The lesson of this year's GCSE results is that New Labour's standard measurement of a school's success – the percentage of students getting five GCSEs at grade C or above including Maths and English – is hobbling an entire generation of state-school educated children. The fact that a secondary school's ranking in the league tables is determined by this metric explains almost all the bad news contained in yesterday's results:
- The reason Maths is now so easy that a five-year-old can get a grade C is because schools have effectively forced exam boards to dumb down the syllabus, knowing that their fate hangs on the percentage of their pupils who achieve a passing grade in the subject. (To read more, click here.)
Re: GCSE results are now worthless as a measure of a school
Posted by Abhijit P.G. Pandya on 25-08-2010 22:22:
Since when did A-levels and GCSEs become a measure of intelligence to those working outside the self-absorbed world of secondary education?
I would rather have a boy or a girl who has read and reflected on Tolstoy and Koestler of his or her own volition in my undergraduate classes, than some one with four starred A's at A-level who has learned how to master exam practice.
Education at a secondary school and at University is a mere-subservient to the free-market. It works in the spirit of 'certificates for jobs', rather than intellectual introspection. It is over excessively focused on literacy over individuality of thought. It evades the most important thing it can give you: The ability to question the world around you.
Abhijit P.G. Pandya
Fellow
Department of Law
London School of Economics
pandyaa4harrow@gmail.com
