I am not impressed by the annual chatter in the media and politics about GCSE and A Level examinations getting easier, it is a lot of nonsense used to score political points or in the case of the media, used to fill in when there is no real news to discuss. It is impossible to compare the exam results today with those 25 or 30 years ago. The word has changed beyond recognition, the slide rule has given way to the calculator, the computer has conquered the world and the internet has largely replaced the reference library. We now (allegedly) have equality and the expectations and attitudes of pupils and parents have changed beyond recognition.
My daughters claim that they would have hated sitting O levels in the 'olden days' as I did because they were entirely exam based and everything depended on your performance on the exam day. It suited me fairly well, I was content to drift along doing the minimum necessary to be average, then I revised hard and churned it all out on the day. Having a fairly good memory, common sense and being able to manage my nerves helped. However my girls put in endless hours of work and research to ensure their course work got a decent grade and knowing that they had made a good start gave them the confidence and background knowledge to cope with their exams. I suspect the way they learned may lead to more lasting knowledge than my cramming, but that would be hard to prove.
Having said all that a couple of things recently have made me wonder what the modern over regulated education actually teaches - certainly not general knowledge! The children and I watched the final of Big Brother on Friday, the winner seemed to be a lovely chap and he was a popular winner. At 19 he surely couldn't have forgotten his education completely, yet during a quiz he revealed that William Shakespeare was a film producer who made the film Titanic! Oh well, I always thought Shakespeare was overrated anyway!
Laura has just achieved an A in her GCSE in RE, that led me to assume that she must possess a certain level of knowledge about the beliefs and traditions of the various major faiths. Having been brought up in a Christian family and attended church I was astounded when she took out her Bible last week and asked me which bit Jesus was in! I wonder what they learn in RE these days!
More noticeable than the lack of general knowledge was the departure from recognisable English. I watched the Big Brother winner and the twins who came second being interviewed and it seemed to me that they were speaking a foreign language - I must be getting old! I struggle with Robbie's accent occasionally because he speaks too fast and has some very odd regional words (he grew up in South Staffordshire). The oddest thing is that he uses the word 'just' at the end of a sentence eg 'I fed the dog just'. On the other hand he thinks my accent is posh because I say words like bath and grass with a longer middle sound. I get really cross when he teases me about my accent, I guess it is quite a personal thing.
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