A headteacher of one of the major independent schools asks for schools to cut the number of GCSEs taken by pupils – he wants education to benefit students and not league tables. At a time when top grades are increasing many people fear that this is because schools sit pupils for “easy” subjects where students can get high grades and thus boost the school’s tables. This is backed up by news that results of grades C+ in Maths and English and other key major academic subjects are not particularly good.
A headteacher of one of the major independent schools asks for schools to cut the number of GCSEs taken by pupils – he wants education to benefit students and not league tables. At a time when top grades are increasing many people fear that this is because schools sit pupils for “easy” subjects where students can get high grades and thus boost the school’s tables. This is backed up by news that results of grades C+ in Maths and English and other key major academic subjects are not particularly good.
As reported in the Independent Richard Cairns, headmaster of the £20,400-a-year Brighton College, claims exam league tables "are encouraging heads to enter pupils for exam after exam quite unnecessarily". He said that Oxford and Cambridge Universities have said that there is no need for students to do more than eight GCSEs. "What the universities are looking for is evidence of ability, intellect and academic ambition," he said. "Of course, they want a string of A*s but not so long a string that a child is denied the time and opportunity to develop intellectually." Under the league tables, schools can be ranked on the average point score per pupil at GCSE. The greater the number of exams taken by the pupils the larger the point score will be. Mr Cairns said a reduction in the exam burden would allow schools to start "harnessing their [pupils'] intellectual energies". "We can only do that if there is time in the school day to do so," he said. "Schools are forcing children to dig up road after road when we should really be teaching them to design bridges." As a result of the reduction in exams at Brighton College, he argued that "chemistry enthusiasts may choose to spend the extra time available in the laboratories with like-minded souls, exploring new ideas". His warning about league tables was echoed by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Dr Richard Pike said pupils were being directed away from "difficult subjects" at A-level to improve schools' rankings. "The use of school league tables is damaging UK science because of the unintended consequence of treating education as a market commodity," he said.
I notice that Small and Large Business representatives are again on the television saying that no matter what the GCSE results say, that employers still find the literacy and numeracy skills of school leavers appalling and that they need remedial help before they can work with customers. From personal experience I know this to be the case – a member of my family set on two school leavers and neither of them could articulate well enough to speak on the telephone even after two years of training and neither could write or spell well enough to be trusted either to enter material onto the IT system or write up invoices. After having a university student on work experience and him spending the whole day trying to avoid work and download electronic games to play he was not enamoured of the way the student’s course was preparing him for work. There is no way that he can afford to employ any young person again on this basis. I heard a Headteacher just now saying “education is not about preparing young people for employment – its about preparing them for life”. Yeah. Right. If they can get a decent job commensurate with their intelligence they won’t have much life, will they ?
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