22.08.2001

Down with exam culture

Familiar scenes. Images of grinning, ebullient school students clutching bits of paper. Whoops. Lots of hugging. Handshakes. Joy and optimism for some -  disappointment for others.

Yes, last week saw the publication of the A and AS-level results. This naturally heralded the start of that great British annual summer ritual, the ?A-level wars?. You should know the apparent lines of demarcation by now. Either you are supposed to think that Britain?s educational ?gold standard?, once the envy of the world, continues its inexorable slide downwards, or you heap praise on the current crop of A/AS-level students for being the most diligent students ever and thus fully deserving of the grades awarded to them. Decline and fall. Success and expansion. Take your pick.

So what did happen? The pass rates have improved for nearly two whole decades - with 89.8% of all students getting grade E or above. This despite the introduction this year of the AS-level, which is supposed to be effectively ?half? an A-level. Some school students took four or five AS-levels, or even more, the idea being that by sitting these extra examinations they would end up getting a ?broader? education. There was, however, criticism of the new AS-levels, the claim being they were unceremoniously dumped on teachers more or less at the last minute. This abruptness, it is alleged, ensured that there was no proper preparation. Hence both teachers and pupils were placed under undue stress.

The background to the fuss is the huge expansion programme earmarked for higher education. So now we have bold target-setting from the government and its supporters in the education industry. They want 50% of all 18 to 30-year-olds to have had some experience of higher education (good or bad) by the year 2010. Critics have dubbed this the ?more is always better? ethos.

On the surface the ?modernisers? project appears to be going well. But not everything is rosy in New Labour?s educational garden. We now have the situation where supply is massively exceeding demand. Last year there were 10,000 places in higher education for which there were no takers - the equivalent of an entire university standing empty. Despite this, however, the number of university places on offer has been expanded by a further 6,000. We also have to add into the equation the fact that this year the number of A-level takers actually dropped by 23,000 (last year?s total A-level entries was 774,380).

The educational system is clearly in a state of flux, if not turmoil. By 2010, if everything proceeds to plan, you might have difficulty getting a job as a cleaner unless you have got a degree of some sort or another. How tenable is this?

Naturally, this year?s A-level results have provoked the usual round of irritable and grumpy responses from the high Tory nostalgics who yearn for the good old days when an A-level really was an A-level - in the halcyon days of educational and intellectual excellence before the system was taken over by the ?progressives? and ?Marxists? who wrecked it with their ?trendy? ideas about ?equality? and such like.

This attitude was typified by John Adamson of The Sunday Telegraph, who moaned about galloping ?Weimar-style inflation? which has supposedly overtaken A-levels. He commented: ?Once again, we are being asked to believe that the latest ?improvement? in A-level results - the 19th consecutive year in which pass rates have gone up - is part of an ongoing British pedagogic miracle. In the universities, even the government?s most credulous well-wishers recognise that the ?gold standard? of A-levels has been devalued. What began as a harmless conjuring trick with figures is now doing higher education serious harm? (August 19). Note that in Adamson?s school days there was no possibility of measuring overall improvements in exams. A fixed percentage of candidates were granted As, Bs, etc each year and that was that.

The yearning for the good old days was echoed by that reactionary curmudgeon, John Humphrys, presenter of Radio Four?s Today programme, who also called for a war to roll back the disastrous years of misplaced egalitarianism. He stated: ?We should try to reverse expectations so that getting a degree is the exception, not the norm. We should bring back what has effectively disappeared: selection at the age of 18. Selection is a dirty word to many: shades of the 11-plus. But while it is wicked to write off a child at the age of 11, it is a cruel delusion to pretend that every child is capable of studying for a degree? (The Sunday Times August 19).

Some even more charming individuals have pontificated about how ?the stupid have never had it so good? under Blair.

In reply to John Adamson et al, who think that only the ?credulous? can believe  there have been 19 consecutive improvements in A-level results, communists say - why not? Take a look at sport. In absolute terms sportsmen and sportswomen are getting better and better results. Look at tennis. Thanks to ever innovatory (and gruelling) training schedules and improved racket technology (high-tensile strings, etc), tennis players are hitting the ball faster than ever. Or what about the four -minute mile? Once considered nigh impossible, it is now run as a matter of routine by top middle distance athletes. This does not mean of course that Roger Bannister was a lousy athlete. Far from it. It is just that human achievement has moved on.

