Working the system

One of the questions I discussed today with some of my third year teaching students was: what is the use of school exams? We discussed why we should put kids through the stress and anxiety of testing, when tests do little to help kids to learn meaningful things. Testing is essentially a snap shot of what the student knows when the test is administered. It's a very effective method of scaring kids to death, and it's also a very efficient method with which Governments can gather data to indicate how well the cohort of students in each school has had their heads crammed full of useless facts. And so, educators then find themselves 'teaching to the test', just so that they can give their students a better chance at passing with a reasonable grade. The more students in that school who get good grades, the higher the school will appear in the league tables. Yesterday I wrote about the way the UK Government has cynically manipulated recent test results, with disastrous consequences.

So what about the kids? Isn't school meant to be for their benefit? Exams do little to help children to learn deep and meaningful stuff they can later translate into the reality of life beyond the school gates. How much do I recall from the exams I swotted for? Not a lot. What exams teach children is that if they rote learn lots of facts, figures and information, they can manipulate the system. Being able to regurgitate this kind of surface knowledge onto a test paper to score as high a grade as possible is as far removed from education as it is possible to be. Exams are at best a test of memory and a snapshot of what students 'know' when the test is administered. The exam itself tells us nothing about how children will cope with the messy, complex problems they will face in real life, or how good they are for example, at working in a team. Exams tell us next to nothing about their creative abilities or their cognitive agility. Project work, continuous assessment and monitoring of progress are much more likely to be indicators of how well a child is doing in school.

Chris Husbands, Director of the Institute of Education, recently made a telling statement on the topic in the Guardian newspaper:

"I'm not sure there is any evidence that exams are an improvement device on their own. What improves education is improving teaching and learning. Where exams play a part is the extent to which they provide structures that encourage improved teaching and learning. It's really important that we have rigour in our assessment. It's also really important that we are clear about what rigour means. And rigour means assessing children and young people on the basis of the knowledge, skills and understanding that are going to prepare them for adult life."

Do we need an overhaul of the school examination system? I think in it's current format, it is broken beyond repair. I would be very interested to hear your views.

Calvin and Hobbes cartoon courtesy of Universal Press Syndicate


Working the system by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Moving the goalposts

Listening to the Welsh Minister for Education and Skills speak yesterday at the iNet Conference in Cardiff made me question once more the reasons for school exams. What Leighton Andrews AM had to say in his speech made me also question the sanity of those behind the recent GCSE exams fiasco in England. Schools are now resorting to legal action to challenge the UK Government's decision to downgrade the results of an entire national cohort of students.

Earlier this year, without any consultation or warning, grade boundaries were changed on the order of the UK Government exam watchdog Ofqual. Teachers who had prepared students for a particular grade expectation had the carpet pulled out from under their feet. Many students were disappointed by their downgraded results. Schools, students, teachers and parents all feel betrayed. And there is no comeback it seems. And yet the Welsh Assembly, which was devolved several years ago from Central Westminster control, took the bold and intelligent step to say 'no' to the results. As far as Leighton Andrews is concerned, the students who took the exams under one condition, should be marked under that same condition, and their grades upheld. He ordered the WJEC (Welsh examinations board) to regrade all the downgraded results so that students received the original grades they deserved. Andrews deserves a medal for his stand. He is one of very few who actually have the backbone to stand up and be counted on this issue. In his speech, Andrews asked how we could possibly expect school improvement, when devaluing examination results militates against their position in the school league tables? It's as if all schools are now being punished for simply following the rules.

The bottom line is this: In the UK, exams are used by Government more to provide indicators of school effectiveness than they are for providing students with qualifications. The GCSE qualifications are political footballs that are kicked around by both sides of the House, and ultimately, the metrics generated by each year's results are crunched together to produce school league tables. This disgraceful state of affairs has been happening for some time. Exams are no longer about giving students the opportunity to shine, to show what they have learnt. It is now purely a mechanism for data gathering. Yet according to some commentators, the current fiasco will render school league tables invalid, for this year at least.

Now we also have a politically motivated and grossly unfair assessment regime. Imagine Olympic athletes sprinting for the line, only to discover half way through the race that the finishing tape had been moved another few hundred metres down the track. Imagine if they had trained for 400 metres and then had to run 800 instead. Unfair? Yes it would be. Grossly unfair. And yet this is exactly the same trick that has been perpetrated upon an entire year of students. We cannot prepare children for examinations using one set of standards, and then impose a new set without warning. We don't move the goalposts halfway through a football game. Why did the UK Government sanction grade boundary changes right in the middle of an academic year? What message does this send to an entire generation of young people? I remarked in my speech at iNet that it was a real shame that the English could not devolve from Westminster as the Welsh have done. It raised a few smiles, but it was a serious remark.  Not only have the Welsh stood up against Westminster and refused to play the moving goal post game, they also banned standardised testing for under 16s throughout their school system. And for good reason.

Back in 2007, the General Teaching Council argued that school exams should be banned for children under 16 because the stress caused to young children was 'poisoniong attitudes toward education'. The GTC also called for a review of all standardised testing practices because there is no evidence that exams are improving school standards. The GTC was disbanded by the Government in 2010, as a part of its 'austerity' cutbacks. If exams are causing students unnecessary stress, and testing is not contributing toward school improvement, then why are we still persisting? One definition of madness is trying the same thing over and over again, in the hope that a different result might be obtained. There are many better methods of tracking student progress than exams.  Many assessment methods are substantially more effective in assessing for learning. Isn't it about time we had that review the GTC called for?

Photo by Walter Baxter


Moving the goalposts by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.