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The media had been fermenting interest in the A-Level results for weeks, so there was little surprise that the pass rate had improved by a further 0.8% to 97.5%. This was the 27th successive annual improvement, a straight line which, taken literally, would suggest reaching perfection in three or four years’ time. Yet human performance isn’t like that; we each have good days and bad which is as true for the total population as it is for individuals.
Maybe Disraeli went just a little too far when he spoke of “lies, damned lies and statistics,” but surely it is Einstein who gives us the proper perspective to reflect on what such results might mean when he said, “Not everything that can be counted actually counts, and not everything that counts can be counted!”
The tragedy of these results is not that 50,000 youngsters with appropriate qualifications will fail to get a university place. No, the real tragedy is twofold: several hundred thousand youngsters have been conned into believing that the purpose of doing well at A-Level is primarily to get to university. Secondly, too many of them have been urged on by the very teachers that Aldous Huxley raved against who know only too well how to fill their pupils with ready-made knowledge without having to think for themselves.
Why is it that the English are so slow as not to apply reality tests to statistics that somehow just don’t seem right? Like asking, for example, why it is that employers just don’t believe that some youngsters with brilliant A-Level results can think as well for themselves as did their parents or grandparents’ generation? Or perhaps asking why, with some of the country’s cleverest children taking the International Baccalaureate with its far more open exam questions, that the overall achievement of students fluctuates only slightly from year to year around a common norm?
All this we know yet, like old-fashioned parents, we don’t talk about it in front of the children.
Read the statistics and remember that Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And finally ask yourself the question: where is the “justice” in a society where more than half the top grades go to the 7% of privately educated students?
See Part Eight and Nine and Actions 1, 5 and 6 of the Briefing Paper
Well said John, as ever. It occurs to me that the “measurement” dilemma is summed up in the government phrase “value added”. By this of course they mean progression through levels within a very narrow core curriculum against time and against expected norms. This becomes intersting when one considers how one might add (or develop) during the primary phase the values that, in my expereince of 20 years of headship, children, parents, governors, industrialists indeed everyone (apart from government) universally subscribe to. Qualities of resilience, flexibility, moral justice, political astuteness, spiritual awareness, a strong self story, good social skills and a desire to be someone. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is remarkably consistent in its content and has been so for two decades in my experience and for time immemorial I suspect. The problem is, of course, such values do not lend themselves to convenient testing one week in May!
Bluntly, there is a universal consensus amongst all stakeholders about what we want for our children and a legally enforceable wadge of statute ensuring that something else is measured. So, of course, something else happens to children. My colleagues are afraid of doing what they know and believe, they might get caught!
I am not saying that we don’t want or need literate and numerate chidlren, of course we do, but what a small game that is when the stakes are so high.
What we need is Michelin standards, not fast food. All schools would be different but that would be truly beautiful; and for the first time in 30 years the inspectors could measure quality properly.
Parents, also known as voters, would love it. But it would take courage to pursue and if anyone doubts the powerful effect courage might have as a damning force on government initiative then watch any episode of “Yes Minister”!