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1. THE EXAMINATIONS PROCESS: ANTECEDENTS, ANOMALIES AND LIMITATIONS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Critical issues

»Limitations of the format of the examinations system in developing learners.

»Limitations of the equality of opportunity of the current examinations system.

»Limitations of the scope of the examinations system in providing ‘job ready’ lifelong learners.

»Limited attempts at reform of the current examinations system.

»New directions in learning: the growing distance between current examinations and the effective twenty-first-century learner.

Limitations of the format of the examination system

The public examinations process, as internationally constituted, is the most eminently fair and equitable system designed to test pupils in national examinations at statutory levels. It gives every pupil the same circumstances, time constraints and environmental conditions in which to respond to the standard questions. If the school invigilation teams are doing their job and ensuring there are no infringements of the rules, then every pupil has an equal opportunity to demonstrate their ability. This is incontrovertible.

Put another way, over the whole programme of study of perhaps two years in which the pupil has prepared for the examination, the last one to three hours in which they are tested is the only point that can be guaranteed to be equitable.

Up until entry into the examination room, myriad other factors are in play:

• access to good teaching;

• home support;

• access to online resources;

• places to study outside school;

• access to books;

• support from peers and mentors;

• access to professional tutors;

• freedom from illness to enable pupils to attend school;

• an adequate diet;

• sufficient sleep;

• access to role models/aspirational role models;

• parents in work;

• freedom from poverty.

All these factors make the examination less a test of the native ability and aptitude of the pupil, and more a trial of circumstances beyond the control of the individual pupil. I am not arguing here that pupils with more difficult circumstances cannot do well in examinations. I am arguing that such pupils succeed despite the system, not because it efficiently and effectively recognises their educational potential at the point of statutory testing (Gillett, 2017).

I am passionate about the efficacy of the examination system from personal experience. I grew up on a council estate and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a marvellous community with exceptional role models in fairness, family orientation and entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, it offered few examples of formal educational success. My passage to university was supported materially by my parents (who had lost the pathway to further and higher education to the Great Depression and the Second World War), an uncle who was a Labour councillor and an aunt who was a staff manager at a popular high street department store. Their ability to see beyond tomorrow and invest in the future through study today was what gave me an opportunity to succeed in what would otherwise have been an educational lottery. Many children far more talented than me did not get this opportunity to thrive in study. Many succeeded through other pathways but too much native talent was wasted for want of sufficient support at critical times in their schooling.

Limitations of the equality of opportunity of the examinations system

If I suggested that you wilfully neglect a section of the cohort of pupils entering both their GCSEs and A levels as an experiment in social engineering, you would be aghast. If I suggested that you leave the top performing 20 per cent of your pupils to their own devices and concentrated all your efforts on the remaining 80 per cent with a disproportionate bias to those with the greatest social disadvantage, how would you react? Would your parents or governors support this policy?

This would be seen as a preposterous position to take and would fly in the face of all your school stood for: excellence, opportunity and hard work.

Now let us reverse the proposition and suggest you abandon the bottom 20 per cent of your pupil cohort to their own devices and whatever support they could muster.

Again, this is a preposterous proposition which makes a mockery of your school’s proud position of equal opportunity and support for all. But would there be such an outrage from parents and governors?

I am suggesting that this is what is, in fact, happening because of the assumptions schools make about the capacity of pupils from less advantaged backgrounds to develop the self-supported study skills that underpin academic success.

Limitations of the scope of the examinations system

There is an element used to justify all intense ordeals, from the long hours incurred as a junior doctor to military service that highlights the mindset ‘Well, I went through it, and it didn’t do me any harm!’ This, of course, is always said by those who survived the ordeal intact and with limited emotional or psychological damage. That, of course, ignores two critical aspects.

1.Such testing regimes are faced by adults with greater maturity and experience. This is not a justification of the process, merely recognition that, hopefully, the person undergoing the process has developed the maturity to survive the ordeal. The burnout rate of junior doctors, military veterans suffering from PTSD and, for that matter, young teachers in schools, should lead us to different conclusions about the efficacy of these processes.

2.Military training and the experience of being a junior doctor or young teacher are transitory processes. There is a better time beyond the difficulties. For young people in the secondary school examinations process, the motivational factor, implicit or explicit, is that their whole future life experiences are entwined with their ability to thrive in a series of formal written examinations. This is both only partially true and fundamentally unhelpful in motivating them.

