Exams; The Great Leap Backwards

Having written my introduction, the difficult second blog would have to be about Something. My guess, and I know me pretty well, would have been "why oh why did Labour oppose Scottish independence so vehemently". Well, that one's coming soon, but I read an article and had Thoughts, and my Thoughts are what this blog is for. So, 'A' levels...

I did my 'A' levels 30 years ago, and the Boy is now choosing secondaries. So, despite working in schools occasionally, until I read this excellent article by the always interesting Laura McInerney I was not aware that 'A' levels are reverting to a one-shot exam model. The piece explains how the changes have been badly planned, and will be bad for students, schools and universities alike. I agree vigorously with all of this and would like to add one further point; single exams are wrong in and of themselves.

Do you get nervous on big occasions? Anxious, sweating, vomiting nerves? Do you suffer from hay fever, diabetes, PMT, or any similar recurring condition? Have you recently had an accident, or a bereavement, or split up with your partner? Tough luck, this single exam defines your future, immediate and long-term. Your excellent coursework, dedication, imagination and flexibility count for nothing if you can't scribble key points and perform complex calculations which at this precise moment in life are utterly without meaning. For three solid hours, to the exclusion of everything else swirling round your head and body.

The snapshot, one-and-done exam was discredited when I did my 'A' levels in the 1980s. Notoriously, universities offered places on predicted grades, causing chaos when life got in the way. Equally notoriously, degree results correlated inversely to 'A' level results, and far more closely to 'O' levels. Which were also one-and-done, but at a generalist level and with far less serious consequences.

From the above, you would probably think I was bad at exams and a diligent courseworker. Precisely the opposite. I am good under pressure and at deadlines, remembering facts and names, forming coherent sentences and arguments, and making a virtue out of my atrocious handwriting (it made it look like I spent the exam trying to catch up with my brilliant thoughts, and won me the benefit of the doubt with names and spellings).

What this meant for my education was that I thought I was invincible. However lazy I was in class, however little homework I did, however many Smiths concerts and football matches I went to, I could pull it all together on exam day and come up smelling of roses. This interesting approach meant that I sailed through 'O' levels, scraped through 'A' levels, and fluked my first year degree exams on pure cunning. And then we began to specialise and I sank like a stone. Because I hadn't done any actual academic work in five years, and the education system had let me get away with that.

I'm a pretty extreme example, but one-and-done exams fail exam experts as much as they fail exam-phobes. Regular reporting and testing, with the opportunity to repeat failed tasks, is far more analogous to most work situations than building up to a single moment. If you're a gymnast, or a singer, then you have to get it right once and once only. Everyone else gets it right by learning, testing, peer feedback, trial and error.

This government more than most is obsessed with education as a preparation for working life, rather than a means of personal development. Perversely, these new old exams will penalise those who work consistently hard in favour of those who have the skill to bring it all together on the day, and the luck that the day is not a bad one.