ILLITERACY: THE WRITTEN EVIDENCE
Leo McKinstry identifies the perfect test to disprove those `ever-rising standards' WHAT, apart from the appointment of the excellent Chris Woodhead as Chief Inspector of Schools, was the single most effective educational reform of 18 years of Tory rule? No, not grant-maintained status or primary tests or the national curriculum or city technology colleges or the expan- sion of universities. It was the introduction of written theory examination in the driv- ing test. For this modest measure, designed purely to improve road safety (and perhaps bring in a little extra revenue for the Treasury), is now unwittingly but brutally exposing the inadequacy of British state schools. As thousands of teenagers struggle with the written test or simply avoid driving instruction altogether because of this new obstacle, we can now see both the disastrous consequences of so-called 'progressive' teaching and the hollowness of the claims from the educa- tion establishment about ever-rising stan- dards.
The written theory test was first intro- duced in July 1996, largely as a result of the demand for yet more harmonisation across the European Union. Most other EU countries have long had a written sec- tion as part of their driving tests. In Britain, the change did not initially have the impact which many learner-drivers feared. With a low threshold of required correct answers, the pass rate stood at 85 per cent. But in January this year the test was made more stringent. The questions became less predictable; the number of incorrect answers allowed fell from nine out of 35 to just five; and all examinees had to pass their written theory test before they could apply to sit the practical one.
The results of this tougher written exam- ination have been dramatic. Pass rates have now fallen to 65 per cent. The num- ber of driving test applications in the first quarter of this year has dropped by 54 per cent compared to the first quarter of 1996. The number of tests conducted has also declined by over 50 per cent during the same period, from 391,504 in early 1996 to 259,802 in early 1997. Provisional licence applications are down 15 per cent. The effects of the test have been most keenly felt by driving instructors. The British School of Motoring, easily the largest company in the field, has seen its profits halved. Eighteen of its branches are to close, and 110 of its franchised instructors have already left. Smaller companies have been equally hit. 'There has been an alarming drop in business, down well over 50 per cent in the first few months of this year,' says John Lepine of the Motoring Schools Association, the representative body for the trade. One local instructor near my home in Essex told me that his business has fallen by two-thirds since the introduction of the new written test. `Before Christmas, I was doing 30 hours a week. Now it's only between 10 and 12 hours.' Another Essex instructor explained that 'work isn't nearly as plentiful as it was since the written test became harder'.
This startling fall in business cannot be explained by demographic and other social factors. With the birth rate static, there has been no decline in the numbers of young people, the group which makes up the vast majority of learner drivers. There are more cars on the road than ever, and affluence among the young is greater than ever. The reason must lie, therefore, in the intellectual poverty of today's youth and the consequent fear which a simple written test inspires amongst them. The education establishment would no doubt dismiss this as nonsense. Look at primary test results, they would say, or GCSEs. Both show a relentless and heart- ening rise in educational standards in recent years. The cheerleaders could point to last year's A-level results, when the pass rate reached 86 per cent, up from 76 per cent in 1989 and the 15th year in a row it has risen. Since 1980, the proportion of students failing A-levels has halved. But if any of these statistics were remotely credi- ble, why on earth are these same academ- ic achievers so perplexed and terrified of a little written theory about motoring? After all, the multiple-choice test paper could still hardly be described as difficult. The examinee does not even need to write any- thing, only tick a box for the correct answer.
The truth is that 'progressive', child-cen- tred learning, the orthodoxy of our educa- tion system for the last three decades, has left generations of adolescents poorly equipped for the most straightforward of academic or analytical tasks. At the most extreme end of the scale — and again this has been revealed by the driving test rather than spurious school exam results almost 20 per cent of school leavers are barely literate. John Lepine of the Motor- ing Schools Association says that 'there is some evidence that almost a fifth of teenagers may be frightened to sit the test because they are genuinely worried that they can't read very well'. It is truly appalling that so many can spend at least 11 years in the education system and yet remain illiterate.
Just as damaging has been the lack of rigour in the child-centred approach. For the progressive educationists, corrections only hinder the process of self-learning. Children's work should only be praised, never criticised. This reluctance to evaluate has been reflected in the growing replace- ment of traditional examinations by contin- uous assessment and modular tests, where pupils have access to study material. One pupil last year described this method as `authorised cheating' and said that his A in GCSE French 'would not fool myself about my abilities. I am so poor at French that I would have struggled to get a C in a con- ventional exam.'
The enfeebling mentality of our educa- tion system, with its terror of pressure and tolerance of incompetence, has undoubted- ly hindered the ability of learner-drivers to cope with the written test. 'A lot of them are fearful or plain idle. They don't see that they have to do some work to get through the test,' says one instructor. Another told me, 'I can't understand how these 17-year-olds are failing. I mean, most are doing A-levels. It makes you think about their education.'
Indeed it does. Now that the test is established, however, it may act as a vital incentive for young people to take aca- demic study more seriously, even if so many of their educators do not. Unfortu- nately, the test may soon come under threat from two areas. First, there is talk of moving away from a written examination to a computer-simulated model, since this would allegedly provide a more realistic assessment of road understanding. Second, the new Labour government wants to clamp down on car use with bold state- ments about 'switching the agenda from road to rail' and darker mutterings about fuel taxes, road taxes, emission regulations (hitting the second-hand car market on which first-time drivers are so reliant) and motorway tolls.
These measures, however welcome they might be to modish public policy-makers, can only act as a further disincentive to young learners. And the new government should recognise that the written theory test is central to its goal of improving not road safety, but educational standards.
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