A-levels and Education

Two posts from the BBC this week that seem to show different results in our Education system in Britain.

First we have this article, Fewer teens achieve maths target, from earlier in the week which seems to show slight drops in achievement by 14 year olds in England for maths and only slight increases in English and Science. Whilst the rises/drops are only small they need to be balanced against the targets set of 85% reaching Level 5 in English and in mathematics by this year.

The BBC has looked at the story as balancing one year against the next rather than looking at the underlying problem which is that the targets are being breached by large amounts. This makes the results look better than they really are.

The opposition spokesmen caught this and pointed out the problems as follows:

Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the results confirmed Ofsted's view that half of secondary schools were performing at a level that was "not good enough". The government was being complacent. Secondary schools needed to learn lessons from the best, with a rigorous focus on better behaviour and classes organised in sets in all academic subjects so children were taught in groups of similar ability.

Liberal Democrat spokesman Stephen Williams said the government had fallen "woefully short" of its own targets. "Any progress previously made has now stalled or is even going backwards," he said. "Ministers must now say when they expect to reach their targets and what measures they will put in place to help teachers and children achieve them."

Next we have the A-Level results coming out down south today which are again supposedly going to up in number of passes and the number of passes at the highest level.

Ministers defend standards but are making changes so the exams will be challenging in future, with the very best papers getting a new A* grade. Some universities have said that exam grades are no longer sufficient for them to use to select undergraduates.

One student who is taking her A-levels said

the boom in A grades was down to students taking "much easier subjects like media studies or flower arranging" not maths, economics or history.

"There is also the fact that the soft options that are available now, were not available 40 years ago - I wonder whether the pass rate differences between now and then would be so great if there had been the opportunity for some people to study the softer options?

"As a student who has studied for three tough academic subjects I find it very disheartening when my hours of study are effectively written off as my qualifications are seemingly worthless."

How does this balance against the fact that rates of passes are stagnant or falling when pupils are fourteen?

From my own observations from the type of work my kids are doing at school I see standards are much lower, both in terms of the the level of work being done and the quality of work that is acceptable.
Much of the work appears to be aimed at reaching targets rather than reaching above that to proper understanding of concepts and the application of these. Perhaps I am being unfair as I was lucky enough to attend a school that ranked very highly in England versus a standard school in Scotland.