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Royal Society of Chemistry Slams UK Exam Standards
cheesethegreat writes "The Royal Society of Chemistry has sharply criticized the 'catastrophically' falling standards for UK school exams in the sciences. The RSC had 1,300 highly achieving students take an exam made up of questions taken from the last 50 years. The students averaged an appalling 15% on 'hard' numerical questions set in the 1960s, but managing much higher marks on the more recent 'soft' non-numerical questions. This latest report has garnered mainstream media attention. The RSC has also created a petition on the UK Prime Minister's official website, calling for urgent intervention to halt the slide, which has garnered over 3,000 signatures. The issue of declining exam standards has been an ongoing concern in the UK, with allegations that exam results have been manipulated by the government to increase pass rates and meet its own targets."
Standards are not falling in private schools
Which is why the NuLabour government is doing its best to get rid of private schools. There is a marked and increasing difference in standards, and levelling down is so much easier than levelling up.
A while ago, the UK government's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) fined 50 leading private schools a total of GBP3.5 million (about $5.25 million) for exchanging information about the fees they were charging. See, for instance, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511429/50-public-schools-fined-for-fixing-their-fees.html
Note that in the UK, "public school" means a particular type of private (independent, non-state) school. The name was adopted before there was any state-run education in the modern sense, so it was logical in its day.
The irony is that most (all, AFAIK) of those schools have charitable status - they are "not-for-profit", so that the fees they charge merely pay their costs. No one is getting rich from running those schools. Moreover, the fine of about $100,000 per school could only be paid by increasing the fees!
Obviously, the purported motive of the fines - to stop the schools colluding to distort trade, reduce competition, and raise prices - was not applicable in the case of the public schools. What could be more ridiculous than fining a bunch of charities for not being competitive enough, when none of them makes a profit?
It's even stranger when you reflect that the body doing the fining - the UK government - forces all children who do not attend independent schools to go into its own state education system, which offers no competition at all. Moreover, competition law does not seem to apply to transport (where big companies enjoy state-granted monopolies), TV (where Sky has a monopoly in satellite and Virgin in cable), or banking (in which, as we have recently noticed, there has hardly been any regulation at all).
It seems pretty obvious that the motive for the investigation and subsequent fines could only have been to damage the public schools' reputation and financial status. As it had to be passed on to the parents, it was really a fine on them for daring to avoid the state education system. In itself, this attack has apparently not forced any of the schools to close (yet), but the government and its supporters live in hope.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I must agree.
I went to school in the UK in the 70s. Being what is now recognized as Dyslexic I had a rough time, being considered 'thick' and not worth teaching. Since I now have a Ph.d in Computer Science, I often find myself wondering at this assessment, and how many peoples lives such labels all but destroyed. For me it was a hard road up the education ladder, but I got there in the end.
I didn't notice anything much better back then myself. Seems to me, given how many people I knew from that time still work in local factories, and got pretty much nothing of benefit from their 'harder' exams (I wasn't allowed to take them, so I can't comment) I don't see how things have changed that much.
My boy is also dyslexic, gets extra help as a result, and in spite of some issues with the low standard of education which even he realises is a problem, he's doing OK (far better then I did), and will be going to university to do a science subject himself.
I personally think people need to be looking to their own parenting, and how they encourage their child to learn, and not expecting the government to sort it out for them. Behavior is so bad in UK schools at the moment that I'm amazed the kids learn anything at all. This is almost entirely a parental issue.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Nice Post. I couldn't agree more.
I'm an English teacher at a good school, but even here, we are forced, not just from administration, but more diffused social pressure, to make sure our scores are good, even though we know the tests are flawed.
The problem with education is it has become a political issue, which means we keep slathering nice pretty paint on a school building that's rotting away from the inside.
I'm afraid the whole system will have to collapse before we begin actually fixing it.
An important change for education.
With the obvious point being, if learning to pass the test isn't good enough then the test must be wrong.
I'm paying £3,000 a year for this degree. I don't expect to be told to read stuff in a book!
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