In view of the recent discussion about educational standards generally in
State education and England in particular, I thought some FW readers would
like to know that evidence is now clear that grades have been devalued.
This is from a study of 900 schools conducted by Carol Fitz-Gibbon,
professor of education at Durham University, and advisor to the
government's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
She claims that standards at A-level (pre-university exams taken at 18
years) and at GCSEs (taken at 16 years) have been adjusted downwards by a
whole grade over the past five years. In the national curriculum tests for
children at 11, 48% of children reached the pass mark in English in 1995
whereas 70% did so last. In mathematics, the corresponding pass rates
between those years were 44% and 69%.
Her research will be published in a book soon and apparently she rejects
the usual suggestion that the improved grades are attributable to extra
effort by the candidates. Confidential questionnaires sent out to hundreds
of thousands of schoolchildren suggested that they were not wroking any
harder today than in 1995. In fact, A-level students were being set less
homework. She says that these conclusions are supported by university
lecturers who say that students do not know as much as predecessors did,
particularly in the science subjects.
My case, as previously expressed in FW, is that this decline in standards
has been going for at least a century ever since a very small group of
politicians and civil servants tricked Parliament into starting State
education by use of false statistics. The only difference between now and
the 1870s is that, probably, the lowering of standards has been gently
accelerating. I'm old enough now to look back half a century and I know
that when I took the first type of new examination at 16 (O-levels), they
were immediately considered to be easier than the old School Certificate
which preceded it. I couldn't judge the difference, of course. All I know
is that when I saw some GCSE exam papers recently for 16 year-olds, I
couldn't believe what I was looking at.
Of course, if the lowering of standards and the apparent rise in passmarks
is accelerating as I maintain, it obviously can't continue for much longer.
There'll be such a deterioration that developed nation governments will
have to drastically revise all their education policy. At the moment,
they're only nibbling at the edges of quasi-privatisation, but there'll
come a time (and I think it will be within 5-10 years) when they'll have to
go fully into a voucher scheme for all children. And that will be the
beginning of a revival of a educational opportunities.
For those children who want to learn, of course.
Keith Hudson
