Universities are having to pick up the pieces of the government’s emphasis on targets and testing, according to today’s Times Education Supplement (TES). The TES refers to a report published in the Times Higher Education which has found that schools are failing to equip pupils with the knowledge and skills which they require for higher education. As a result, universities are resorting to catch-up courses and even considering extending degrees by a year ‘…to accommodate the extra time remedial work takes in the first year…’
The learning deficit has arisen as schools have opted for so-called “soft” A-levels in a bid to improve pupils’ scores and schools’ places in the league tables. The London School of Economics and Cambridge University have gone so far as to publish a list of the subjects which they consider to be less beneficial as A-level options. Amongst what the TES refers to as the ‘blacklisted’ subjects are
Aside from the learning deficit, the problem with this situation is the way in which it has arisen. The TES refers to research by history teacher Barbara Hibbert who has undertaken a PhD on the university experiences of A-level history students. She identifies one of the central problems with A-levels today:
‘If the government wants more young people to get their A-levels, then that is what teachers will deliver. The examination system now means that we are not allowed to let children fail at A-level.’
Although it is frequently misconstrued, the issue is to do with learning and the abilities of young people rather than harking back to the past or notions of elitism. King’s College London’s Alison Wolf articulates this in relation to sciences, languages and maths. ‘For the sciences and languages and maths there is a growing problem. I do not think that it is just people being hung up on the good old days, but there are real issues on abilities.’
Furthermore, state schools are disproportionately entering pupils for “soft” subjects which is likely to exacerbate an already acute divide between the state and private. This is the case not only in the sense of a learning chasm but also because softer subjects are less likely to be welcomed by university admissions tutors.
Comments (1)
I have been working for three years as the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University. Like other fellows at around 80 universitiies in the UK, I'm here to help staff and students to write good academic English. Many of the students who come to see me struggle to write coherent essays in their native language. The reason is, in many cases, the failure of their schools to ground them in all the basics of writing. I do not mean simply grammar, syntax, punctuation, and spelling (important as those are), but how to construct an argument, how to think in a directed way, how to use words to convey difficult ideas, and so on. The recent RLF study, Writing Matters, can be obtained from our website (or hard copies can be obtained from our office). So long as there is a philosophy of not marking pupils down for bad English, this will continue, and we will have more people trying to write PhDs and floundering.
Posted by Denis MacEoin | January 13, 2008 8:01 PM
Posted on January 13, 2008 20:01