Though I'm (wrongly) imagining the educational equivalent of Judge Dredd, it sounds like it'd be a step-up from the status quo.

The problem is integrity. As one who works with young graduates I am unable to place any reliance on their exams grades as an indicator of their literacy, numeracy and so on.

Until we have a system that is perceived as 'honest' and that discriminates between candidates and has a significant failure rate then the value of the exams will continue to be eroded.

As for having the confidence in the teaching profession to set and mark 'course work'; sorry but that's simply risible.

We need independence in both the setting and marking of exams. Course work should not feature in pre undergraduate assessment.

Something needs to be done. I used to work at a university and found that British students, unlike their foreign counterparts, could not be releid upon to understand the rules of punctuation or indeed even the use (or existence) of paragraphs.

The dumbing down of exams, especial GCSEs has been a disaster. It fails everyone.

Is it too late to go back to O levels? I understand they're still sat elsewhere in the world.

Of course the problem with in-house assessors is that familiarity might affect judgement.

Also I doubt unions would put up with it - the assessors might discover some teachers aren't much good....

Even if those factors were evened out, a grade earned on papers taken in the hay-fever season gives only a snapshot of performance on a particular day.

Agreed, but if the teachers were left to assign a mark they would almost always provide an overly optimistic view of the student in question - this goes on all the time with UCAS applications, it's not unheard of. It's also difficult to tell if it was misfortune which brought the grade down or if the candidate is genuinely unprepared for the subject. Sending someone who would struggle into university does nobody any favours and would only end up denting the student's confidence further, possibly discouraging them from education altogether.

As things are, exam grades can be moderated slightly in particularly unusual cases but the difference made is very small indeed. I was told mine might be altered because of untreated severe depression but nobody was able to confirm what changes were made or how many - the system is a shambles, there should be more clarity in these circumstances.

I didn't get into university this year (A-level grades ACD) but that's because I didn't get the grades. I could claim that the system had failed me and it wasn't working but that would be immature and naive. No, what this summer has shown me is that I need to get my health problems sorted out and reinforce my subject knowledge by studying hard at college. That's the point of exams: getting able candidates into university, not getting anyone in on sympathy.

Teaching has become a career rat race like in any other business. In these days of academies where one's need to impress governors to maintain one's professional status, indeed existence has become a priority, it would be no surprise to find teachers being more generous in their assessment of pupils. And who can blame them?

We need to put more trust in the professional judgment of teachers to mark students' work through the course and use those marks to award a grade, or at least a substantial part of it, say 50%.

Total balls.

Schoold children would be vying for their teacher's approval, and the way would be open for gross injustice.

Coursework needs to go as well. Do you think Mr Investment Banker is going to let his dim child do his coursework by himself?

What we need are exams in which children answer questions, and are marked on how they perform in a controlled environment where they are on a level playing field with their peers.

As pointed out by Bangorstu above, we also need to teach children how to put together essays.

An exam Grade should include an indication of how many attempts it took, so that my English Literature 'A' Level B (1) can be fairly compared to my son's A (3). Me, bitter?

So if we abandon secondary school coursework all together until undergrad level won't the kids be totally unprepared for it when get handed massive non-essay assignments?

For those who hanker after the O and A levels of yesteryear, there is a big snag.

Perhaps 20% of the population went to grammar school, and O levels were designed for them. GCSEs are designed for everyone.

Same for A levels. Not so long ago, less than 10% of the population went to University, and now it's nearer 50%. The exam has changed to accommodate this.

What is the answer? This particular article seems to be rather special pleading by the leader of a particular organisation.

But are exams the answer? Yes, for those who want to go to university, but for 50% of the population, no. We persist in trying to make everyone do an academic course until they are 18 - then wonder why standards are low and why so many drop out.

As for having the confidence in the teaching profession to set and mark 'course work'; sorry but that's simply risible.

Recalling the annual marathon of getting half a dozen teachers to agree on the marks to be awarded for chemistry investigations I hope that you don't think that we weren't trying. The problem is that if coursework is to be significantly different from an examination then some freedom to select a topic is good. Comparing the standards of different approaches to different topics requires either dangerous subjectivity or rigid use of an inappropriate checklist.

