Examining school standards

Vernon Bogdanor

Over the last decade and a half, many familiar educational landmarks have disappeared with startling rapidity, to be replaced by structures whose purpose is often as unsure as their construction is unwieldy. One institution that has so far escaped this process of change is the GCE examination which, in a world of flux, provides a benchmark through which educational standards can be evaluated.

One might, nevertheless, have predicted that the '0' and 'A' level examinations would not for long escape the upheaval, and indeed there are a number of perfectly respectable reasons why an evolutionary reform of the examination system might be desirable, within a comprehensive system of education. In the grammar schools, most of which are now extinct, pupils were prepared as a matter of course for GCE examinations, which are suitable for the top 20 per cent of the ability range; the CSE would be taken by the next 40 per cent of the ability range who would have been in different schools. In a comprehensive system, however, teachers themselves have to make the decision as to whcih examination pupils should be entered for. Such a decision generally has to be made at the end of a pupil's third year. Yet, for many teachers, selection at fourteen is no more acceptable, and almost as fallible as selection at eleven.

The administrative untidiness of having two separate examination systems, organised in wholly different ways, is also a factor. The GCE boards are, with one exception, linked to the universities, and draw their candidates from schools and colleges right across the country. The CSE boards, on the other hand, are regionally based and it is difficult to secure national comparability of their results; their examinations and syllabuses are, in addition, controlled by the teachers. Indeed, CSE Mode III examinations are marked by the very same teachers who have constructed the syllabuses and prepared the candidates. There is, as a result, considerable disquiet amongst many employers as to the value of CSE grades below I, the equivalent of an 0-Level pass; and scepticism as to the value of the internally examined Mode III.

If, however, there is a respectable case for reform, there are also some murkier arguments lurking in the background, which depend for their validity upon a fashionable dislike of any institution which demarcates

one person from another (except of course in sport). Indeed the pressure for a common examination system at sixteen was initiated by the Socialist Educational Association in a pamphlet published in the mid-Sixties, and ominously entitled, Examining at 16 — Plus: A Threat to Comprehensive Education. It is not difficult to see why the GCE is a threat, if not to comprehensive education as such, at least to some of the less worthy comprehensives, since it reveals the extent to which they have been unable to live up to the claims made for them by their more enthusiastic supporters. In the Inner London Education Authority, it is true, things have not been allowed to get out of hand, and councilors do not find it easy to acquire the comparative examination results of different schools: but in Oxfordshire, when the County Council demanded that secondary schools publish their examination results, many headmasters were aghast, and some have been reduced to the trade union threat of 'non co-operation' if the Council persisted in so wrong-headed an approach.

But these tactics bear signs of hasty improvisation rather than strategic thought. In the long run, the best way of ensuring that invidious comparisons between one school and another cease to be made, must be to produce an examination system which, instead of being nationally comparable, is controlled by the very schools and teachers which the system seeks to evaluate!

In this country, the Schools Council is the body entrusted with the monitoring of school curricula and examinations. It is dominated by the non-graduate National Union of Teachers, the driving force within the profession behind comprehensive reorganisation. In 1976, the Schools Council recommended a common system of examining at sixteen plus, and a Steering Committee under the chairmanship of Sir James Waddell was set up to examine the feasibility of the proposal. To what extent could a common system of examination safeguard the values of precise assessment and external validation upon which the GCE boards have always prided themselves?

The Report of the Waddell Committee (Cmnd 7281) published last week, answers this question only by evading it. The committee's belief that a common examination is feasible, depends upon subverting the

whole concept of an examination as it i5 understood by the GCE boards and bY many schools. Any joint examination testing 60 per cent of an ability range will, in the view of the committee, require a great extension of the methods of internal assessment and teacher control, which have already caused such diwiet: 'there will be a need for greater use of practical tests anu oral assessment'. And school-based 'assessment over a period of time by the teacher who knows the pupil and his work was found useful in searching out skills and understanding which may be more readilY tested in this way than in a formal written examination externally assessed Board'. by the

The consequences of an extension of

school-based assessment may be readilV imagined. It will mean that the great advantage of national comparability of examinations will be lost, so that a Grade I fror° Winchester will be more valuable than a Grade 1 from the local comprehensive, because employers and colleges will be , aware of the reputation of the one but not the other. The curriculum will also be affected, since the school will itself dete.t: mine the syllabus to be followed. This will allow disciplined subjects to be subverted by the fashions of the day: the curriculurn will determine the examination, rather than, as in a healthy system, the other we round.

The result will be that the education sYs."

tern, upon which nearly L7t billion a year spent, will in effect cease to be accountable for its products. The abolition of the ven plus', indeed, has already had grievous effects upon primary school standards, since these schools are now subject to ri° monitoring mechanism which might &al° ate their work. The Waddell reconr mendations would extend these troubles into the secondary schools. They will Yield a tremendous advantage to those articulate children from 'good' homes whose parents can afford to send them to reputabl,e, schools. As always, it will be the ab'v working-class child who will be the victirn:

The future structure of examinations Is

not, therefore, a technical issue of concern only to educationalists and administrators. FOr an efficient examination system Pr°,:i vides a guarantee to parents, colleges and employers that schools are functioning effectively. The high degree of public con fidence which the GCE commands Is, perhaps, something which we too easq take for granted; but it is a source of envY I° other countries. Any reform, therefore, should seek t° build on, and extend virtues such as the' rather than destroy them. But, as the , same headmaster sadly admitted: `Sorn,c of the pressures being exerted as regatel,; abolition of the GCE must be hard to stand up to, as they so frequently look for mass support from the incompetent'. Will the pressures serve to outweigh Mrs Williams_ educational judgment, or will she put the Waddell Report where it belongs?