David Vance has demonstrated the usefulness of setting up, running and most importantly writing your own blog. His Tangled Web site into gives him the space to articulate his own views and take on those of his critics. I hope others will follow his example (send us yours if you’re doing the same). It also sets up the possiblity of interblog dialogue. So here’s my own response to David’s post on the record high rate of A Level passes announced yesterday.
David,
I have to take issue with you, on a number of counts.
Be very careful with the 96% pass figure. That’s the percentage of all entrants. One effect of school league tables is that individual schools are highly incentivised to exclude those likely to fail. In addition, the A2 level exams scan the sixth form population a year ahead for those likely to be in above their heads, academically speaking.
Arguably the quality of A Level entrants has been heightened since our time. So too has the involvement of parents as proactive agents of their children’s learning (from a very early age) – the private tuition market is one booming micro-segment of an otherwise moribund private sector in NI!
There certainly is a problem with trying to sort out who is the best of the best. But that comes in part from the flattening of teaching practices by the blunt instrument of the national curriculum (instigated by a conservative government) that emphasises the need to conform to the average, and often encourages teachers to abandon the gifted as outside their category of interest or even competence.
Your use of the term Gold Standard is interesting. The monetary gold standard was abandoned in the UK in 1931, and more lately in the US when Nixon finally broke the link in 1971. Since then we’ve had a floating currency system. Now the price of gold rises and falls in relation to worldwide demand for the metal.
As with markets, so with education. The demands from employers have changed and will continue to change considerably according to market conditions and the degree to which technology relieves individuals from the more menial tasks, of handwriting (word processors) spelling correctly (spell checkers), or even counting (spreadsheets) properly. Knowledge arguably is broadening more than it’s deepening. What is a school to do in the face of such challenges?
Tying it to a timeless Platonic ideal of what education should be, is inimical to the need to float education to the changing needs of employers, parents and the economy and society at large. That there are flaws in the system at any point in time is both inevitable and obvious. What’s much more interesting to explore is what might be done about it.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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