Here in Northern Ireland we'll happily take anything over Catriona Ruane!

"Let's get rid of the 11+!"

"Alright, so what do we replace it with?"

"What? Don't look at me! Down with exams! Boo! Hiss!"

Teachers also like to encourage their students.

Perhaps the first step would be to stop willying about with 'controlled assessors', multiple-choice questions, course-work, modular exams.

I'd quite happily settle for exam papers that didn't have impossible questions on them, and that were marked properly.

Instead of harking back to a golden era of assessment that never really existed, the government should set in place a thorough review of assessment and examinations and look at how teacher assessment could be used more effectively.

Absolute piffle. What needs to be done is to make exams as hard as they were in the 1950s, not the dumbed-down turd that is modern education.

We need to put more trust in the professional judgment of teachers to mark students' work through the course and use those marks to award a grade, or at least a substantial part of it, say 50%.

But how can we when those same teachers are assessed on the basis of those very same grades? No teacher would be foolish enough to fail half their own class.

Some people are good at doing exams; I was fortunate to have the right kind of head for it. Many people with considerable ability do not have the good luck to shine in exams, and, let's face it, it's hardly a skill likely to be of the remotest use, other than in the exam room.

In the world of education it is a well explored path that you start with the outcomes - what you want the student (of whatever age) to be able to do as a result of studying. Having established the outcomes you design a learning experience and assessment aligned with the outcomes to determine whether they have been achieved. Gove, typically of people without any real knowledge or understanding of education is starting at the wrong place.

Incidentally my background is professional (as a practising Architect) and I only became involved in education late in my career. Prior to lecturing I shared many of the same preconceptions.

Sounds like a system designed for cronyism, unfair pressure and collusion (As well as an obvious piece of empire building). You can only guarantee the integrity of the system if there is no relationship between the assessor and the examiner.

That's before you get to the well known systematic difference in the accuracy of A level result prediction that exists between the independent and state sectors under the current system.

Alternatively, we could recognize that the stupid idea of exam boards competing against each other for custom is yet another aspect of the failed application of neo-liberal market nostrums to everything and go back to the system that worked perfectly well before it was 'reformed'.

I'm sorry James, you are arguing against people who believe that every child learns in exactly the same way (and I include ALL politicians in this belief!)

An exam system sounds oh-so-simple. You learn "facts" and at any given moment you repeat those "facts" and if you can repeat sufficient of them, then you'll pass a test.

Some youngsters can soak up facts, and regurgitate them at will. Others who may or may not be able to do this, may be far better lateral thinkers.

Everyone is different.

The ONLY way to assess pupils is a properly moderated teacher assessment using senior teachers with years of experience.

Sadly, the cash goes to "teachers" and "Headteachers" sitting on their arses buggering about with computers using two finger typing, NOT to folk who know what makes kids tick. But again, that's what the government asks for.

Good post Birdie 59.

Abolish national exams, let the universities set their own exams. Stops people buying private tutoring up-to-the eyes, promotes vocational subjects so people don't feel forced into universities and makes student realise a bit of bloody work is required, not just mucking around

(3rd year undergrad here, bitter, moi?)

Good God. Which planet......?

Currently in my kids' (old) school the teachers practically write the coursework for them. Do the kids complain? Do their parents? Does the Head? Are the schools grades good? Is the school over-subscribed? Is it fully funded?

All must be well.

I once worked - briefly - for a consultancy "training" people in NVQs. Same thing. A complete sham and waste of taxpayers money. Assessors were expected to get people through, not evaluate their work honestly. The company concerned achieved its ISO wotsit and Investors in People certification because the paperwork was nicely filled in and as a result of his fine work the MD of this company won contracts worth £11m (of taxpayers money) and retired when he sold the company.

The whole sector stinks with fraudulent activity that the regulating bodies simply close their eyes to, because all the indicators used to track success say all's well.

BobShkibold

3 January 2012 08:17PM

Absolute piffle. What needs to be done is to make exams as hard as they were in the 1950s, not the dumbed-down turd that is modern education

Well I haven't taught for a few years now, but before I hung up my boots, the 10 and 11 year olds in primary schools were expected to know concepts that we tackled for O Level, and were examined on those for our grades, at my extremely well-respected and ancient grammar school which has a list of famous old boys longer than your arm.

