The GCSE and the EBC

Now that some of the dust has started to settle on the summer's examinations debacle, what are the key issues?

One starting point is that Ofqual has not covered itself in glory. Simply put, it just is not fair - to students or to teachers – to change the examining arrangements once students have started a course. In this case, either the autumn 2011 English C/D grade boundary was too low, or the summer 2011 grade boundary was too high... in either case, Ofqual should have acted but in a way that was not unfair. The grade boundaries, once set, should have been applied consistently and then changed for 2013.

Second, Michael Gove is right to move to a single examination board for each subject. With the need to preserve market share, and with performance tables and outcomes being the key basis for choice, schools will inevitably choose the 'easier' boards when there is a choice. In addition there will be a significant pressure towards collusion between boards and schools – leading too often to corrupt practice.

Third, there is a myth about 'teaching to the test' being a bad thing. This is, and always has been, universal. In English literature, you study the books that have been set, and teachers prepare you for the sorts of questions that might be asked and have been asked in the past. That's true both for GCSE and degrees at Lady Margaret Hall – where Michael Gove studied English.

Of course, the whole point of tests is that they should assess what matters - and if they don't, they (obviously) need a redesign. So what matters? Of course knowledge does matter, to an extent, as we don't expect every student to start from scratch. But understanding how to put knowledge together in new ways, using learned techniques, is very much more important.

Try suggesting to an A Level mathematics student that a three-hour paper is just a test of memory! Of course scientists and others need ready access to a body of knowledge - but it is the techniques and methods as much as the facts that matter. And in some cases, a three-hour written test just will not allow for the assessment of the things you want to measure.

Even in science, I am less concerned with the fact that copper sulphate is blue than I am with an understanding of why some substances are coloured and others not. Another problem with knowledge is that it changes - so when I was at school learning geography, our study of weather patterns simply ignored one of the key determinants of our weather, the jet stream - indeed it is only this year that a physical phenomenon discovered during WW2 has impacted upon the public's understanding.

Which leads to:

Fourth, there is a myth that modules are bad and examinations are good. In fact, both measure short-term memory and skill acquisition - it's just (slightly) longer term for end-of-course examinations. Just ask yourself how much detailed knowledge you retain from your GCSE, CSEs, GCSEs, A Levels, or degree. My sister has a research PhD in 16th century theology - she can still discuss the issues, but once she passed her viva, much of the detail was lost - and it didn't and doesn't matter! And my BSc in chemistry has faded to the point that I can only just recall some of the course titles.

Fifth, there are important skills and attributes that we ought to assess and also ought to continue to develop – communications (oral, written, reading), information skills (storage, retrieval, evaluation), mathematical skills, and attributes such as perseverance and team working – skills that go together under the general heading of 'employability'. The problem here is that we tend to value what we can test, not test what we value... and testing team-work, for example, is difficult –- and probably impossible without seeing some team-work in action.

Sixthly, we are told that English, mathematics and science EBC will be introduced for examination from 2015, with other subjects to follow. Ignoring the problems with motivating young people to follow GCSEs where the EBC has not yet been introduced, the limited range of the EBC will narrow the curriculum into something that is even more limited than the grammar school curriculum of the 1950s.
As a long-term proponent of vocational education for all, I find the total obsession with academic subjects deeply worrying.

So what does all this mean?

If the EBC is to be for all, based on a series of standard end-of-course written examinations, then it will: