A is for Acrimony: why social guardians should lay off A Level ‘free loaders’
It’s the 14th August today (what’s left of it) and so this morning thousands of naive youngsters woke up squirming and anxious at least a clear 45 minutes before their alarm went off. Bleary-eyed and a little nauseous they padded their way downstairs and waited for a decent time to nip hastily off (hello split-infinitive) to their local sixth form. Yes, it’s that glorious time of the year again, it’s A level results day.
It’s a good four years since I had to fumble about with my car keys and shakily drive my little white nova down to the college to pick up mine. Let me tell you this: the best thing you can say about the entire experience is that… it’s shit. Utterly vile, stomach churning, sweaty palmed, dry mouthed balls (ooh wait, that doesn’t sound too wholesome does it. I didn’t mean that at all)
Thankfully, I got the grades I required and made it into my first choice university. Sheer angelic and blissful relief.
However, this is clearly not always the case. I can still remember deflated youths hanging about the canteen, clutching sweaty and crumpled sheets of paper and staring vacantly off into the middle distance. ‘Clearing’ is a pretty thin and sickly word in August I can tell you.
Needless to say it wasn’t one of my better days. Still, I was in practical elation so every cloud… The only thing that could make something like this worse is getting home to find every sober hack from a certain corner of fleet street pissing all over your achievement by telling you how the easy the exams were.
Well thank you very much.
Those bastions of public decency, The Daily Mail, today described the A level as “virtually impossible to fail” and, after sifting through a few examples of successful students, their article launched into a piece about the apparent “prizes for all culture”
Now, I don’t know if the A level is getting easier. I don’t know how you could know that anyway. I don’t know whether switching to an International Baccalaureate would be a better option. I don’t even know what value A levels in so called ‘soft option’ subjects like Media Studies are going to be to students in later life…
What I do know is that bitter, middle-aged hacks who don’t know shit about the education system shouldn’t fill the later part of every August pouring scorn over the very real efforts, anxieties, hopes, fears and triumphs of 18 year olds across the country.
One would of thought the young were to be encouraged, I mean it’s not as if they don’t have enough to worry about anyway, what with knife crime, hoodies, desperately trying to get laid and the final level on Medal of Honour.
Of course negative journalism is not the only problem in this case: the education system in this country is not exactly blameless. If those fire-breathers from The Daily Mail insist on attacking something, the answer surely is not to attack the A level. That’s like blaming Chris Moyles for being an insufferable bore: that’s just his way. The truth of the matter is that they should attack the entire National Curriculum and educational system which is seemingly based solely on testing and quantitative assessment.
I mentioned this in a previous blog, but look it’s reared its unpleasant little head again. Here is what I said last time (sorry to repeat myself):
The last 20 years has seen the National Curriculum reduced to a stepping stone path of quantitative assessment. From Key Stage Two, there are formal examinations every school year: CATs, Key Stage Three, Mock GCSEs, Genuine GCSEs, AS Levels and then A2 levels; the education system in this country is just one eerily hushed sports hall after another.
The point as I see it is: if you are intent on testing students all the time then you will not get students who are intensely knowledgeable about their subjects, you will get students that are intensely good at passing exams. Added to this is the laughably regimented marking protocol of the A level. It is, in effect, an exam by numbers. Fill in the script the way they want you to and you will do remarkably well, deviate in any fashion and you will do remarkably badly.
I remember my very first seminar when I got to university. The fairly seasoned student supervisor went through our first essay topic. The first thing she said was “Everything you’ve leant to do for A level – forget it. you’re at university now; all of that is precisely useless.”
‘Great’ I thought; ‘that was a waste of two years’.
I know, I’m being facetious, of course it wasn’t a waste of two years. But then that is exactly how certain acrimonious journalists insist on being when they cover the A level results.
I suppose I just find the whole business of running the efforts of bright-eyed youngsters through the guttural muck as a little mean spirited, petty and not just a little ill-informed. After all, if it wasn’t for this kind of papers’ insistence on peddling league performance tables and value-added bullshit then perhaps the education system might be a little more focussed on teaching and a little less focussed on appearing to teach.
So, Mr and Mrs Daily Mail, I suppose you better be careful what you wish for in future.