However, we must go beyond mere appearances. Just denouncing educational rearguardists like Adamson is to run the danger of ending up as mere left cheerleaders for educational technocratism. The real point is that education in the here and now is a reflection of the alienated social relations which characterise capitalist society as a whole.

So, yes, in all probability, students - thanks to increased training, coaching and pressure - are getting constantly better exam results. Yet that does not mean people are suddenly becoming better human beings. In other words, are we seeing what Hamish McRae of The Independent called the creation of ?more interesting, and more interested, human beings? (August 21)?

Clearly not. In fact, the reality is more like that portrayed over 20 years ago in Pink Floyd?s The wall, where the dominant image was of education/school as an inhuman sausage-grinder - the primary purpose of which was to crush individuality and make people fit for wage slavery. In such a regime education is imposed from above on the powerless individual. To get through it - true - you certainly need stamina. But originality, opposition, anger ??

One thing you can say in all confidence. Like the kids represented in The wall, those who are processed in the schools of today definitely do not see the experience as an actively pleasurable extension of their humanity. Instead of education, what they have is schooling: a seemingly endless - and ultimately meaningless - series of tests and hurdles. Blair?s 1997 slogan, ?Education, education, education?, is more accurately put as ?Exams, exams, exams?.

Under New Labour we have had the introduction of national curriculum tests for seven-year-olds, then we had the stage-two tests for 11-year-olds. This year of course we had the AS-levels. Next year we will be faced with what have been called the ?curriculum 2000? A2 levels, which are supposedly the follow-on from AS-levels. What next?

The A-levels are a near perfect symbol of this alienated and hierarchical capitalist system. Rather than the ?pursuit of excellence?, the main purpose of A-levels was to act as an efficient final social filter system - hence the associated primary 11-plus which brought so much misery to so many. The majority were to be readied for the factory floor or the typing pool. The minority trained to function as middle class professionals and administrators.  Here we had a form of social engineering which only the truly soulless could defend. Of course, it never really went away, for all the guff about the dawn of the so-called ?comprehensive schools? and the death of the grammar school (if only). Labour in office has added to the Tory drive for a return to selection at 11.

Inequalities abound. A recent editorial in The Independent on Sunday observed: ?For all the government?s declared aim of half of all school-leavers attending university, we are nowhere near that figure. Worse still: of those who do get to university, the overwhelming majority come from middle class backgrounds. Here is a wholly unintended consequence of a badly designed policy - as student numbers have risen, the universities have become even more of a middle class enclave then ever before? (August 19). Of course, The Independent on Sunday has no understanding of the working class and the fact that nowadays nurses, teachers, computer programmers, lower-grade civil servants, etc have become proletarianised.

Nevertheless figures compiled by the Sutton Trust show that more than two-thirds of pupils with three grade As at A-level came from the state sector, yet only half were given places at the leading 13 universities. Indeed, less than one in a hundred children from the poorest areas of the country went to study at one of these prestigious institutions. Yet private school pupils with the same A-level grades - using last year?s statistics - were 25 times more likely to be given a university place. Welcome to the meritocracy.

Meanwhile, competition at the upper echelons of the educational market - such as for medicine and law courses - is fiercer than ever because of the steady improvements in A-level passes at A grade. Somewhat predictably, there is now talk of changing the A-level grading system once again - making it harder to achieve an A-grade pass by introducing more grades if necessary. (Or, maybe, to devise some ?super-A-level? - god help us.) The war of all against all dominates and pervades the educational system from top to bottom, and it is set to get nastier.

Communists say: down with the market-driven and class-ridden ?education? rat race with its incessant hurdle-jumping, egotistical competition and unsavoury one-upmanship. We strive to do away with the examination culture and everything it represents under capitalism.

Education under socialism and then communism will have nothing to do with crude utilitarianism, rote-learning or the transmission of received truths. Education should aim to unlock the astonishing potential that resides in every human being and to allow us to express a non-alienated individuality. In that revolutionary sense, communist education will be truly spiritual - ie, more human.

Eddie Ford