Scrapping GCSEs

It was somehow inevitable that, eventually, Michael Gove would take a look at GCSEs and hark back to the days of the old O-level - and it was even more inevitable that many in education would rise up in indignation at what he said. It's a reflex action for many - if Gove says it then it must be wrong/stupid/Victorian.

But Gove, on this, is talking sense.



We desperately need to review the exams that students sit at 16.

When I was a pupil there were O-levels and CSEs. The O-levels were for the academic high fliers and the CSEs were slightly more practical but, largely, for those who weren't academic.

GCSEs were introduced in the late 1980s to try to have one qualification that fitted everybody. Sadly, as is the way with one size fits all qualifications, it is an experiment hat has failed.

GCSEs are tailored at the average. They are a half way house between academic and vocational and, let's be honest, in most cases fail both. They prize mediocrity and fail to stretch the academically bright whilst still being too academic for those who struggle with such forms of examination.

GCSEs have been allowed to fail for far too long.

In an attempt to make it seem that everything was rosy with GCSEs successive governments have allowed slippage in standards to an extent that actual grades in GCSEs have become meaningless.

Yes, students may well work hard for them. Yes, they may be assessed more often than in final examinations. Yes, teachers are working very hard to get their students the best grades possible.

But none of this addresses the real issue - GCSEs are overly easy for the academically able who have been failed by a system that is aimed at the average student. High fliers now coast their way through GCSEs. They aren't stretched. They're not really being prepared for A-levels, let alone degrees. They are ale to freewheel their way to an A* with little effort.

Meanwhile, the students at the other end of the academic spectrum struggle. They can't cope with the aount of academic assessment required and really shouldn't be sitting exams that are so unsuited to their skills and abilities.

Yes, when I told my O-levels back in 1981, CSEs were looked down on and sneered at. hey were the exams for "thickies" - but in the past three decades surely we've learnt that vocational skills are as valid as academic?

The left wing politicians, and even the Liberal Democrats, are opposed to re-introducing a two-tiered system for exams. Why? Every few years everything should be reviewed even if it is working, to see if it can be made to work better. Some things will be changed and improved, other things left alone. Reviewing something is a good thing.

In many ways, we already have a two-tiered system. We have GCSEs (half academic/half vocational) and we have BTECs (vocational). The problem is that too many students are taking the wrong course and there's too much crossover between the courses.

The other problem is the way that BTECs - a totally different type of course and assessment - are given "GCSE-equivalent" status - as if to say, these BTECs are all well and good, but it's GCSEs that really count. And, in order to counter the ridiculous anti-vocational lobby the BTECs have been given huge numbers of GCSE-equivalnce - which has meant that some schools have replaced GCSEs with BTECs as they will score better in league tables...

What is the problem with a course and an assessment being vocational? Vocational is good, just as academic is good. They are different from each other. They suit different students and that should be encouraged and applauded.

Surely a better system would retain the BTECs but make them more vocational and minimise the academic aspects of them, scrap the neither here nor there GCSEs and introduce a new academic qualification that will look to street those students who are more suited for that?

The other thing that needs to change is that the concept of failure needs to be re-introduced. It is pointless that everyone passes an exam. It makes the qualifications meaningless. Yes, when I failed my O-level French I felt deflated but it was the correct mark - I was hopeless at French. There is nothing wrong with being failed if it helps you focus on the things you are good at. There are whole generations of students who haven't failed at anything because it might upset them too much. Such nonsense must stop.

If someone's not very good at something they should be told.

I hope Gove looks to replace GCSEs, and that they are more academically rigorous, but I hope he brings back failure as an acceptable mark for the sake of future generations.

COMMENT: Time for schools to give elocution lessons?

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a rant about accents. It's not even going to be a rant about long or short vowels. What's concerning me is the noticeable increase in the number of adults who seem totally incapable of pronouncing "th" in words.

It's absolutely awful.

Guilty

Words beginning with "th" are pronounced as if there's an "f" there instead.

Words ending with "th" are pronounced as if there's a "v" instead.

Most of the time it doesn't interrupt the flow of speech - the speaker just sounds like an under-educated child who hasn't been taught how to speak properly - but there are times, when there are a lot of such mispronunciations, that it becomes increasingly hard to understand what is being said.

