However, my sons get their GCSE results tomorrow, so I thought I would have my say about exams before I know how they have done.
There are bound to be the usual comments about exams getting easier, but the questions looked pretty similar, and occasionally harder than mine, even if they were put into slightly more accessible language. Teaching is now focused on the test and there is no pussy-footing around with anything much that doesn’t help with exams; so it seems to me that grades are bound to improve on that basis.
Whether it means our children are getting a better education is a completely different question though. I went to a pretty poor comprehensive, a feeder school for the Ford factory down the road. Although I loved my time there, learnt a lot, and did pass my exams, I certainly didn’t get the shiny grades that are expected nowadays. But then exams weren’t necessarily the point in those dim and distant days. I also didn’t get the breadth of knowledge that I wanted – I couldn’t learn Latin or the classics, for example (although my lifespan in the school grounds would probably have been very limited if I had). What is interesting though, is that one of my sons said last week that even with its problems my education had been much broader than his. Overall, I agree with him. That is a bit of a worry really, if a pretty dodgy comprehensive in London in the 1970s produced a more rounded education than that of a highly rated comprehensive in the leafy and wealthy home counties in the 2000s.
My kids will have better grades, and a better knowledge in the narrow range of areas they have studied than I did, but who got a better education is still a difficult question to answer, and a much more interesting one than whether exams are getting easier.
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