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John Redwood Wokingham Times Article

Posted by John Redwood, MP for Wokingham, at 14:19, Mon 30 October 2006:

I was pleased to learn that the Education Secretary has decided to cut the amount of course work in some GCSEs. It is the first sign that the government is aware that there are problems with our examination systems.

I think our students are examined too often. Anyone going on to University now faces public exams every summer from the age of 16 through to the age of 21, if they have end year exams each year at university as many do. There is not a lot of value value in taking GCSEs in subjects they are planning to study at a higher level, and it makes a mess of the sixth form that they have to do A/S at the end of the Year 12. These could be cut out, so that some summer terms could be used for tackling new frontiers of knowledge rather than for revising, sitting exams and unwinding afterwards.

I was recently talking to a GCSE student who explained to me that he planned to have full marks for his course work. He could, he explained, keep on resubmitting it. The teacher could tell him what was wrong with it, and eventually he could submit a version that gained full marks. It did not seem to be a very sensible way of proceeding. It is better that students should range more widely as they study, with more emphasis on assessing what they have learned by written examination at the end.

The best universities find it increasingly difficult to use either GCSE or predicted A level grades to decide who is worthy of a place. Of course the best universities want the best students. They are not biased against certain groups, nor are they falling over backwards to help the children of the privileged, as some allege. They have problems deciding who will be the best, given the very different standards of teaching and attainment between the differing schools of this country, and given the inadequacies of the main public exams to differentiate between the good and the very good pupil. They are gradually reintroducing entrance exams and oral tests of their own, to try to work out who has the right power and flexibility of mind to benefit from an academic education.

It is worrying that social mobility has reduced in recent years. Part of the reason is that bright children from poor backgrounds no longer have access to free places at better schools, or places at a grammar school in many parts of the country. They are left in the poor performing comprehensives in the inner cities. They may suffer so much that even a tutor from Oxbridge falling over himself to give some a chance, cannot rescue them because their education has not equipped them in any way for life in an elite university. We need to do so much better in our worst performing schools, for they are preventing talent from shining through.. It is going to take more than just reducing course work to sort out the problems.

We need to trust schoolteachers and headteahcers more, and send less instructions form the centre. We need to create more places at the better schools, so more children have a real chance to shine.