Monday 12 November 2018

Education system in need of reform

Jyoti Wilkinson`s excellent article on the failure of academisation rightly condemned school academies for "lowering the pay of the workforce and increasing the pay of management", but ignored another aspect of their behaviour (Morning Star, 08/11/18). Not only does "one of the government`s favourite academy trusts", the Harris Federation, pay ridiculous salaries, especially to its CEO, it is one of the four chains which have the highest number of 15-16 year olds leaving their schools. According to a report in the Guardian, the three other academy chains are Delta Academies Trust based in Wakefield, London based Aldridge Education, and the Inspiration Trust, based in Norwich.
  These academy chains are "off-rolling", with a view to keeping pupils not expected to do well in GCSEs away from the exam room. The effect is that results look better than they really are, and that academies can claim to be improving education!
  Is this any worse, though, than what most private schools do? In the independent sector schools often do not even enter their pupils for GCSEs and A-levels, preferring iGCSEs and Pre-U exams, both run by Cambridge Assessment. The latter have a very high percentage of grade A*-As awarded, far higher than traditional A-levels, explained by the chief executive by the "above average" cohort.
These exams are taken by mainly privately educated pupils, mostly set and marked by teachers in the independent sector, and not subject to the "additional rules" which Ofqual applies to A-levels. Should they be eligible for university entrance, when the government has gone to great lengths to reform "national qualifications based on content set by the government" - in other words, A-Levels? Cambridge Assessment, unlike all the other awarding bodies, is not even required to compare similar qualifications when setting a grade level to ensure a measure of consistency! 
     It is especially worrying to have such significance attached to these lightly-regulated exams after they were involved in a cheating scandal in the summer of 2017. Chief executive Michael O`Sullivan even admitted to the select committee on education that there has been a "sharp rise in the number of cases of exam malpractice" involving his exam board, rising from 269 in 2013 to 719 in 2017!
  Has our education system ever been in more need of reform?

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