Issue 4, Jan 2002 (Back to Contents)

Andrew Reekes, Director of Studies, writes about the state of the current exam system.

There has rarely, if ever, been such a concentrated period of examination upheaval in our secondary schools. The Blair government's fondness for initiatives has led to the introduction - in quick succession - of the AS/A2 Exams, of Advanced Extension Awards, of new Key Skill examinations, the phasing out of old GNVQ separate vocational qualifications, and now the threat of six term years. It is too early to give a definitive judgement on the effectiveness of many of these developments, but certain cautious conclusions can be drawn. The Key Skills Exams are burdensome, time consuming, and have been largely ignored by Higher Education. For most independent schools, where a very large proportion of pupils get As and A*s in English and Maths at GCSE, Numeracy and Communication Key Skills are overblown and superfluous, whilst the IT Key Skill at Level 3, a sensible idea, is complicated, difficult and inconsistent in practice. Government obsession with relevant skills for a 21st century workplace has ensured that there is still some life in this initiative, but it would be better for all schools, weighed down with timetabling and staffing the new A levels, if euthanasia was speedily applied.

The AS and A2 exams have already had a profound, and in many cases a deleterious, effect on schools. Overwhelmingly they opted to enter pupils for AS exams in the summer of 6.1, Year 12. So, that term was badly disrupted - teaching suffered as examinees missed lessons to revise for, and take, exams; cricket and other games lost 6.1 participants and fixtures suffered. Radley avoided this by deciding to take all exams - AS and A2 - at the end of the 2 years, the linear approach.

There have been other complaints: it is clear that AS Maths was far too demanding, partly because some of the most difficult areas of A level Maths were contained in AS syllabuses; in History, the fragmentation of traditional chronological sweeps into 6 'patches', or units, has sacrificed context, insights on development, in sum a real understanding of a period which 2 years' uninterrupted study on Outlines used to give; in English Literature, rigid adherence to pre-prepared mark schemes has penalised original, perceptive and intuitive interpretations by clever candidates; and, in a number of subjects it is argued that the division into AS and A2 topics has been artificial and mishandled so that it is impossible to teach an AS unit without having to teach more difficult A2 material. To be fair, there have been some positives in these reforms: there is little evidence of 'dumbing down' in the standard at A2; coursework assignments have led to much sophisticated, high quality writing; and some imaginative re-thinking of subject syllabuses and content has gone on. But the much-vaunted breadth of AS levels has meant - in most schools - that pupils have taken on one more subject from the same area of the curriculum.

Yet the overall effect of these changes has been a dramatic increase in the amount of examining. Most boys and girls now do major public exams at 16+, 17+ and 18+; British school children are now more examined than any of their European or American counterparts (and, judging by continuing criticisms of the products of many schools, with less effect). This escalation has led some to demand reform of the whole 14 to 19 curriculum; some sententious heads of academic London day schools would scrap GCSEs as an unnecessary and limiting hurdle and encourage pupils to take lots of AS levels, at 16+ and 17+. They do not speak for the bulk of schools for whose pupils GCSE remains a useful target and motivator. But, irrespective of future curricular desiderata, the present consequence of so many exams being sat is a catastrophic collapse in the standards of examining.

In the run-up to the new AS/A2, syllabuses were hastily, often tardily, drawn up and sample papers were riddled with typographical errors. Finding good quality Chief Examiners has been difficult, as has finding markers. They are appallingly remunerated; marking colleagues at Radley tell me they might earn £6 an hour after tax. Unless Government grips this (contracting all teachers to mark; exempting marking from income tax?) the situation threatens to become graver still. Management of recently amalgamated Exam Boards remains poor (inexperienced people outnumber the diligent and committed). With a whole raft of new exams (the AS levels) in Summer 2001 the national edifice of Exam Boards creaked alarmingly. Independent school statistics (from HMC sources) show that c. 1 in 5 pupils were getting rogue results at A level. In some subjects there were clearly considerable problems: English Literature at AQA and Edexcel (37% of schools thought their examining 'unacceptable'); AS Maths became a national cause celebre in November as universities and schools criticised the difficulty, the erratic nature, of papers and the inconsistency of marking; Edexcel A level Economics, History, Spanish and Biology saw 1 in 4 pupils get results below their expectations. Each of these statistics reflects pupils whose university chances were threatened or blighted. And the scandal is that the Board's own appeals procedures often collapsed under the weight, failing to remark within agreed time limits and leaving candidates suspended, unable to clinch university places.

Radley had its fair share of this. Our Edexcel Economics A level was flagrantly mismarked. Our 77% A and B prediction for Economics became 20% A and B on the morning of August 17th; some underperformance by boys is perfectly understandable, but the scale of this ...... Four months of appeals, remarks, scrutinising boys' exam scripts ourselves, has brought a measure of justice painfully won from reluctant bureaucrats. But stories from other schools confirmed the scale of the problem: of Biologists marking Economics A level scripts; of examiners instructed not to amend Appeal scripts (and so save the Board's blushes); of scripts disappearing, never to be found again; of Boards desperate to find examiners to cope with their backlog.

Bulking large in most dons' minds here is the knowledge that, however hard candidates have worked, however well prepared and taught they be, ultimately - in the lottery which is now the Exam System - the results will reflect whether or not your cohort has managed to avoid the rogue examiner, the careless Chief Examiner, the bureaucratic break downs. It does not help that League tables are published in August; journalists analyse positions incessantly; reputations are made and tarnished - often on raw and erroneous statistics. We have done our bit; every department here has at least one examiner, both to help the national marking crisis and to give our departments insights into the expectations of the new exams. Our earnest hope is that by making a great fuss on every occasion disaster occurs, by doggedly fighting each case, and by exposing incompetence, we will shame the Boards into higher standards.

Andrew Reekes