Abolish the league tables
So Michael Gove has pretty much accused certain schools of boosting their position on these infernal, meaningless league tables by including too many vocational courses. Subjects such as nail technology and travel and tourism, he believes, don't hold as much clout in the real world as proper GCSEs and A-Levels like Latin or Geography.
The implication here is that it is the underperforming schools who are only ever involved in dirty tricks campaigns where these tables are concerned. Not so, I'm afraid, Mr Gove. I daresay a lot of the top performing ones are doing it too.
In the early 90s I took my exams at an all boys' school that currently heads up the league table in its area and indeed comes pretty much top in the whole country. Back then there were more than a handful of students whose mock exams suggested that they wouldn't do quite so well in the league table-influencing real thing. So what did the school do?
Offer them extra lessons to get them up to scratch? Nope.
Encouragingly say “what's important is not what mark you receive but that you try your best”? Wrong again.
In actual fact all of these underperforming students were asked to take their exams privately so their inferior grades wouldn't be included on the school's results board. Actually, asked is the wrong word. Told would be more accurate.
Hence that year my school achieved a 100% pass rate at GCSE and A-Level. As they have done every year since. Incredible, eh?
Now I don't know if such a practice has gone on since I left or indeed if it goes on in any of the other schools who achieve perfect scores in the league tables, but if I was a betting man...
Of course, no-one ever queries these top scores and instead Mr Gove has chosen to cast suspicion on those schools who are creeping up behind them, schools that are actually using their initiative and supplying a demand. Nail technology and fish husbandry may not merit two GCSEs in Mr Gove's eyes, but they are far more likely to set you on the path to making a proper living than five of these so-called 'proper' exams.
Unless, of course, he means for these GCSEs and A-Levels to get you a good place at university where you'll supposedly end up with a better job than if you'd left school at 16 or 18 to do an apprenticeship or, indeed, a vocational course.
There's another name for that and it is elitism. It will no doubt continue in some small way in the years to come where graduates will be given jobs based on where they have studied rather than if they are actually the best person to do that job.
A few levels down in the real world, however, and we need schools to offer vocational courses more than ever. Not necessarily just to lead students into jobs, but to inspire them to set up in business on their own based on the skills they have gained.
I still curse my dad for steering me away from doing business studies at A-Level. I am convinced I would be earning a much better living now if I had gone down that road. Instead I did German. I haven't been to Germany since the sixth form and can barely remember how to ask the way to the cinema.
I have the greatest admiration for anyone with vocational skills and they are people we need in society every day, whether it is to do your nails or fix your boiler. Indeed the chap who has just come round and fixed my boiler on the coldest day of the year is, to my mind, positively godlike in his expertise.
Clearly, good grades in 'proper' exams help students go on to be doctors, scientists and, erm, lawyers, but the world needs people with other vocational skills just as much. Please do not bring them down, Mr Gove, or discourage schools from running these vital courses in the first place.
How then shall we solve this league tables issue? How can we encourage, nay insist, that all schools be totally open about the results they have achieved from their students in all subjects. The answer is simple – get rid of these tables. I could have told you that 20 years ago.
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