If it were possible to transfer you when you were say 14, into a modern class of 11 years olds, you'd have struggled to keep up with the better ones. Not a nice thought is it?

Quite.

I know first-hand of teaching colleagues who have been instructed by their headteachers to re-write coursework for students who achieved low marks with their own efforts. Every teacher and every head of department is hauled over the coals by his/her Headteacher if they don't achieve ever-improving grades. I myself am given targets by my school for students to achieve a Grade A at A-level, for students who cannot spell or write basic sentences, and who have to have textbooks read to them because they cannot/will not read themselves.

Will I do everything to try and get them that grade ? Yes, of course. If I don't, my job's on the line. I cannot be poacher and gamekeeper simultaneously. The more of the qualification I'm responsible for, the less I would trust the mark. That mind sound appalling, and I do have a poor relationship with my management precisely because I refuse to re-write coursework, or dictate answers to students who won't do work themselves. However, I am also aware that when I mark controlled assessments, even if I am determined to apply the mark scheme fairly and without favour, I am almost certainly more generous to my students than I would be to faceless papers from students I didn't know. I have been on courses where coursework has been described as "free marks" on the grounds that it is entirely within the teacher's control, and the exam boards know that.

As long as league tables exist, heads will demand their teachers produce miraculous results. As long as miraculous results are demanded then teachers will find any way they can of producing them. If you want to trust the results provided by schools you need to have independent assessment, and as little content marked by schools as possible.

Oh, and not having commercially competing exam boards might help too !

Gah, don't you just hate it when you write a para condemning students' spelling, only to re-read it and find your own mistakes ?

The shame, the shame....

1) Don't have more than one exam board for each subject.
2) For any results of external significance, the marking should be anonymous and in no circumstances done by teachers of the same school as the pupils.
3) Exams to be of a sort that, as far as possible, cannot be "mugged up" for.

As long as league tables exist, heads will demand their teachers produce miraculous results.

As long as league tables exist, SOME POOR-QUALITY heads will demand their teachers produce miraculous results.

There. Corrected that for you.

20% of kids leave school functionally innumerate and/or illiterate. Unemployable, to use another term. One in five.

Then they bitch and moan about immigrants, whether from Poland or Pakistan, taking "their" jobs, or if we're very unlucky they go and kill a Stephen Lawrence or an Anuj Bidve.

The only constant here seems to be that the teachers who seem to be congenitally incapable of teaching anything whatsoever to a fifth of their charges are never, ever fired. Society is to blame.

One teacher needed 36 attempts to pass a (frankly imbecilically simple) literacy test; another needed 39 attempts at the equally idiot-proof numeracy test. Somebody should be telling these morons, about 34 attempts earlier, they are never going to be teachers. Somebody should also be questioning why they were ever taken onto expensive teacher training courses.

Yes, we should be testing some people here: the teachers, not the pupils. And the consequences of failure should be very direct and very permanent.

I'm afraid you underestimate the pernicious effect that having a salary dependent on results can have on you. In every industry, from health to banking, through politics to policing through to education, all but the noblest human being is vulnerable to pressure that might cost them their job and thus their families their homes.

No system can claim integrity if assessment rests with those whose futures depend on the results. No human being should be placed in such a position.

The phrase "we're all human", is a cliche for a reason.

Education has gone so wrong in this country. It is all about the school - getting the best results for the school, where the school is on the League Tables etc. Free schools and academies will not improve this and in fact will probably make it worse.

Instead of looking for a new way of assessing students we should be looking at the best way to teach them. Assessment should be for teaching. It should be looking at where the child is, how the child is learning and the best way to support the child to progress appropriately.

Formal assessment may be needed at a few points in the child's education but the main focus of assessment should be assessment for learning. The formal assessment should be carried completely independently of the teachers and school the child attends and so should only be done at an age when the child could be expected cope with that.

At an INSET session today we were told that under the new OFSTED framework, a school would be judged 'outstanding' if the children can tell inspectors what level they were currently working at, and what they need to do to progress to the level above.

I don't know about you, but I find that deeply depressing.

