Know Your Place
David Green, 22 November 2004
Prince Charles stands accused of wanting people to ‘know their place’. According to the current Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, the Prince is hostile to the ambitions of ordinary folk, whose interests are championed by the present Government. Does this accusation fit the facts?
If Mr Clark were really in favour of allowing everyone the chance to make the most of their talents he would, at the very least, expect schools to aim for the highest possible standard of attainment. But, in truth, the present government has done quite the opposite. At every level where measures are available, there is evidence, not only of falling standards, but also of the decline being deliberately concealed by moving the benchmarks. The Government is more interested in social engineering than in real achievement.
Here is some of the evidence. First, employers and universities, have been pointing out the consequences of school failure for some years now. In August 2004, a CBI survey of over 500 firms found that 37% were not satisfied with the basic literacy and numeracy of school leavers, up from 34% in the 2003 survey. During the previous 12 months, 33% of firms had to give school leavers basic training in literacy and numeracy.
The latest issue of the Times Higher Education Supplement reports a survey of about 400 university academics. It found that 71% agreed that their ‘institution had admitted students who are not capable of benefiting from higher level study’. And 48% said they had ‘felt obliged to pass a student whose performance did not really merit a pass’. Nearly 20% admitted turning ‘a blind eye’ to student plagiarism.
Key Stage 2
At Key Stage 2 (age 11) level 4 represents the expected standard of literacy for children of that age. In 1996 48% reached level 4 and in 2002 it was 75%. Was the achievement real? The University of Durham’s Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre found that there had been no real increase. It applied the same test of ability between 1997 and 2002 in 122 schools involving about 5,000 pupils. In reading it found no increase in ability.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) commissioned a report into the claim that standards had been lowered. It compared 1996 and 2000 and claimed that, overall, their evidence ‘gives the lie to any theory of conspiracy to undermine’ standards. However, when the report compared English at Key Stage 2 (for eleven year olds) between 1996 and 1999 it found that reading standards had fallen. Reading (and total marks) for the 1999 test were, on average only 4 marks lower, but the overall 1999 cut-scores for levels 4 and 5 were nine marks below those in 1996, overcompensating for the harder 1999 reading test by 5 marks.
GCSEs
The latest results for 2003/04 show that only 53.4 % achieved 5 or more grades A* – C at GCSE or equivalent. 4.2% did not achieve any passes at all.
In August 2001, Jeffrey Robinson, a senior examiner in GCSE maths for the OCR Examination Board, claimed that pupils achieving As and Bs would have received C and D grades ten years earlier. The pass mark for a C grade had fallen from 65% in 1989 to 48% in 2001.
‘A’ Levels
The Engineering Council produced a report in 1999 and compared A level grades with a standard diagnostic test devised by the University of Coventry. The same test was applied between 1991 and 1998. In 1991 those with a grade B at A level in 1991 scored 40.5/50 on the diagnostic test. In 1998 those with a B scored 36.8/50. At grade C the gap was from 39.9 in 1991 to 32.1 in 1998. As the report remarks, the score of 32.1 in 1998 was 2.3 marks (4.6%) lower than the N grade achievement in the same year.
A study by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) published a report on ‘A’ level achievement over time. It found that the proportion of pupils obtaining two or more ‘A’ level passes between 1975 and 1995 had increased from 12.1% to 19.9%. To test whether the achievement was real Dr Robert Coe of Durham University has been able to compare actual achievements between 1988 and 1998 using the International Test of Developed Abilities (ITDA). The test is applied voluntarily in a minority of schools, and the results may not be representative of all schools. However, across six subjects (biology, English, French, geography, history and mathematics) achievements fell steadily. The average ITDA score for maths in 1988 was 72.3 and 59.3 in 1998, and for English Literature 57.0 in 1988 and 51.5 in 1998. However, the average ‘A’ level grade increased over the same period from 4.59 in 1988 to 5.96 in 1998 and in maths from 3.78 in 1988 to 5.69 in 1998. (The ‘A’ level grades are coded as follows: A=10, B=8, C=6, D=4, E=2, N=0, and U=-2.)
I’m shocked by the desire of David Green to build such a sweeping case on such thin evidence. The allegation is that the “Government is more interested in social engineering than in real achievement” and that as regards standards “decline [is] being deliberately concealed by moving the benchmarks”.
Let’s examine the evidence he uses.