Don't these people realise they are making them sound stupid? Like a 3-year old still learning to speak properly?

Schools, as far as I am aware, have ignored such problems over recent decades, deciding it's accents, and regional and individuality is good. It's not, if it makes communication difficult.

Schools need to offer elocution lessons to those who don't speak properly and clearly and it's the duty of society to highlight adults who are destroying the language with their infantile babblings.

Dorries calls Cameron an "over-educated posh boy"

Nadine Dorries' criticism of her own party leader, David Cameron, as being an "over-educated posh boy" takes politics to a new low.

Nadine Dorries is, of course, well known for regularly saying stupid, badly thought through and, often, objectionable things, but to criticise someone for being well-educated seems particularly ridiculous. Would she prefer that there was a limit of, say, 5 GCSEs to be an MP. If you get more, or higher, qualifications you can't stand? Truly idiotic and, surely, a further example that Dorries' mouth works separate from her brain.

Then she called him a "posh boy". Would she criticise John Prescott for his working class background? Would she criticise you and me because of decisions our patents and grandparents made? Doesn't this show that Nadine Dorries' is out of touch with society?

What next? Her comments aren't that far from criticising the disabled for being disabled or black people for the colour of their skin.

Dorries needs to spend some more time thinking about what she says or, hopefully, the electorate will remove this two-faced bigot from Westminster at the earliest possible opportunity.

COMMENT: Cutting calories from foods

Plans are afoot for food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the number of calories in a wide range of their products.

What's the point?

I suspect that the tiny (and yes the proposals are no more than a tiny slither from the calorie count of the products) will have a negligible effect on the daily calorie consumption of most people. It has been suggested that it might be as little as the equivalent of 16 peanuts a day!

The problem is the current proposal is voluntary. It's not backed by any legislation or code of conduct.

To improve diets there are two sensible tactics the government should be legislating for.

1) Heavily tax all high fat, high salt, unhealthy food. High taxation has been used to try to put off smokers so why not as a tool to adjust eating habits? And, instead of the money being lost in the Treasury's coffers, why not use the money raised to subsidise healthy foods?

2) Educate more and better about the dangers of eating badly as well as how to cook.

On BBC News just now a mother said she welcomed foods that children eat being made more healthy. The examples she used were two chocolate bars!

D'oh!

OPINION: Is your child fit for purpose?

Reports suggest that increasing numbers of pupils arrive at the school gate still wearing nappies, unable to use a knife and fork, incapable of changing themselves into a PE kit, and some, unbelievably, don't actually know what their name is.

How can this be the case in the UK in 2012?

This generation of semi-feral children can't be blamed but the generation of bad parents can. Why haven't they spent the time to teach their children such basic life skills? I wonder how much time these bad parents (yes, that's where they are, there's no getting around it) have spent with their offspring? Did they just ignore them as they grew up? Were the parents just too busy drinking or going out?

Sure, many people work long hours and have difficult lives but that is no excuse for child neglect. Presumably these children were being looked after by someone who might have noticed that the child was socially retarded. Or is this abuse of the youngest members of society a generational thing? In some families is it actually not the parents fault but the grandparents fault?

I think schools should require children to be able to do certain things before they're allowed to start school. I'd suggest being toilet trained is pretty fundamental but I think, before they are accepted into school, all children should be able to eat with a knife, fork and spoon; use a cup to drink (not a baby's bottle with a test); be able to change clothes without being helped; recognise their own name; be able to hold a pen/pencil/crayon appropriately; be able to sit properly on a chair... there's probably more.

Yes, if parents haven't done these things then school need to pick up the pieces but while the teacher, or classroom assistant, is busy changing some 5-year old's nappy, they're not able to give the attention the other 30+ kids in the class need and deserve. Why should one (maybe two or three) semi-feral children harm the education of the other 30+ children in the class?

And how embarrassing is it for the child when, as will surely be the case, that have that epiphany and realise they are socially retarded? And that their patents are bad parents?

It strikes me that we've had decades of social workers, social care, billions spent on people to help, oversee and identify problems in families.... we've got GPs and Health visitors who are meant to do checks on the development of children... we've got communities, neighbours, families, friends, babysitters, nurseries.... Where and why has it gone so wrong?

