees in Medieval English headgear studies at the University of Brixton, young people could acquire skills that would get them a job, and a very well paid job at that! And, wait for it, because fewer people went down the academic path, the universities would be able to survive without charging top-up fees.
For me, the guiding principles should be these: first, that nobody should be barred from academic success if they are determined to achieve it and have the tallent so to do. Second, and conversely, nobody should be forced through the garlic press of academia if that is really not their vocation and their interests lie elsewhere, beyond having the basic academic attributes that we all need in a civilised society. Third, academic and vocational successes are separate things and should not be devalued by fallacious comparisons such as comparing glass-blowing with an A-level in Latin. With my system, I submit that people would be better directed to where they are going to be of most use, and with less pressure on the system, the opportunities for learning in later life would be increased.
PS: if anyone thinks I'm saying this just because I'm from Oxford and we're all posh then they really have a lot to learn!