The Welsh Question

Sometimes I tell myself I’m being too hard on Nick Clegg, I mean he’s unused to people taking him seriously, he’s not been in the public eye for very long really of course he’s going to cock it up. He probably has policies of his own I’m just not looking hard enough for them. There must be something that differentiates the Lib Dems from a Conservative whipping boy it’s just not very evident.

Then something like this happens.

You remember the GCSE row and the Coalition’s (I refuse to call that shower a ‘government’) brilliant idea to replace them with the English Baccalaureate (EBac). Well this happened in Wales too, obviously, and they have a slightly different regulatory system there. Instead of the ‘independent’ regulator Ofqual, the Welsh minister has regulatory responsibilities, and he’s decided to exercise them and had the papers in question regarded. Unlike their English neighbours.

Clegg as always is fighting the Conservatives’ corner but this time, if the BBC is to be trusted, all cognitive power left him when the urge to endear himself to the Tories struck.

Clegg apparently thinks that the Welsh are ‘”shifting goalposts” for children in Wales’, forgetting that the main problem with these changes to exams was that they happened in the middle of the academic year; so that those children who (if they could) took the exams in January had an easier time of it that their peers who took the exam in the summer. The goalposts have already been shifted, this year was effectively weighted in favour of those who took the exam in January, the goalposts are being movedback.

Saying “I know what they say but I don’t think it’s right for politicians to be interfering in an independent exam system” Clegg seems to have forgotten that the minister is the regulator of the Welsh exam boards and fully within his rights to act as he has done. He also seems determined to ignore the fact that the issue of examination and assessment is already politicised and it would be naïve to think of the exam boards as independent when Gove’s opinions are so obvious, as I have argued previously.

But the most noticeable sore in this sorry body is the characterisation of the re-grading as a unilateral decision, implying that they shouldn’t have taken this step without, I don’t know, asking permission?

Outrageous isn’t it? But ripping out the entire systemand replacing it with theEbacs, that’s a “sensible” decision, an example “for the Welsh government and the Welsh politicians to decide whether they want to follow”.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the Welsh are showing too much independence. The Welsh should just learn their place goddamnit, and do exactly what daddy Cameron tells them.

Just as Clegg does.

The GCSEs are Dead, Long Live the EBacs

So it’s finally happened, when it comes to examination Gove’s put his money where his mouth is, and his foot on top of both.

Yes the GCSEs are doomed, at least for maths, science and English, and I don’t expect the plans to extend this new English Baccalaureate to be deterred by anything as sordid as results when there is good old fashioned Tory dogma at stake.

Apparently the Baccalaureate will be assessed by one huge exam at the end of the course, which is two years barring future changes.  According to that spineless mass of gibbering jelly, Nick Clegg, these changes will

“raise standards for all our children”, but he added that it would “not exclude any children”

Well that’s very reassuring, because his record on education is just so reliable isn’t it?

But really, isn’t it the whole point that children are going to be left behind? Isn’t that what Gove and the Tory’s have wanted all along?

I may be delusional here, but I was under the impression that the problem with GCSEs, at least in the government’s eyes was that we had too many children passing and that that was devaluing the whole system. Surely then this is Gove’s aim, to reduce the number of children passing so the academically qualified becomes an elite, filled with people like him who can afford good schools and private tuition if the unqualified teachers provided by the academies aren’t up to scratch.

This is my problem with the Conservative and by extension the Coalition (because-really-what’s-the-fucking-difference) approach to education. It isn’t that they’ve chosen the wrong solution to an evident problem, a la the economy; they’ve invented a problem where none exists.

That isn’t to say that our education system is perfect, it really isn’t, but the problem has always been that there is too much importance given to exams. As I’ve said before, students aren’t taught about the subject, their natural curiosity afire with the drive for knowledge, they are taught how to pass exams. What key points to bring up when discussing those poems you don’t care about to tick the boxes in the checklist the examiner has. Show your working, because that will get you marks, doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you’re doing just do this to these numbers and you’ll at least get half marks. Don’t know what cumulative means? Doesn’t matter. Don’t know why algebra is important? Who cares, just get all the Xs on one side and the Ys on the other because that’s what the examiner is looking for.

Ah those magic words, the answer to every schoolboy question.

“Sir, why should we do it this way?”

“Because that’s what the examiner will look for.”

Education shouldn’t be like that, it should be about awakening a desire for more and better knowledge. Channelled curiosity. But according to the Conservatives it is in fact a market, the economy of grades.

Because you see, your knowledge only has value in the light of other people’s ignorance. To the Tories the fact that most people don’t fail suggests that it is impossible to fail, and if there is no failure then success is meaningless.

Actually this is a pretty good window onto Tory thinking.

For being rich to mean anything others must be penniless.

For being well fed to mean anything others must be starving.

For your nice house to mean anything others must be living under bridges [link].

For your voice to matter others must shut up and do what they’re told.

FUCK THAT!