GCSE examinations
An end to selection
James Bowman
Much has been written about the new centralism in the Government's approach to education under Mr Baker. Together with the new examinations at 16+ designed by his predecessor, it represents a more subtle but perhaps more effective threat to the private sector in education than any- thing likely to be instituted under a radical socialist government committed to the abolition of independent schools.
The rationale of the new GCSE exams, which will take the place of 0-levels and CSEs in June 1988, accepts a shift from what the educationalists call norm- referenced to criteria-referenced assess- ment. What they mean by this is that the measure of pupils' achievement should not be how well or badly they do in comparison
EDUCATION SPECIAL
with each other (which is the supposition of the 0-level/CSE system), but rather how well they perform certain clearly-defined tasks. Thus it is theoretically possible in the GCSE system for all pupils to attain a Grade A, where the assumption at present is that only a certain percentage can be expected to do so well.
Of course, it is unlikely that, in the real world, there will ever be anything other than a wide spread of grades over the whole available range, since we know that in fact pupils' abilities differ. Equally, though, the pressure for educational change which has resulted in the GCSE owes much to a desire for more open access to the higher grades at present unattainable by more than about a quarter of school leavers. Criteria-referencing will prove to have been nothing more than a costly failure unless there is a significantly higher percentage of pupils who achieve what are supposed to be the equivalent of 0-level As Bs and Cs. And the Govern- ment now has the strongest electoral in- terest in ensuring that no such failure is seen to have taken place.
It is therefore safe to assume that, after 1988, it will no longer be possible for
employers, colleges of further education and universities easily to identify the intel- lectual elite which at present comprises the principal beneficiaries of higher education. It follows that either some new method of selection will emerge or else there will have to be an expansion of educational opportu- nities, perhaps on American lines, that will make Robbins look like a piker. Clearly, the educational establishment will exert all the pressure it can in favour of the latter alternative. Already there is a general acceptance that GCSE must entail some relaxation of the demands currently made of pupils at A-level, and the necessary changes to that examination are in train.
In fact, however, Britain is not rich enough to afford higher education for as high a proportion of its population as the US. Nor is it politically possible to allow for the educational elite to be selected by market forces, as it still largely is in America, where higher education enjoys relatively little in the way of Government subsidy below the graduate level. In this matter of selection it would seem probable that the Government will have prepared the ground for a crisis like those which have so recently embarrassed the governments of France and Spain. In France, the time-honoured policy of open admission to university has simply meant that selection is postponed until the end of the first or second year of higher education. In Spain the system of market- based selection is even more archaic than the American. It is coming under student pressure for change along lines roughly comparable to those laid down by the French. Understandably, no one is particu- larly happy with this state of affairs, but there seems little that anyone can do about it. If anything can be certain it is that there is no political profit for anyone in the traditional British system of early selec- tion.
One possible way to avoid the creation of a lumpen-intelligentsia of déclassé stu- dents, the breeding-ground of all manner of left-wing bacilli, may be found in the idea of student loans, already the subject of vague rumblings and dark hints from the Department of Education. Politically, the charm of student loans is that they repre- sent a sort of purified market in education. Selection will not be based entirely on anything so crass as mere ability to pay but also on the willingness of the dedicated to defer the gratifications that higher educa- tion brings until such time as they have repaid to the state some considerable portion of what it costs. The appeal of such a system to the rather puritanical sense of justice and decorum of Thatcherism is obvious.
But if the traditional sacrifices to educa- tion on the part of the upwardly mobile so dear to the heart of every Tory are now to be institutionalised and written into the system of state provision of education in a new way, the old way cannot but suffer.
Again, the example of America is in- structive. There it is much rarer for people to reach into their pockets to provide their children with a superior secondary educa- tion. What would be the point? The universities select their intake on the basis of a combination of 'aptitude' and ability to pay, hardly at all on the basis of achieve- ment at the secondary level. They take it for granted that the schools will have done little or nothing — increasingly even that they will not have taught their pupils to read or write properly. If everybody starts more or less equal (in terms of achieve- ment) at 18, it is a waste of money to buy a first-class secondary education in the hope of securing some advantage at the higher level. At that level, of course, sacrifice does make sense, since selection takes place between the ages of 18 and 22 instead of 11 and 16, the winners going on to `graduate school', in approximately the same proportions as to university here, and the losers entering the economy with some- thing comparable to A-level qualifications.
The ultimate effect of GCSE will be to postpone similarly the time of selection in Britain. Already, in the last 20 years, it has been postponed from 11 to 16. Now the logic of that tendency still in operation is postponing it still further. If, as seems probable on the basis of the sort of comments about it to be heard in any public school staff-room, the GCSE has been designed to be the sort of qualifica- tion that will be obtainable by the more ordinary sort of comprehensive school pupils, it will scarcely matter if the next step is towards open admissions under a Labour or student loans under a Conserva- tive government. Either way, the rationale of paying for a superior secondary educa- tion will have been undercut.
Moreover, a 'national curriculum' such as that proposed by Mr Baker will be enforced on state schools and independent schools alike. This means that the latter will find it very difficult to provide a significant- ly more academic programme than the former, even for those idiosyncratic tradi- tionalists who are prepared to pay for it in any case. Already, many independent schools are having to plan reductions in the number of periods per week that they devote to science — in order to conform to DES guidelines designed to increase the number of such periods in state schools. In these circumstances, the outlook for pri- vate education, which has thrived for the last ten years on the anomalies thrown up by the legacy of early selection, will be grim indeed.
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