We seem to teaching kids to internalise the assessment structure and tailor all their outcomes to it. No wonder they have no clue when they have to think for themselves.

BTW I shouldn't be commenting at all on education apparently. Teachers aren't allowed. :-)

dapperdanielle

3 January 2012 10:22PM

BTW I shouldn't be commenting at all on education apparently. Teachers aren't allowed. :-)

Quite right Danielle.

We know nothing. Not one of the 440,000 in the job, or the many tens of thousands of us who have now left.

All we need is for Sound Money to tell us the error of our ways .............

So the argument is that exams are not perfectly reliable, so we should replace them with a system of teacher assessment that is guaranteed to be both more expensive and less reliable?

God, I can't wait for the hippy generation to die, and take all their stupid, nihilistic with them to the grave.

...their stupid, nihilistic ideas...

Exams are about as good as we're going to get - teacher-based assessment would be far less reliable. What we perhaps should be doing is revising the curriculum less often - as it is, teachers are having to constantly learn a new syllabus, which makes it harder for them to teach students.

An exam result is like a barometer in a closed room, when you want to know what the temperature is outside. You're wanting to know something that the instrument doesn't measure!

Folks want to know if a young person is suitable for job x, y, or z, and all the exam tells them is how good they are at an unknown (to the employer) aspect of (e.g.) history.

Anyone who knows a teacher will know that they can talk about every child in their class for 20 to 30 minutes. But folk don't want that .... they want to know that they got an "A" in English Literature. Nice, simple, box ticking. Then they want to judge the child, the teacher, the school, the town on that, without knowing anything else.

It's not so much the content of a new syllabus that's the issue.

Most subjects - apart from IT - should maintain the same core content, and teachers should be able to teach their degree subject to KS4.

It's the constant shifting mess as to how this information should be delivered and which skill set is in fashion, and the arbitrary and political way inspectors operate.

Since the demise of externally-marked KS1 SATs, teacher assessment is the only way of being able to track pupil progress between KS1 and KS2.

Our assessments are moderated by senior teachers (deputy heads, curriculum co-ordinator etc) to ensure that not only assessment is consistent within the year group but across the year groups too so that a level 4a would be the same in say, year 5 and year 6.

We have had real issues with SATs marking over the past few years and we are not alone. Our writing papers went back for re-marking two years ago and came back completely untouched - not a single mark had been changed, something we knew should have been an impossibility.

Good grief, Danielle, it is indeed depressing! It sounds like a few sturdy nails going into the idea of teaching for creativity and originality.

Good luck next year, MU. You've got a really mature attitude to a temporary setback.

Were they harder then? That were probably just different. I took O levels, they were just memory tests.
People who want to go back to the Golden 50s, should remember that we were a Country in decline then.
Most pupils left school very poorly educated, without any qualifications. Our workforce was badly educated and trained. Large numbers of the population could not read and write then. Literacy is still poor for many, but has improved.
Any method of deciding ability is imperfect, and looking back to an old system, used to test very small groups of pupils is not the way forward.

If we can't trust school teachers to assess pupils why should we trust University Lecturers?

If an assessment by a teacher is a suitable way of determining a child's performance it follows that a similar process is s suitable way of determining a teacher's performance. I look forward to the teaching profession supporting the introduction of a performance related pay system, based on an assessment of an individual teacher's performance by their more senior colleagues.

We know nothing. Not one of the 440,000 in the job, or the many tens of thousands of us who have now left.

'It can be no more logical to leave the running of the education system solely to teachers than to leave the running of the banking system solely to bankers. Discuss.'

We persist in trying to make everyone do an academic course until they are 18 - then wonder why standards are low and why so many drop out.

It has taken years of effort by the left in this country to shoehorn all children into the same academic rut in the name of equality and not 'writing off children', now you want to undo all that?!

An exam result is like a barometer in a closed room, when you want to know what the temperature is outside. You're wanting to know something that the instrument doesn't measure!

