Dear Mum,
About this time every year the
media takes to the subject of exams and slates the current education system.
Every year I find myself
scrunching at newspapers, the blood rushing to my cheeks as I grimace and snarl
at the headlines and read those undying words: “easier”, “new plans” “replace”
and “properly testing.”
It seems students are never safe
from new plans.
I feel for all of those students
who have just finished their exams, reading Michael Gove’s plans to reintroduce
O-levels over their morning porridge, previously elated at having jumped the
first hurdle in examination procedure.
They must find this completely
undermining. I certainly do.
My GCSE’s were the hardest exams
I’ve taken and this includes my degree modules.
This being the first set of proper
exams (SATS don’t count – they’re not on my CV) it was a
whole new challenge... The sleepless nights of not knowing what to expect; the
chopping and changing of subjects (German on Monday afternoon, maths on Tuesday
morning, then history in the afternoon, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday...); all squashed
into a couple of weeks, everything riding on how you felt on that day.
Come A-levels and university, I
was a dab hand. There were coursework and exams throughout the academic year,
not just in the summer, so I could hedge my bets. I knew what to expect in the
hall (such as invigilators looking over your shoulder,
judging me. They definitely do it). And I had selected the subjects I was
interested in and, ultimately, good at, i.e. not foreign languages, maths, sciences,
or any subject that persistently uses the word “hypothesis.”
The GCSE’s where physically and
emotionally exhausting due to the number of exams, concentration of exams
within a short space of time and resulting amount of revision required. Plus in
some cases, primarily ‘hypothesis’ subjects, I had a lot to learn for the first
time, lessons on trigonometry and the Doppler effect having gone over my head. At
200 miles an hour. In fact I doubted I was even in those lessons.
But here we are. Listening to a
middle aged, middle class man bang on about a set of exams he has not taken.
It was so refreshing to read in last
Sunday’s Sunday Times Magazine that a
group of celebrities sat the 11+ and respectively failed to get into Grammar
School.
Finally – a group of adults
giving it a go before passing judgement.
Are GCSE exams easier? Or are
students working harder?
After all, university places are more
competitive than 30 years ago and they’re sodding expensive – most students are
probably aware they need the best results to ensure they make the most of their
future.
And, aware of the above, aren’t parents
generally pushing their children more?
Plus teaching resources are vastly
improved since you were at school – there are self-help books, practice papers
and online sources.
Students are training themselves
to give the examiners what they want, which is surely what exams boil down to.
And yet this is not enough.
Because us youngsters are working
hard and succeeding an MP resolves to throw us a curve ball, to diminish all of
that hard work by taking a social step backwards.
Perhaps next they’ll be
re-introducing the cane and dunce hat.
We’ll be that grey area in
history – The GCSE Debacle.
In twenty years time an employer
will look at my CV with a puzzled expression, the GCSE column meaning very little,
and I’ll lose out on a job to a younger or older O-level candidate.
My year group also missed out on
the A* at A-level, meaning an employer who does not know the year this
initiative was introduced could look at our A-level grades sniffily.
There was clearly a reason for O-level
exams being scrapped and replaced by GCSEs but this reason lies dead and buried
and forgotten underneath the paperwork sitting on Michael Gove’s desk.
It doesn’t take a genius to note
the faults in his new plans. My hypothesis is that Gove doubts students’ ability,
ambition and the varying modes of revision at their disposal.
But then I only took those easy
GCSE exams so what do I know...?
No comments:
Post a Comment