Another Fail for Phillipson

It has been reported in the Telegraph that GCSE exams are set to be ‘slashed’ because they are having an impact on the ‘wellbeing’ of teenagers.

An interim report ahead of the review ordered by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, said concerns were frequently raised about the ‘pressure that exams can place on students.’

Polling commissioned by the independent panel leading the review found that half of those completing their GCSEs last summer had found it difficult or very difficult to cope with stress during the exam period.

But that is the point.

Coping with stress is part of the human condition.

Will these poor darlings ever pass a driving test? Will they be able to work as teachers, doctors, nurses, solicitors – or in any profession or occupation that requires exams or tests to be taken?

Isn’t it patronising to write off millions of children because they get stressed taking exams.

‘Resilience’ is a buzzword at the moment and the good and the great speak of building resilience in our children.

Yet at the same time they are implying that children are not resilient enough to do exams.

We should not be constantly trying to make things easier. When I did finals for my degree I could have failed the whole thing with a poor result in the exams.

There must be a reckoning at some point in any course that is undertaken. I found exams hard, but I don’t regret doing them. They were part of growing up.

Soldiers go through training to ensure they are battle-ready. It would be pointless if their training wasn’t tough.

Educational challenges are to help young people get ready for work and the struggles of life. We don’t help them by making everything easy with no pressure.

If there was a better way to assess students, we would have found it by now. Exams have been part of societies for thousands of years.

It is arrogant to think that we can replace them with other forms of assessment.

Despite the interim report concluding that ‘traditional examined assessment should remain the primary means of assessment across GCSEs’, I sense we will see fewer exams and more coursework.

And this poses great problems and will alarm those who want the best education for our children.

Having seen improvements in England’s education since the curriculum changes of 2014 we are now seeing a Labour government try everything to reverse it.

Exams are absolutely vital, and they should not be watered down, reduced in number or importance.

They inform teachers, students, parents, future employers and further education institutions where a person stands in terms of their knowledge and attainment.

Coursework – which we know teachers and unions love – is no replacement.

Middle-class children are at a distinct advantage with highly educated parents who can help them with the work.

These parents can also hire tutors to help their children, meaning the work is not authentically their own. This will widen inequality across the country.

Artificial intelligence software can assist with coursework, and this is very hard to detect. If the AI programme is generating a new response, it will not show up as plagiarism.

Coursework also needs to be properly moderated to ensure that what is going on in a school in Southampton is assessed in exactly the same way as a school in Birmingham. Moderation is extremely expensive.

Organising coursework across the country would require every school to set the same coursework task for the system to be fair. Exams are easier to organise, and it is very difficult to cheat the system.

During the pandemic we saw the enormous problems caused by teacher assessment. It was disastrous as moderation was virtually non-existent and grading was spurious.

As Laura Trott, shadow Education Secretary, correctly said, the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations is back’.

ends