Rant

Now come on what is it with education these days?

We constantly read reports that the whole schools system is cracking around the edges, teachers are more stressed than ever, kids are more badly behaved than ever and some people seem to come out of school illiterate and unable to add up. All of this and yet exam results have improved year on year, every year for 20 years... something doesn’t quite add up here.

I am of the belief that the issue is not a superficial one; the problem is deep rooted in the way the educational system works and the way in which it treats learners.

When we first enter school we are taught the basic systems of numbers and words, at this stage the role of the school is as much about supporting personal development as it is the teaching of specific knowledge. Even at this stage there is testing, aged 7 children are expected to sit their first SATS exam and although it is emphasised that the function is mostly diagnostic of the system the exams don’t stop from this point onwards.

Upon moving onto secondary school there is another ramp up in the level of testing and I believe that this means that emphasis on personal development is lost. While we are busy cramming for exams and tests the appreciation of a subject is lost. Teachers of subjects are trying hard to pass on their enthusiasm for the subject that they love but they are constrained by the system which demands objective assessment at all stages. Some way has been made towards resolving this issue with the scrapping of the Key Stage 3 Sats exams which it was concluded had little or no benefit to education and were a bureaucratic nightmare.

Moving on to study A-Level does change things slightly, the reduction in the number of subjects studied means that more time is spent on each so there is a greater scope for exploring the subject in a more interesting level of detail. However the pressure on students is no less intense if not more so, you are now studying subjects that you are interested in so there is no time for wasting. Whereas in secondary school you can go easy in Art and Music there is little of this respite at A-Level.

The other problem is that of the modular nature of most A-Level courses. Now I am not attempting to cast aspersions on the modular system as it does have numerous advantages over the linear style courses. If you have a bad day on the exam then you are not ultimately punished, also coursework broadens the scope of the subject, increasing the skill base of the qualification and meaning that the emphasis is not entirely on exam technique on the day. However the disadvantage is that there are formal exams every 6 months for 2 years. Having just recovered from GCSE's pupils are thrown straight into AS Level module exams, less than 6 months later. The pressure is constantly on to achieve and to pass.

Now this modular nature may increase the pass rates for the exams but at what cost? For a start, less emphasis is placed on the retaining of knowledge, students seem to be encouraged to cram for an exam and then forget the knowledge and move onto the next module. Also there is the constant pressure of having to repeatedly sit exams, this can result in people getting fed up with exams towards the end of their second year and suffering a major decrease in performance as a result. This sort of experience will also reduce people's interest in a subject and would certainly diminish their enthusiasm for studying the subject at a further level.

So why does the education system place such an emphasis on continual assessment? Well to an extent assessment is necessary, as it is in all areas of life, to ascertain a persons current level of knowledge and determine whether or not the work done has had a significant impact on their amount of knowledge. Assessment is very useful to determine whether or not teaching methods and techniques are effective, and the information collected can allow a teacher to improve their teaching methods in order to better deliver their knowledge.

I think however that a certain amount of the testing is driven by the current popularity of league tables. Schools are ranked on their performance in the exams and are subsequently rewarded for doing well. In our performance related culture, we naturally want to send our children to the school with the best results, to give them the best foothold in the world. We see a school as less suitable if its results are not as good as the school across the road. Although the exam results do reflect in part on the overall performance of the school, these are not the only things to take into consideration. The league tables do not measure the personal development of the children or extracurricular activities or pastoral support.

This pressure on the school to achieve the best possible exam results then filters down to the teachers, who know that the security of their jobs is dependant upon their pupils achieving good results. This leads to exam based teaching methods, teaching the children only what they need to know to pass the exam. Since no account is made for encouraging interest or excitement in a subject, the pupils just feel that they are being pushed through a boring system that does not benefit them. Since the pupils are not interested they are less inclined to work hard, subsequently exam results will be poorer than they could be. This leads to the pressure on the school increasing and we have the increasing pressure cycle.

At the end of their academic careers, young people come out with some arbitrary qualifications and find themselves under prepared for the world of work. All those years of hastily cramming for an exam and then forgetting the knowledge afterwards seem somewhat wasted, although the time spent was under fulfilled and more could potentially have been achieved

The worst thing is that the majority of teachers feel the same as the children. They want to teach a subject that they enjoy and pass on that enjoyment to their pupils, however they are entirely restricted to what is on the exam syllabus and are often unable to find any time to teach anything else.

Had too much time to think about this... about 13 years to be exact :p