Brieng

NEWS 15

The current Education Secretarys fondness for uniforms, discipline and facts recalls an earlier age of schooling What was so good about the 1950s? It was the decade when Englands postWar school system as laid out in the 1944 Education Act got into gear. The General Certicate of Education (GCE) was introduced in 1951, with its Advanced A level and Ordinary O level, and the newspapers griped that the new exams were too hard. Learning was often by rote and built around the traditional subjects such as maths, English, history and Latin. Boys wore ties, unruly pupils got the cane and the food was terrible. In short, it was tough much tougher than now. A reality TV series in 2003, Thatll Teach Em, recreated a 1950s school for 30 teenagers who had recently got As and A*s in their GCSEs to see if they could handle it. They could not. During their rst week, less than half passed an 11-plus paper from 1957. Almost all failed their O-levels. a minority of elite students took A and O-levels: the rest prepared for a life in the trades. But such a system was at odds with the increasingly prevalent view that in a democracy every child should be able to attain a decent level of education a view given institutional expression in 1986, when O-levels were merged with the CSE to make GCSEs. For the rst time, all 16-year-olds in England and Wales now took equivalent exams.

The 1950s: a golden age of education?

And how did that affect standards? It was soon after this that employers and universities started to complain that the young werent being properly taught, and we began to witness that relentless improvement in results know as grade ination. A recent study has found that A 1953 schoolroom: just before the rot set in? between 1996 and 2007, the average grade achieved by GCSE students of the same ability rose by two-thirds of a grade. Three times as many pupils got A*s in 2010 as did in Is this what the Government harks back to? 1994. In A-levels, the effect has been starker: pupils who would Though Education Secretary Michael Gove is careful not to have scored a U in maths A-level in 1988 would have got a B or a mention the 1950s now hes in ofce, he made no secret of it in C in 2007. Yet oddly enough, the likeliest cause of grade ination opposition. People know there is something wrong with our probably has little to do with the quality of teachers and pupils. education system, he said in 2009, and they know the rot set in in the 1960s. Gove has told secondary schools to focus on What has it to do with, then? traditional subjects; he wants teachers to exert more discipline in The people who set the exams. The former regional exam boards, class and a new emphasis on facts. Goves favourite school is set up by universities in the 19th century, had traditionally drawn Mossbourne Community Academy, in east London, where the up exams with a view to keeping standards high: their main students wear ties and stand up when adults come into the room. incentive was to identify the best students and maintain a reputation for academic rigour. But the creation of the national Whats wrong with that? curriculum in 1988, and of school league tables a few years later, Those nostalgic for the schooling of the 1950s tend to forget that changed all that. The exam boards, now spun off into educational only a small proportion of pupils got to benet from it. There charities and private companies (see box), began to take their lead was no golden age of education, says Russell Hobby of the from Whitehall rather than the universities. Their prime incentive National Association of Head Teachers. It felt good then because now was to keep schools happy by softening exams giving we were only concerned about the education of a minority of lower pass marks, introducing modules that students could take children. In 1959 only 9% of pupils got ve O-levels, whereas in again and again, and so on. At the same time, in their hunt for 2009, 70% got ve A* to C grades at GCSE (broadly equivalent higher grades, schools started pushing pupils towards unacademic to O-levels). Only 25% pupils at grammar and public schools subjects. Under Labour, the number of students taking the core were offered a proper academic education. It wasnt until 1965, GSCEs of English, maths, languages and science fell from 50% in when the poorly regarded Certicate 1997 to just 22% in 2010. of Secondary Education or CSE was Englands unusual exam boards introduced, that students at secondary How can this trend be reversed? According to the exams regulator, Ofqual, there are modern schools got any qualications Gove wants the top universities to now 183 official providers of exams in England, at all. Even the lucky few were often regain their leading role in the Wales and Northern Ireland, offering almost 14,000 ill-prepared. Many candidates clearly design of exams and to be consulted qualifications. But the market in GCSEs and A-levels had no understanding of the subject on A-level syllabi and test questions. is dominated by just five organisations: AQA, Cambridge Assessment, CCEA, Edexcel and WJEC, matter of most questions, sighed a He hopes to see new courses up and which operates in Wales. These private bodies mostly report on 1960s maths A-level. running in 2014. The system of came about in the 1990s, when the Government taking modules, introduced in 2001, ordered exam boards to merge with providers of But werent standards higher? could be scrapped, or the number vocational qualifications, to bridge what it called the Not in terms of what was taught. of modules per A-level reduced from century-old division between education and training. Detailed comparison of exams and six to four. Goves reforms have It is an unusual system. Most countries have a single standards in the 1950s and 1960s divided educationalists. Some argue exam authority, run by the education ministry, or, as with the present day do not reveal the that he should go further and in the case of America, standardised, national tests, yawning gap many people expect. nationalise exam boards into a single like Sats. It is rare to have exam boards compete with Maths teaching 50 years ago was body as in Scotland putting each other across subjects to sell their products to almost uniformly bad; syllabi were universities in charge of it. But others schools. The pitfalls of this were well illustrated when narrow; exam questions, often oppose a leading role for universities, officials from Edexcel Englands only profit-making exam board were caught (by The Daily Telegraph) satised by answers learned by rote, insisting that A-levels should be a boasting to teachers about their supremely easy were dull by todays standards. What capstone to what students have geography GCSE course. There is so little [content], did change over the years, however, learned in school and a preparation we dont know how we got it through, said Steph was the conception of what education for life in general, rather than a Warren, who was in charge of the exam. You dont and qualications were for. In the specic preparation for further, have to teach a lot Im deadly serious about that. tripartite school system of the 1950s, narrowly academic learning.
9 June 2012 THE WEEK