Gove’s Plans for GCSEs – My Story

There has been a lot of talk today about changing the way that exams are carried out in this country. But aside from the comedy of the government having to make yet ANOTHER u-turn over their policies (you would think they would learn not to announce something until they know whether it is going to work or not, let alone whether it is going to be popular or not, but apparently they never learn) there is something of actual importance to consider.

The government, in their infinite wisdom, think that the exam system should be return to how it was in the early 80s – a single exam at the end of the course to determine how well the student has retained the knowledge from the previous two years. 

From what I understand, this was changed back in the late 80s (more or less the time I was taking my exams) because it disproportionately punished children who were not good at taking exams, and not good at retaining facts in their heads. Instead, it rewarded those who could. 

So it was changed to a modular system, so that teachers could get a better idea of which kids understood the subjects they were studying, and which ones had problems. And it taught children more about how to learn about a subject, rather than simply testing their knowledge at once specific instance in time.

To me – this makes perfect sense. I work in computer programming, and if I can’t remember how to do something, I can look it up and then carry on. Same with almost every other profession. There are a few that it doesn’t work for – surgeons for example. If they can’t remember how to remove a kidney while they are doing the procedure, they can’t stop and go back and look it up then return to the operating theatre. 

But – those kind of professions aside – people do not need to know everything about their job all the time. But they do need to know how to learn more, how to look stuff up and how to find out what they don’t know. 

Which is what GCSEs were all about – they were about learning and understanding a subject, not about retaining facts on the subject. (I know – it is a fine line between the two, but a fairly important one). 

Anyway – the government somehow believes that returning to "Traditional" examination techniques will make the country a better place and teach our children more about what they need to know. And despite – while I (and Labour and most of tomorrows papers) are painting this as another humiliating u-turn in a long line of humiliating u-turns this government has committed, the truth is most of what Gove wanted to do he is still going to do, and most importantly he is going to return to a system where knowledge is prized over wisdom, and where a kid who can retain twenty facts in their head will get a better grade than someone who does understand the subject, but – for whatever reason – might not do well on that one specific day where they have to regurgitate these facts – will get a worse grade, despite knowing the subject better than the student who can – much like a performing monkey – spew out facts on cue. 

Without wishing to sound overly prideful and boastful, I am one of the smartest people at my company. And I have always been good at learning and (to repeat my phrase) being able to act like a performing monkey when it comes to repeating facts I was taught. 

When I was 16, I got 9 GCSEs – 5A, 4B. And I went on to do four A-Levels, and by all appearances I was going to get either straight As or a combination of As and Bs.

But I didn’t – I ended up with 1C, 2Ds and an E. Which was way – WAY below what all my teachers were predicting. 

Now – you might be thinking it was because I was lazy, or didn’t try or just gave up. 

Well – no. It was none of those things. 

The reason that I did so badly in my exams was that – about six or seven weeks before I took them – my sister was murdered. And that apparently gave the press licence to come in and spy on every aspect of our lives, hang around outside our house to talk to any friends that might visit, and to generally interfere as much as they sought fit to do so.

(On a related note – this is also why I am 100% behind the Leveson Inquiry and think Cameron is a COWARD for not taking any notice of it. But right now, I am talking about a different Tory MP, so I will get back to my point). 

With all this going on, and the fact someone I loved had just been horribly killed, my school work suffered and when it came to taking the exams, they suffered as well. 

Now – if the final grade for each A-Level had been done on a course work basis – that instead of being done on one single exam at the end of a two year period, it was done every three months or so when we moved on from one module to another – then maybe my grades would have been a lot, lot better. Because for the first year and a half, I was (quite frankly) a very good student who got very good marks. 

But no – the government of the time thought that – while GCSEs should be modular, A-Levels didn’t need to be – and so my marks pretty much went down the toilet. 

Hopefully you can see where I am leading to with this.

The benefit of modular exams and a modular course is that it allows you to gain an idea of how much the students understand what you are teaching them while you are teaching it to them. And it allows you to mark them for their understanding of that module. 

AND it means that – if they get a bad mark during the year because of some one off incident (a death in the family, for example) then it doesn’t ruin the entire course and screw up their future because of that one single incident. 

But apparently the redoubtable Mr Gove doesn’t see it that way. Apparently every student should be able to take in two years worth of knowledge and then – on one specific day, no matter if they are sick, no matter if they have anything else that might be distracting them – spew it all up on to a piece of paper to show how much they know about the subject.

The Tory party scrapped this in the 80s because they realised just how bad a system it was. So why is it suddenly a much better system thirty years later?