Dumming Down
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31 / 03 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
Dumming Down? Prove it. I can’t.
We have all heard the charge. ‘GCSE’s are easy these days.’
Pass marks go up every year. The number of subjects students get every year goes up.
The percentage of grade a – c’s goes up every year. There must be a catch.
GCSE’s are getting easier. Standards are going down.
As someone who took their GCE ’s –yes GCE’s – in 1958 I thought it would make an interesting scientific experiment to take one GCSE this year to compare my work with that done all those years ago.
If I got a higher mark it could show that they were easier. If I got a lower mark then that could show that they were harder, give or take a factor which we could call life experience.
So, I enrolled on a GCSE History course with the National Extension College and dutifully set about the crop of 15 assignments.
Thinking back all those years was a fascinating experience. I had to go back to the person I was. The gangling, awkward teenage contradictions were long gone. So were the counter contenders for my attention. Gone was the anxiety, gone was the fear of poor spelling, gone was the acute shyness, gone was the fear of failure and long gone was the banter and teasing that went with my choice of subjects.
What I hadn’t expected on a history course relating to Britain in the 20th Century was a realisation that I had in fact lived through some of it. The 2nd World War was not History. It was a childhood memory. The Berlin Airlift was an adolescent BBC newsreel memory. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a teenage nightmare and Vietnam the stuff of student demonstrations. It wasn’t so much History as a reminiscence course.
The course content provided ongoing feedback. The marks were neither spectacular nor poor. I was a conscientious student and felt I was making a good case for constructively analysing the standards of GCSE study. All I needed was the exam mark to compare the standard of marking.
Hidden deep in the instructions booklet was the paragraph which pointed out that I had to make my own arrangements for sitting the exam as an external student. On request they sent me a list of schools and colleges in the Greater Manchester area.
There’s the rub.
I rang my first choice.
“Sorry, we don’t do external candidates.”
I rang the second choice.
“Sorry we don’t do external candidates.”
I rang the third.
“Sorry we have stopped doing external candidates.”
I rang schools in Bolton, Chorley, Heywood, Droylesden, Oldham, Sale, Rochdale and Stalybridge.
Twenty-one on the list. Twenty-one versions of the same response.
External students are deemed an administrative nightmare. External students may threaten league table positions.
Whatever the real reason, I am having a hard time in testing whether GCSE’s are getting easier or, what is more crucial, whether the system of marking is getting more lenient. Maybe I will never know.
