Posts Tagged ‘Qualifications’
Talk at the Cambridge Fabian Society
Last night I went to speak at the Cambridge Fabian Society about alternatives to the current education policy. Details of the meeting are here. These are some notes on which my talk was based. 1.Education policy matters. One of the best ways to judge a society is by its education system. Does it offer equal […]
Why we need a ‘Better Bacc’
Link to original Guardian article When I was 18, I went to America for a gap year. It was the dark ages in terms of modern technology and I spent ten months without speaking to my parents, corresponding intermittently by post. True, I had left school, but this followed teenage years punctuated by equally rare […]
Watch out for private school spin and dodgy statistics
The private school spin machine is cranking itself up, in readiness for its usual post GCSE and A level orgy of self congratulation. Consider the story on the front page of this week’s Observer, which claimed that privately educated pupils were expected to get’ three times as many of the new A* grades at A […]
What is the IGCSE and what does it mean for our schools?
The decision – and early decision of the coalition government — to ‘allow’ state schools to offer IGCSE is actually far-reaching. As this narrative suggests, it reaches back into the heart of the educational divisions – the divisions of class, status and hierarchy – which underlie – oh, so shallow under the surface – English education. In the 1960s, there was a clear pecking order of examinations: O-level for an academic minority, CSEs for the upper reaches of the secondary modern, and vocational training for the majority. IGCSE needs to be seen in this context as an attempt to restore the hierarchy of qualifications.