I agree that it's not just the parents' fault - so many others in our complex social network should be able to identify that there is a problem and for every child arriving at school unable to go to the loo properly there's a whole web of people who have failed but, surely, the bulk of the blame lands at the feet of the parents?

Bad parents are a niggling cancer on our society. Their actions, often their inactions, cast an ever longer shadow on the face of our civilisation. Their abuse of their poor patenting, which is really just a form of child abuse, causes problems for everyone including their own children who they fail to give a fair chance in life.

Something drastic needs to be done to stop bad parents, to bring a halt to generations of bad parenting, do that this cyclone of social destruction is ended.

In the meantime, I'd support any government who introduced minimum requirements to allow a child to start mainstream school and a clamp down on the various institutions that should be spotting these problems and doing something about it.It's time we made sure all children arrived at school fit for purpose.

OPINION: Gove sinks to a new low with Bible plan

Education Secretary, Michael Gove, is much-pilloried by the teaching profession and the general public. On occasions, I've thought this rather harsh, but he deserves every bit of grief he will, I hope, receive over his latest plan.

Gove wants to give a single copy of a special edition of the King James' Version of the Bible to each school. Each copy will cost the Department for Education £10, and so the total cost is going to be about £200,000 (apparently, according to The Guardian, the DfE reckon the total cost will be £375,000)! In a time of austerity and budget constraints that seems a bizarrely large amount of money to spend.

After all, haven't all school libraries already got a copy of each of the main religions' holy books? Even if they don't, I'm sure they have the Internet and can access, for free, umpteen different translations of the Bible.

Yes, the KJV is/was a very important book and it is rightfully regarded as a significant part of British history, but, for one thing, the 400th anniversary, the apparent inspiration for the distribution, is this year, 2011. Are the Bibles ready to go? Budget-approved? Waiting to be sent? How much will the distribution, alone, cost on top of the £10 per copy?!

Then there's the issue of the Bible itself. Any right-thinking person knows very little of it has any historical or factual basis. Many of the best stories, including most of the Jesus-myth, are, we'll be generous, borrowed from earlier religions. None of the headlining stories have any basis in history, archaeology, geography, science or fact. Why on earth is the Bible being donated to schools, remember just one copy per school, rather than, say something by Darwin or Dawkins?

One copy will, I predict, sit on a bookshelf in the Headteacher's office, gathering dust for most of the year. The only time a pupil is ever likely to see or use the special Bible is if they use it for readings at the Christmas carol service.

At a time when education is struggling, when schools are scrambling about for money surely there's more important things to spend the £375k on? Should the government, via the DfE, be giving free publicity for one of the biggest, wealthiest organisations in the country.... the Church?

I hope lots of schools simply return the copies to Gove. Or flog them on E-Bay and use the money for something useful, worthwhile and educational.

Mr. Gove, as Secretary of State for Education, your job is to facilitate education and guide and assist schools, keeping an eye on budgets and improving the learning if every child in the land. It is not to help the church manipulate and brainwash a new generation of "believers" and it is not to waste money on pointless baubles that have more to do with you trying to achieve immortality than worthwhile education.

OPINION: Soldiers aren't heroes

Soldiers aren't heroes, they're victims:

*Victims of incompetent politicians who would rather use bombs instead of words and gain jingoistic favour by tugging on the heart strings of societies lowest common denominators.

*Victims of the immoral arms trade who turn massacres and maiming into profits for shareholders.

*Victims of warmongering military leaders who use them, and, increasingly, the public as cannon fodder in their war games. 

*Victims of a failing education system that provides few options for the less able and allows them to be brainwashed by regular visits from Army recruitment who lie about a glorious career. 

There are no heroes in military uniform.

It's wrong to glorify their actions, their killing of civilians, their maiming of children. War cannot be justified. 

At remembrance, weep for the waste of life, the loss of possibility, the destruction of families but, please, remember these soldiers were trying to kill and maim; that's their job so that the politicians can get a jingoistic boost, so that arms manufacturers can make a profit, so that the military can justify their existence and so that the education system has a dustbin for its failures. 

There are no heroes in the military; just victims and aggressors.