Depends on the exam. For instance, most employers would like to know if their pupils are numerate and literate to the point of (a) being able to solve simple mathematical problems quickly in their heads, and somewhat more complex problems with the aid of pencil and paper, (b) able to measure things, (c) able to understand information presented as diagrams, charts, tables, etc., (d) able to comprehend moderately complex textual information accurately and reasonably quickly, (e) able to transmit moderately complex information clearly, concisely and accurately and without embarrassing gaffes, (f) able to recall facts from long term memory quickly and accurately when required.

A lot of what was in the exams that was useful in testing these things has been stripped out by the nihilistic hippy fools, for various stupid reasons, including inverted snobbery (grammar is so bourgeois) and Alice-in-wonderland egalitarianism (all must have prizes). Thus the exams' usefulness has bee diminished, but it is not as useless yet as teacher assessments would be.

Folks want to know if a young person is suitable for job x, y, or z, and all the exam tells them is how good they are at an unknown (to the employer) aspect of (e.g.) history.

GCSEs and A levels are not designed to test job proficiency. They evolved from university admissions tests. Consequently, they're about how good the examinees are academically, how capable they are of following a more advanced course in similar topics. Do they have the essential basic grounding? Do they have a demonstrated ability to learn? Can they weigh up, assess and relate information? Can they construct arguments and criticize arguments? Along the way, these exams do incidentally test some skills (such as numeracy and literacy and reasoning) that are relevant to a wide range of jobs. Exam results are more likely to be objective, rigorous and unbiased than teacher assessments. Therefore, they are to be preferred.

Anyone who knows a teacher will know that they can talk about every child in their class for 20 to 30 minutes. But folk don't want that .... they want to know that they got an "A" in English Literature. Nice, simple, box ticking. Then they want to judge the child, the teacher, the school, the town on that, without knowing anything else.

You're right. People don't want thirty minutes of vacuous waffle padded out with ingratiating phrases ("you're child is very creative and articulate", blah, blah, blah) and tainted with the teacher's bias, sentiment and prejudice. They want concrete proof that the child has learned useful skills. In particular, they want proof that the child is proficient in English and mathematics, and also has developed the ability study hard, learn effectively, think long-term, understand goals, focus, persist and achieve assigned goals. A system with rigorous exams does achieve this.

I accept what you say to some extent. BUT, a teacher is there to do everything they possibly can for the children. If the choice is doing right by the pupils, or doing Gove's (or his predecessors) bidding then the kids come first. Sometimes you have to put your neck on the line .... but make bloody sure you can demonstrate you're in the right!

This is the nub of the failures within the education system, the over-weaning arrogance and stupidity of some working within the higher education system who perceive themselves as superior to teachers, who could not possibly be trusted to assess coursework accurately and competently.
Those of us with any memory left might recall the success of CSEs with their in-built assessments and high level of co-operation between teaching colleagues.
The key problem for teachers is that over three decades they have been given curriculum initiatives handed down by university level politicians and educationalists with extremely limited ideas as to how schools function.
All these types possess is an enormous and erroneous self-belief which has served only to confuse and
wrongly direct schools from their real purposes.
I do not include all higher education contributors in this piece, only those fools who believe themselves to be superior to mere teachers on the basis of the age of their students.

If you think an exam mark will tell you that, you are very, very deluded!

We have, in the most important political job in the land, a man who went to what some folk call "the best schools and universities in the land." He has more advisers than you can shake a stick at. His exam results you would expect to be good.

Yet he makes gaffe after gaffe even on the purely factual stuff.

And that's just one tiny example.

If an employer is desperate to know all the things you reckon, then he has a couple of options. He can set his own tests, OR he can talk to the child's teachers. Both would take a tiny amount of time in comparison to the expected time the employee would be with him.

I once applied for, and got a job which involved driving. I had a driving licence after doing the TEST. But the boss wanted to know if I could actually drive not whether I had a bit of paper saying I could, so I had to do a driving test specifically for him, in one of his vehicles that I would be driving. That's the difference between his attitude (long ago) and yours.

The point was that many on here, who have no interest in being a teacher, and never ever have done, have some ridiculous belief that they know all there is to know, and teachers who have spent a lifetime in the job know absolutely nothing.

If you were going to discuss running banks, you'd been a total idiot in not including SOME input from the bankers! Indeed, on the minutiae, they'd make you look an idiot! The same goes for any job after someone has been in it for years/decades.