This new plan to scrap GCSEs and introduce the EBacc as some kind of replacement seems like one more in a series of ill-thought out policies to emerge on Gove's watch.
In June we find out
in the papers that the government plans to scrap GCSEs and bring back something like O-levels and CSEs. Unfortunately the LibDem members of the government also seem to have found out in the papers, having not been consulted, then proceeded to hurl (accurate) accusations at Gove that he wanted a return to a two-tier system.
Fast forward to September and the EBacc
announcement. Now Clegg and Gove are hand in hand,
writing in the Evening Standard about how they share a passion for education and believe this new qualification is just what is needed.
Of course there will be some students who will not sit these exams — the same students who do not sit GCSEs today. We will make special provision for these students, and their schools will be required to produce a detailed record of their achievement in each curriculum area to help them make progress subsequently — and we anticipate some will secure EBacc certificates at the age of 17 or 18.
So the policy that has replaced the two-tier suggestion seems to be a one-tier system that some kids just don't get to participate in at all? What employer or further education institution is going to look at a "record of achievement", written by a pupil's own school, and consider it to be worth the paper it's written on?
There is plenty wrong with the current system but it does at least seem that, at the moment, a comprehensive school can offer a fairly wide range of routes by which their pupils can access the curriculum. The division of examination into Foundation and Higher tiers means that time isn't wasted teaching more able kids material that does not challenge them, nor in teaching less able kids material they cannot realistically be expected to engage with or understand.
Coursework means that children who have academic talent, but do not perform well in exams, are still able to demonstrate their ability. More than that, coursework is absolutely necessary preparation for the independent learning and research skills that are so important as part of a student's further and higher education. It beggars belief that Gove can talk about wanting to best prepare kids for the rigours of university, and then wants to scrap coursework from English, foreign languages, and humanities subjects.
Plus, as it stands, GCSEs in a range of supposedly less academic subjects (arts subjects, PE, religious studies, technologies, etc.) are to be binned and replaced with something that the government hasn't found the time to come up with on the back of an envelope yet. So that is yet another dividing line.
The worst of it all is that it seems to have come out of the blue. The policy announcement has come
before any consultation, which is the only way it could have happened because no teaching union has had anything positive to say about it. Nor have the devolved administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland, who have had it sprung on them the same as the rest of us. Labour have come out against it, which means if the whole thing is to be brought in, it will have to be rushed through before the end of this parliament.
Then there is the proposed switch from the current system of grading to a normative system, which seems like a fudge to circumvent the need to actually have a sophisticated debate on standards and assessment in schools, even if it would end up being the reasoned outcome of that debate were it ever to take place.
It's frustrating because I think some things of value have been put forward. The idea of one exam board per subject is a good one. A move to writing coursework in supervised conditions in schools rather than at home would go a long way to tackling some of the current problems with that mode of assessment. The modular nature of current GCSEs is also a problem. Not, perhaps, so much because of the fact that it gives students the ability to resit ad infinitum, but because having exams frequently over the course of years 10 and 11 is extremely disruptive to the teaching timetable, and because it necessitates rescheduling (or missing) teaching in one subject to allow for the sitting of an exam in another subject, which has a negative educational impact and increases tension between departments within a school. But it's hard to focus on the good within these policies when so much of the rest is just bollocks. It's policy for policy's sake. And even then it's only half a policy.
Whatever happened to the Tomlinson report? When a long, thorough, bipartisan consultation took place and a fairly broad consensus was achieved, with a raft of commonsense suggestions for addressing problems in the education system? When advances in allowing the maximum possible number of kids to access the curriculum were to be built on? When measures were proposed to deal with other issues based on research and study of what works around the world, rather than by only paying lip service to those things? Obviously too good to be true.