Compounding the problem of public examinations in secondary school is the issue of study leave. For five years, pupils are presented with a model of pedagogy in which the teacher teaches and the pupils listen and make notes and complete simulation exercises with support. Within weeks of the most critical tests of their young careers, they are ejected from school for ‘study leave’, and expected to work with a completely different learning model.

Effective study leave requires that the pupil instantaneously adopts a model based on working independently and autonomously with only the collected pearls of wisdom of the various subject departments to guide them on a programme of revision. Little wonder that so many pupils underperform. Worse, the most vulnerable pupils face the greatest challenges.

Pupils in care, outside the formal school system through exclusion, in hospital, with learning disabilities or in poverty do not conform to the expectations many schools have in their revision programmes. For them, there may not be a secure home, supportive adults, a wholesome diet or even a space of quiet and calm in which to study.

The die-hards will argue that the written examination is the time-honoured method of terminal assessment adopted by the great universities. It is not.

The great universities, going back to medieval times and before, from Padua to Alexandria, from Oxford and Cambridge to Heidelberg and Leuven, never used formal written examinations. Their assessment methodology was the viva voce, the oral examination in which the ‘mettle of the man’ (man because women in formal education in the higher education world only began to occur selectively from the late nineteenth century onwards) could be tested and the moral and ethical standards of the person gleaned from the quality of their reasoning and underlying assumptions.

The formal written examination is a format that only emerged with the rapid expansion of education at all levels in the nineteenth century, when the state made the connection between economic well-being and education, and particularly with literacy and numeracy levels being critical to economic success.

Moreover, the formal written examination is not a measure of excellence because its remit is so constrained. It looks only at the ability to recall information in a written format and under a time constraint. Little wonder that those in industry and commerce comment with disbelief that after all the years of formal education, young people arrive in their first period of employment so poorly prepared for the challenges and opportunities of work; indeed young people believe it themselves (Kashefpakdel, 2017; CBI, 2018).

UNIVERSAL EDUCATION PROVISION WITH A TRIPARTITE ELEMENT

The search for a more rational and expansive curriculum that would prove more challenging and stimulating for pupils and would give them greater insights into life and employment beyond school has a long and convoluted history in the UK.

The 1944 Education Act sought to ensure that every child received a secondary education and also promoted a tripartite system of schools. This tripartite division recognised that, broadly speaking, jobs came in three different categories:

1.managerial and professional jobs, which required further educational qualifications beyond statutory education;

2.clerical and administrative jobs, which required a foundation of a particular skill set that could be started in formal education and continued after school in ‘on the job’ and apprenticeship training;

3.trade jobs, for which the foundations, in the form of woodwork, metalwork and car maintenance, could be developed in school and honed further in an apprenticeship beyond school.

These three elements were reflected in the three types of schools:

1.grammar schools for those destined for managerial and professional careers;

2.secondary moderns for those who would fill the clerical and administrative roles;

3.technical schools for those being prepared for trade apprenticeships.

There was much to commend this system in providing a broad range of curricula that were appropriate to future roles. Whereas the grammar schools maintained the criteria of the formal examination, the testing in the two other school formats was much broader. Secondary moderns and technical schools required the individual pupil to work for extended periods on projects of a practical nature such as sample documents, model cakes and pastries, wooden or metal project pieces. Pupils needed to demonstrate a wide range of construction techniques or the ability to be observed stripping, repairing and reassembling a component of a motor car (Education Act, 1944; Trueman, 2015).

Some schools went further in promoting skills with an eye to the local economy. A school in the Nottinghamshire coalfield actually constructed, with the aid of the National Coal Board, a mock coal face in its grounds so that pupils could acclimatise themselves to the rigours of working underground in their future career. They also attended some of their lessons at the local colliery. This innovation was vividly captured in a film held in the Pathé News Archives in 1947 (British Pathé, 1947).

This breadth of educational experience in the secondary school phase, innovative as it was, did not come without issues. First, the whole system was based on the rather bizarre concept that the abilities of the child were set and largely immutable by the age of 11 and that a simple, formal examination called the ‘11-Plus’ could effectively group pupils into the three schooling types.

The main proponent of this system was Sir Cyril Burt, a psychologist. He believed that educational ability was usually inherited by children and that this ability could be proven in an examination taken at the end of primary school. The test really rewarded reading, writing and language, and mathematical comprehension skills. Important as they are, these skill sets alone cannot be said to comprise academic ability.

