Quote:
Originally Posted by nomadking
Spreading out the taking/retaking of 'O' levels is nothing new.
The are still jobs for those with no qualifications, but the exam system has given people delusions of grandeur that they are better than they actually are. Whatever system is used, there will be people at the bottom end of it. If not, that will only be because the exams have no true value.
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Unfortunately that flies in the face of 50 years of educational dogma - we have a one-size-fits-all comprehensive education system and a one-size-fits-all exam system because the establishment wanted to ensure that everyone turns out the same.
It's no accident that GCSEs and A levels have reached the stage where it's impossible to tell the bright students apart by their exam results. That's simply the inevitable consequence of making the work incrementally easier and easier with the aim of ensuring that as few people at the bottom of the ability range can be said to have 'failed' anything.
The whole system has been skewed in pursuit of this crazy ideology that can't bear the simple truth that some kids are bright and some kids are thick. They shut down the Grammar schools, which really were an engine of social mobility, and look where we are now - vast numbers of public school toffs on both sides of the House of Commons, because in most of the country, parents who want to ensure their kids get the very best education now have no option but to pay for it.
The same thing is now happening in the Universities. These institutions, now groaning under the weight of their own witless Meedja Studies courses and the endless ranks of school leavers who populate them, are charging vast fees for a level of education that once upon a time was free of charge to those who actually stood to benefit from it. Thus a policy that on the face of it was socially liberating - higher education for everyone that could possibly do it - is now turning out, just as the assault on the Grammar schools was, to be simply another means of ensuring that the vast majority get stuck with mediocrity while those from moneyed backgrounds continue to pick and choose the best.
Stupid, stupid, shortsighted lefties. Sadly, Gove is unlikely to be allowed to go nearly as far as he needs to, to turn this ship around.