Quis custodiet ...?
Sir : The current intention to wipe out CSE and GCE examinations and replace them by a single common examination must alarm many people in and out of the universities. Scholars within our colleges have certainly much to fear from this latest example of the anti-intellectual mentality of our educational reformers, led by the Schools Coun cil—which must tie with Penguin Educational books for sponsoring some of the silliest educational notions of this century. Should these proposals come to fruition, then undoubtedly educational standards would slump still lower. The gap between present A levels and the new common test would widen; and inevitably our egalitarians would intensify their clamour for 'reforms' at the pre-university level.
The trendy reformers in and out of the Schools Council have little interest in traditional educational values involving the disciplined acquisition of knowledge. They are besotted by educationally irrelevant and -highly suspect sociological theories that exalt mediocrity and abhor individual talent as anti-democratic. So new examination systems, largely in the hands of the teachers themselves, must be created—tests that no one can fail and that all can sit, no matter what their mentality.
J. H. K. Lockhart 21b King's Avenue, London W5
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