Put charitably, it may be said that the experimental methods by which Burt had come to these conclusions about ability had a number of statistical anomalies. Put less charitably, he manipulated the results to confirm his preferred model. Such revelations were part of the reason that the comprehensive system, which abandoned the discredited 11-Plus examination, gathered such momentum in the 1960s.

Second, the spurious nature of the 11-Plus could be gleaned from the fact that each year it was able to sort the pupils into the exact proportion of provision that each of the three types of schools offered in the local area. It was, therefore, not a rational test of ability but a rather brutal rationing mechanism.

Third, there was not parity of esteem between the three educational pathways at secondary level. Grammar school was the destination of choice for children of all aspirational parents, but was usually limited to no more than 20 per cent of the school population. In this rationing system, parents who had themselves sat the 11-Plus or the matriculation examination that had preceded it were best prepared and most highly motivated to ensure their children received the best preparation at home and school to succeed in the examination. This also explains why the 11-Plus and the grammar school system still persist in some areas in the UK: because those in managerial positions of responsibility and therefore able to reform it are those most likely to have benefited from the system. They also have the support of all those parents who have similarly benefited, and a surprising number of aspirant parents who will support such brutal rationing of educational opportunity in the belief that their child will succeed in the test at age 11.

In such areas, the whole system is geared to providing for those 20 per cent of pupils that the spurious 11-Plus examination deems worthy of a grammar school place. By default, those who do not secure such a place are deemed to have failed in their learning at age 11.

This failure is based on the arbitrary nature of an examination heavily weighted towards those pupils coming from a secure family background: pupils whose parents benefited from this same system, with access to books and, if necessary, access to private tutors. If the 11-Plus examination was so precise a tool at identifying ability then it would spell the end of the lucrative private tutor industry in this country!

At this point, educationalists usually compare the British system, with its inherent faults, to that of Germany. There, for many years, the different educational pathways have been characterised by parity of esteem, in which academic and vocational prowess are valued equally.

Despite this obsession with the current examination system as the ‘gold standard’ in our education system, there are attempts in play to devise a broader, more rational and inclusive educational system.

Limited attempts at reform of the examinations system

One development strand is championed by the author of the original 1988 Education Act, which did much to define the landscape of British education.

Lord Baker, or Kenneth Baker as he was in the 1980s, recognised that the national curriculum, as it developed, did not address the needs of British industry to provide sufficient pupils with technical and vocational skills at all academic levels. The result was a dire shortage of apprentices, and technical and managerial staff with a scientific background. This threatened the ability to innovate, design and manage the technical projects that the UK had traditionally excelled at on the world stage.

Such shortcomings would hamper future national prosperity, so needed to be addressed urgently. Current estimates still suggest that the UK needs some 200,000 level 3 and above (A level and degree level) engineers and technical workers and that, in particular, the failure to attract females to the sector represents a lamentable waste of talent and resources (Education Act, 1988).

The antidote to this problem that Lord Baker proposed was the University Technical College (University Technical Colleges, 2010) approach. In this, a new tier of technically biased schools were set up in the 14–19 sector to address the need for more technically competent pupils at both apprenticeship and graduate levels. The use of the term UTC was a clever portmanteau, designed to capture the interest of aspirational parents and young people. In an age of uncertain employment, there was a suggestion that pupils were being trained for an area of the economy with defined and persistent employment opportunities (Engineering UK, 2018).

Many employers – such as the heavy plant manufacturer JCB, aerospace manufacturer BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Siemens, the Royal Navy and numerous others – quickly endorsed the programme with sponsorship deals, as did local universities.

The UTC system has bridged the gap between school and employment with more innovative learning programmes that stress the technical and scientific challenges and key skills underpinning an effective education for the twenty-first century. Teamwork, research, problem-solving and presentation skills are all emphasised. The involvement of large employers and universities means that pupils have the opportunity to deploy their new found skills in real-time problem-solving, often in industrial settings and with real kit, rather than through classroom-based simulations from textbooks. To some extent, this could form part of the template of a future education which decouples the learning experience of pupils from classroom activity and gives opportunities to develop broad-based and relevant skills for the changing world of work beyond formal education (University Technical Colleges, 2019).

Despite these positive attributes, there are limitations to the UTC programme. The UTCs offer a 14–19 education, so that pupils have experienced a secondary school education before having to opt to leave their existing school to join a UTC. This means UTCs represent a discontinuity with the existing educational structure (Burke, 2018).

