A very ‘Govian’ proposal for A-level reform
Is “Govian” a word? Obviously it’s not but I think it ought to be.
For today’s A-level reforms, announced by the secretary of state for education are, well…very Govian.
Full of talk about “deeper understanding” of subjects and “advanced problem solving”, there were few surprises. So many of his reforms tend to be backward looking – a return to traditional values and virtues, as he might put it himself.
So, the man who wants primary school children to go back to reciting poetry by heart, now wants A-level students to be tested in one big, sweat-inducing set of exams at the end of two years of study.
We already knew that re-sits were going to be scrapped under his changes but today we learnt that the AS level would no longer be a “stepping stone test” with results forming part of the final assessment. It will now be a stand alone exam.
Just as Mr Gove’s reforms throughout education take a familiar pattern so too, do the criticisms that follow. Naturally teachers – who are engaged on a war with Mr Gove on so many fronts – have attacked the proposals. No great shock there.
More worryingly perhaps are the critics who emerged as the day went on.
Social mobility concerns
The University of Cambridge, not an educational institution lacking in rigour one would have thought, issued a statement strongly attacking the changes.
It said deleting AS exams at the end of year 12 would “jeopardise over a decade’s progress towards fairer access to the university.”
It went on to argue that these results were “especially useful in giving talented students from low participation backgrounds the confidence to apply to highly selective universities”.
Will it bother Mr Gove? There’s a strong argument that it should. He has made clear throughout his tenure as secretary of state how much he believes in the transformative power of education and the role it should play in social mobility.
But will it change his mind? Unlikely.
U-turns are just not very Govian.
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There are 3 comments on this post
The sad thing about all of this, is as Jackie says, is that Gove lives in a Govian world. I think it should be renamed cloud cuckoo land.
It is great that Cambridge Uni is against these reforms. Any sane university lecturer, and A level teacher should be too.
If A levels are to reflect life at Uni then there should not be a return to to exams at the end of two years. I know of no degree course that examines their students at the end of their three years. Students are assessed on their essays, end of module exams, and end of year exams. For most uni courses in year 1 it is pass or fail to get to year 2, and then all assessments are cumulative towards the final grade.
So if Gove wants A levels to be more like University, then shouldn’t the A levels have continual assessment and end of module exams? I admit that the culture of the resit should be removed. It leads to a culture of “Oh well I can always resit.” That, and only that, should be the reform.
Gove has no idea about education. How do I know this? I am a practising educationalist, working with students from very deprived backgrounds, encouraging them to aim for Oxbridge and the Russell universities, and with great success!
If he were to have worked in schools, in recent times, he would know that a return to the “bad old days,” would be the death knell for accesibilty to university for thousands of able, students from less well off backgrounds. There’s the rub, that is probably what he actually wants to do.
Jackie,
He isn’t in the least interested in “fairness.” He’s a tory. Selfishness is what they do.
And how can anybody trust a man who dyes his hair that way?
As far as I can see Gove’s educational reforms are largely designed to ensure that the wealthier get the sort of education he enjoyed as a boy & therefore belives it should be imposed on everyone else. As for the rest – they are minimum wage fodder or potential future “shirkers” so why worry about their education anyway.