1. The CBI survey: an increase from 34% to 37% in employers being dissatisfied with the basic levels of literacy and numeracy in school leavers from August 2003 the August 2004. But one year’s worth of survey data (of unspecified size and sample type) does not make a trend, and the question tests the expectations and requirements of employers as well as the ability of school leavers. We know that modern work practices need higher levels of literacy and numeracy for employees to interact with technology. It’s quite possible that abilities havn’t kept pace with employer’s increasing needs, but that doesn’t point to a decline in standards. Besides, who really believes that there’s a measurable difference between the ability of sixteen year olds and that of seventeen year olds. The kindest thing to say about this ‘evidence’ is that it is a blip.
2. Academics tell the TLS that some people are at University who, in their prissy language, ‘are not capable of higher level study’. No comment is made about whether this is a new development, or whether it was ever thus. I’m sure there were plenty of people at my university, back in the early 80’s who were equally ‘not capable of higher level study’, at least if the rugby club was anything to go by.
3. Durham University’s work on KS2 results. It is certainly unlikely that an improvement in SATs scores from 48% level 4’s to 75% level 4’s represents such a huge genuine improvement in literacy among 11 year olds as the numbers suggest. But it is very likely that teachers have learned to train their children in the specific skills required to score well on SATs, following on the long tradition of teachers getting the best from their pupils by passing on what we used to call ‘examination technique’. The best example I can remember of this is my O level history teacher in 1979 telling us that in odd numbered years you get a question on the Agricultural revolution, in even numbered years one on the industrial revolution, so for ’79, we should mug up on the Agricultural revolution. He was right. I don’t remember anybody telling me that my grade B in History O level was therefore worthless.
4. GCSE’s. One examiner gives anecdotal evidence that he thinks standards have dropped by 17% in twelve years. Of those twelve years, eight were under the previous government, and only four under the government indicted by Dr Green. Of course, the examiner welcome to his opinion, but it hardly counts as proof. The argument is undercut by the fact that even in the supposedly easy new exams, still only 53.4% of examinees achieve 5 O level pass equivalent grades.
5. A levels. Much data is provided, from a credible source. It all comes from a period ending in 1998. It points to a definite dumbing down of A levels during the Conservative government of John Major. It says nothing whatsoever about the education policies of the present government.
My son is seventeen years old, and due to take five A levels this coming summer at his state comprehensive school. I took four A levels back in 1981, and our subjects overlap: mine were Physics, English, Maths and Music while his are Physics, English, Economics, Music Technology and Media Studies. I’m in quite a good position to give a subjective comparison of the difficulty of the courses because I’m frequently asked for advice while he works late into the night (he often works until one or two am: the volume of work he is called to do is much greater than it was for me).
Generally it’s true that he knows fewer facts than I had to. He doesn’t memorise character quotations for English because the exams are now ‘open book’. He doesn’t memorise formulae for Physics, or composer’s dates for Music. But what was the use of any of that information? I can probably dredge up a couple of lines from King Lear, but I’m hazy about the date of Schubert’s Trout Quintet, let alone the year of his birth and I’m certain I couldn’t write down the determinant of a quadratic equation. But if I ever shoud want any of that information, I know I can find it in seconds using the very machine I’m typing on at the moment. As can my son.
What he is far better at than I ever was is looking at a piece of writing, or a TV news item, or a piece of music and understanding what it ‘means’: what the creator wanted to convey, what cultural assumptions he or she was working under, what hidden persuasions there are in the text. He can relate what he learns to his other experiences better than I would have been able to. He understands more than I did. And he gets impatient with forty-something commentators telling him that he’s not as clever as they were at his age.
It’s true that many university courses which used to rely on A levels to give their students a grounding in the nuts and bolts of technical and scientific subjects will increasingly need to provive foundation level courses to compensate for this change in emphasis. But I believe that if we take the word ‘education’ in its classical sense: a drawing out of the intellect of the student to fit them to be intelligent agents able to operate in a free society, then our children are better educated than we were.
I think you’re right to some extent, but it’s very easy to say that when you’ve achieved some success and are therefore aware of your abilities. Too many children are held back by a lack of belief in themselves, and comments like Prince Charles’ can only come from someone who has never had to compete on the same terms as everyone else. I can’t think of anything worse than a child (who may be a late developer) never realising their potential because of negative messages they received in childhood.