It is a brave, well informed and innovative parent who will make the leap of faith to withdraw their child from their existing school to trust the UTC to take them through formal examinations – with the expectation that they will continue in school-based education through to the age of 19. Even the underlying assumption that they will be more valuable to local engineering, scientific or technical employers, and therefore have job opportunities built into the system, has not proved sufficient enticement to support the growth of UTCs. There have been notable and high-profile failures of UTCs, which have dented confidence in the programme, and the future of UTCs is now in jeopardy (Burke, 2017; Adams, 2018).

Towards the curriculum of the future

The preceding analysis has demonstrated the limitations in trying to reform the present UK curriculum to produce a fairer, more rigorous and more effective preparation for all young people to face the challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. There is no longer uniform education provision in the home countries, as Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have legislatures that have devolved responsibility for educational provision. Subsequently, my comments are increasingly confined to experience in England. Traditionally, the starting point for review has been the limitations of the current system, so that the need for A levels is demanded by the university sector. While decrying the poor literacy and numeracy output of schools, many employers fall back on demanding more mathematics and English content in schools. The government takes as its terms of reference for change, the existing subject curriculum and the knowledge base that underpins it.

Taken together, this means that those with an interest in changing outcomes are wedded to existing delivery methods and those with the power to change things only contemplate marginal amendments to the existing structures of knowledge and delivery. Meanwhile, pupils are short-changed and prevented from experiencing a range of appropriate and challenging learning experiences to prepare them for lifelong learning in the twenty-first century.

As I write, Ofsted, the gatekeeper of educational standards, has announced a curriculum review. The narrow remit and recruitment of expertise wedded to maintaining the existing delivery system will ensure that little of portent will change following the review. Therefore, we shall fall further behind both in international competitiveness and in the life chances available to our young people (Hazell, 2019).

Meanwhile, those countries above us on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) table of educational performance are undertaking root and branch reviews. In Singapore, this means the abandonment of the traditional examination as the arbiter of the effectiveness of the educational system. Ong Ye Kung, Singapore’s Education Minister, stated, ‘Learning is not a competition’. The Ministry of Education is planning a series of changes aimed at discouraging comparisons between student performance and encouraging individuals to concentrate on their own learning development (World Economic Forum, 2018).

Meanwhile, colleagues in Finland confirm that the country has accepted the limitations of a curriculum defined by knowledge demonstrated in a traditional examination system and indeed of knowledge as the vital currency of learning. They are moving towards extended project-based learning in which the pupil has greater responsibility and autonomy for their learning and skills development. The teacher will move from a whole-class teaching role to one of personalised mentor to pupils negotiating their way through their extended skills-based research projects (Spiller, 2017). Additionally they have abandoned examinations and a quality control system based on a rigorous inspection regime (Alexander and Orange, 2013).

Triangulation point

For your own school, consider how well the current examination system has served your pupils.

1.Do you compile destination data of all the pupils leaving your school? What do these figures tell you about how well you have matched your pupils to employment opportunities?

2.What are the most and least effective elements of your careers and guidance provision?

3.How effective is your provision in terms of having employers providing curriculum challenges in your school?

4.How effective is your liaison work with local colleges of education offering vocational pathways?

Summary

We have seen that the role of the examination has been central to the path of educational development and that it has effectively acted as a rationing system for educational progression. The case has been made that the examinations system is deeply flawed in both the narrowness of the skills tested and the inflation of the claims that it represents an effective arbiter of pupil ability. That the examination is based on dubious research data has long been known, with the discrediting of the originator of the 11-Plus examination, Cyril Burt (Khyade, 2016).

But the damaging legacy of Burt’s spurious conclusions still proves to be popular. This is because it rewards those with most to gain from the educational rationing represented by a selective grammar school system. It gives children from such backgrounds greater access to higher education. There is little appetite for change among those who benefit from the existing system. In the meantime, the relationship between examination performance and Ofsted gradings has led to schools cynically ‘off-rolling’ pupils who they consider will not make a positive contribution (Robertson, 2018).

Clearly, although a wholesale review and update of the examination system to reflect the effective lifelong learner of the twenty-first century is some time away, it will happen. The limitations of English, if not UK, examination practice will be thrown into sharp relief as our international competitiveness is constrained and others take a more progressive attitude to developing the capacity of all their learners.

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