`A LOT OF JELLY'
The new GCSE exam causes chaos.
Michael Trend shows that it may
be superseded very quickly
IMAGINE that you are a PLO terrorist: explain why you killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. All over the country, schoolchildren are preparing themselves with specimen papers, from which the above is an example in 'empathy' from a history course, for their summer examinations. It is a particularly vivid exam- ple, but I know from looking at the papers myself last year (The Spectator, 4 April 1987) that it is not an unfair one to pick to give an idea of the way the wind blows. This year will be the first in which pupils from England and Wales will be sitting the new GCSE in place of 0 levels and CSE. To the usual anxieties that young people feel as they approach a time of trial are now added many new worries as the GCSE increasingly looks like an almost hopeless muddle. Indeed for one history teacher in East Sussex, Mr Chris McGovern of Lewes Priory comprehensive school, it has already proved to be too much. Mr McGovern has said, and parents of his pupils have agreed with him, that the children in his charge would be better off sitting a more traditional type of examina- tion. In the teeth of opposition from his local education authority he has entered his pupils for the Scottish Ordinary grade exams — a simpler, and yet more severe, test of ability. Mr McGovern dislikes in particular the 'empathy' element in the new examination; but his 'protest' has also brought to the boil other, equally impor- tant, questions about the new GCSE.
'Virtually unteachable' is the most com- mon verdict. From speaking to other his- tory teachers I have found that this is a common response especially from the pub- 'Samson — the Philistines are upon thee with a Tom Jones song.' lic schools which — probably very foolishly from their point of view — joined in the GCSE system when 0 levels were abo- lished; rather than fight to set up a better system for themselves. Now, however, their teachers are finding ways round the jungle that is the GCSE. They feel that they can train up their pupils to 'fool' the exam- iners on the set papers, although they are very worried about how the examining boards will react to their schools' own continuous assessment of their pupils. Will an examin- ing board really allow any school to assess almost all of its pupils in the top grade even if that is a true reflection of their abilities — for the whole point of GCSE is that there should be 'prizes for everyone' and thus no one group must be seen to be winners? Or as Mr Kenneth Baker himself recently said about the quality of teaching, all the children 'are roped together to ensure no one gets to the top'.
What Mr McGovern is doing, however, is to say that as he doesn't like what is on offer from the English examination boards he wants to look elsewhere for a different, better choice. That such an exercise in choice is not really possible under the GCSE system in England and Wales was clearly.shown in the most recent pamphlet from the Centre for Policy Studies. In `Choice in Rotten Apples', Mervyn His- kett, himself a former teacher and examin- er, argues this very convincingly. Dr His- kett clears the ground of the deliberately obscuring mumbo-jumbo that the desig- ners of the GCSE employed and shows clearly how an attempt to alter social attitudes lies behind the new examination procedure, rather than a desire for academic rigour. How on earth did we get into this muddle — especially under a Conservative government? What was so wrong with the O level examination? The answers to such questions lie, of course, in the history of the development of theories of education that became the conventional wisdom of the past 20 to 30 years. Educationalists asked — quite reasonably — what could be done for low attainers? Their solution was levelling down; the means to achieve it, the GCSE. But as many teachers have told me recently, the GCSE is no solution to the problem of what to do for the less academic who are in fact finding it much heavier going than the old CSE courses. So now an important new question is being asked back at the 'new establish- ment': how can we get out of the mess you have landed our schools in? The public schools' solution is, of course, no real solution at all; and Mr McGovern's flirta- tion with the Scottish system cannot last. The Scottish Examination Board is itself undergoing change and its Ordinary grades will be phased out within a few years. Ironically, it is only because of a teachers' strike that they have not already been superseded by the new Standard grade exams, which share some of the GCSE's characteristics, although allowing greater scope for able candidates to shine.
Unexpectedly, however, those who want better public examinations do have a chance to push for something to be done. Unexpectedly, because those who steered the GCSE into harbour must have thought that their brave new craft would be safe for at least a generation. The Secretary of State for Education's Great Reform Bill, however, gives the new reformers a chance to slip the painter again and put the boat back out onto the waves.
There are two main areas where some- thing can — and should — be done. First, at the very heart of the GCSE, in its syllabus. We already know that Mr Baker is prepared to be tough here: late last year he sent the maths curriculum working group packing when it presented its report — the Secretary of State has since referred to their report as 'a lot of jelly'. Professor Sigbert Prais — who, as part of the group, sent in a dissenting note and later resigned — has emerged as a hero of the 'new reformers'. Professor Prais could see no future in proposals for a curriculum that left the less able pupils without a proper grounding in the basics of numeracy. The Centre for Policy Studies and other bodies are now working on alternative core curri- cula.
Second, there is growing pressure to allow proper competition among the ex- amination boards themselves. This is an area where the recent cosy gathering . together of the old boards into new region- al groups might have looked unassailable even this time last year. But Mr Baker's Bill gives the new reformers a second chance here too. In it there is a provision to change the present supervisory national examining body for secondary examina- tions — the Secondary Examinations Council. This will provide an opportunity for the Secretary of State to allow real choice into the examination system — for choice is what he is committed to in other areas of his reforms.
Oliver Knox, the director of publications at the CPS, has outlined in his foreword to Dr Hiskett's pamphlet how he could set about this change: he argues that the Government should be free to license new, independent examination bodies which could offer schools and parents such a choice, and that employers 'perhaps under the aegis of the CBI and other bodies' should get together to provide an annual scrutiny of the conduct of the bodies. This would help wrest the examination system from the effective monopoly control of the teachers and their unions (which is how things work at the moment, as Dr Hiskett shows) and would enable schools to know that the grades of the board to which they presented their pupils had real signifi- cance.
Previous page
