Wealden Times | WT188 | October 2017 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Tried & Tested
Susan Elkin hopes change is on the horizon when it comes to exams
Education
Credit: FreeImages.com/Picaland
Exam passes are not the same as education. League tables
which evolved in the 1990s and the ‘results’ culture they
engendered have a lot to answer for. But I detect a welcome
whiff of change in the wind. In January of this year Amanda
Spielman was appointed Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education,
Services and Schools (snappy job title) to replace Michael Wilshaw.
By June she was firmly telling a conference in Berkshire that
Ofsted would in future be looking very critically as schools whose
‘badges and stickers’ approach turns them into ‘exam factories’ rather
than providers of a well rounded education. “We should be ashamed
that we have let such behaviour persist for so long,” she declared.
Revolutionary stuff! If schools are, at last going to be judged
more on Real Education than by counting Grade 9s or A*s then
Ms Spielman gets three very loud cheers of approval from me.
Of course, we want our children to pass their exams –
usually a stepping stone to the next stage of their chosen path.
But the exam should simply be a full stop at the end of an
interesting course. If the material has been taught and learned
with enthusiasm then the exam, apart from a practice paper
or two in the final run up to it, should take care of itself.
At present we have Year 10 students being presented with
a list of ‘assessment objectives’ on day one and being shown
how to tick the boxes to meet them. That’s cramming, not
teaching. 00013MHSWT185x130_Layout Where’s the infectious passion 1 19/09/2017 for the subject? 14:03 Page 1
Then there’s the unhealthy obsession with grades. A journalist
colleague told me the other day that her daughter cried, yes
cried, because she ‘only’ got five As and five A*s in her GCSEs.
The pernicious atmosphere in which these young people are
force fed to produce exam results like Dordogne geese destined
for foie gras, is causing many mental health problems.
It’s OK to fail – or at least to scrape in with a grade C or a 4.
That’s life. And in a year or two it won’t matter in the least what your
grades were. Contrary to what your exam factory might tell you
when you’re 16, nobody in adult life will care whether your GCSE
maths was a 9 or a 5 as long as they can see that you can do the job.
As a teacher, latterly in a very high performing school, I often
counselled distressed students who hadn’t achieved the mark they
hoped for. “Have you done your best?” I would ask. If the answer
was yes I’d then say: “Well in that case, neither I, the school or your
parents can ask any more of you. And you can live with yourself.”
If on the other hand the student admitted that she could
have done more, then I’d advise her to rethink her work
so that she wouldn’t look back regretfully in the future.
And meanwhile keep singing in the choir and playing
hockey because there’s more to all this than exams.
I think Ms Spielman and I would get on rather
well. And she is in a position to make a real difference.
Please assert your authority, Chief Inspector.
Not too big, Not too small, Just right.
The perfect size school to unlock the potential in every child.
We have an enviable record of Cranbrook entry success over the past 10 years, a 100% CE pass rate
and each year our pupils win scholarships to many leading independent senior schools.
MARLBOROUGH
HOUSE
SCHOOL
Marlborough House School, Hawkhurst, Cranbrook, Kent TN18 4PY 01580 753555
169 wealdentimes.co.uk
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