The English Bacc

News that the vast majority of kids have not got a decent set of GCSEs sent the nation into shock. The public, parents in particular, were stunned to find out that fewer than one-in-six pupils last year had gained five A*-Cs in the GCSEs seen by many as the basic foundations of education and employment. Smoke and mirrors had fooled us into thinking that the ever-increasing annual results had meant better schools and better educated kids. In reality a deeply pernicious game had come into play. Young people’s futures had been put last and league table performance first.

But to those who had delved into what exams youngsters were doing, this bleak picture came as little surprise. Beneath the continuing rise in GCSE results lies a troubling truth about what has been happening in schools.

The truth is not only that thousands of young people are not doing well in five core subjects at GCSE; many are not doing these GCSEs at all. In school and national GCSE league tables what has really mattered over the last decade has been reaching the golden five ‘C or above’. Not the subjects taken, or even the types of courses. It’s been a short-term political game with numbers not futures its priority.

This blinkered focus on the A*-C benchmark, together with a failure to sufficiently improve schools, has led to a scenario in which pupils have been encouraged to opt out of harder courses to boost overall results. As one South-East London teacher told me, in some secondary schools pupils are actually prevented from taking traditional GCSEs:

‘When it came to options, the Director of Learning – who is basically the “data” manager – made lists of students who were not allowed to do history,’ she explained. ‘The other departments also published lists of kids who they didn’t want. So on Options Day, where the students and their parents come and talk to you, I had to say I’m afraid that that subject is not suitable for you. It was terrible.’

In response to Gove’s new league table, the teaching unions have cried foul because schools have not had time to ‘prepare’ for it. A reaction which succinctly captures what has gone wrong: schools have been preparing for the league tables rather than the futures of their young people. They have been in the business of data management not learning.

A scenario in which pressure to achieve exam targets, without good enough policies to genuinely do so, created a pandemic of playing the league tables. A subsequent proliferation of weak courses has ousted core academic GCSEs. Schools have been relentlessly pushed to bolster their benchmark performance; exam boards have been quick to respond lining their pockets in the process. Shopping around for the most ‘accessible’ courses has now become an intrinsic part of designing the school curriculum. The best bargains, league table wise, have often been the so-called ‘equivalents’.

A significant proportion of ‘good’ GCSE are not in GCSEs at all, but in what are categorised as ‘vocational qualifications’. Qualifications, which although dubbed vocational, are frequently neither skills-based nor hands-on. Instead, they are weak substitutes for GCSEs, granted a ‘vocational’ tag because they include tenuous links to vocational areas of work. These non-GCSEs were made unidentifiable in the main league tables, with an ‘or the equivalent’ slipped into GCSE table headings. A move the Coalition government plans to revoke. Never mind knowing whether our kids were getting decent grades in a set of basic academic subjects, the most we knew was whether English and maths were included in their five A*-Cs.

The fact is that not only have better results over the last ten years not proved better educated students, often they’ve proved the reverse. In 2010 Civitas research examined the country’s most improved schools, academies, to find that much of their improvement was down to dropping ‘difficult’ subjects. Some academies were doing no history, geography, single sciences or languages at all, let alone getting their kids to achieve at least a C grade in them.

So is it the schools’ faults? Are teachers now having their comeuppance with the new league table system? No, schools have simply been doing as they were told, catering to government demands and putting numbers before pupils. If anything teachers deserve our sympathy but certainly not the blame. Their vocations have been steadily hollowed out along with the quality of courses. Professionals who care about their pupils and education have been asked to re-prioritise. It’s been hugely demoralising – and boring to boot, as part of the charade has involved having to teach weak courses. Teachers talk of ‘hating’ having to teach weak versions of their subjects, as un-stimulated as their pupils.

Where the blame lies squarely is with the years of political decision-making which have led to this distorted system. Ultimately the Labour government was asking schools to achieve the results it promised by hook or by crook. Good intentions turned sour as targets driven by a highly politicised education agenda looked unattainable. The targets New Labour set to demonstrate how effectively they were driving improvement became more important to them than the learning they’d originally intended to prove. Their chief accountability mechanism, in other words, led to a system of deeply unaccountable manipulation.

It’s been a shamelessly short-termist game. Both the needs of the economy and of young people have been displaced. While the five A*-C benchmark may have been serving league tables well, the individual youngster walks out into the world with the reality of the qualifications they have. A poorly-regarded course, a lack of basic knowledge, is revealed for what it is. The business world expressed serious concerns about this week’s revelation, and so they should. History and geography, single sciences and languages may be deemed ‘traditional’ but they are also the mainstays of progress.

But the tragic irony is that the kids who have been least well-served are those who need a good education system the most. When we take youngsters on free school meals, the depressing 15.6 per cent achieving the new ‘English bac’, plummets to around less than 4 per cent, according to Department for Education estimates. Research from the London School of Economics, looking at 2006 GCSE and equivalent results found that pupils from schools with the most disadvantaged intakes were between five and six times more likely take qualifications other than full GCSEs.

The last government talked relentlessly about closing the achievement gap. Not only did it not manage this, many of the gains made were by sleight of hand.

Gove’s rushed new league table was a mistake, punishing the wrong people. Nevertheless, there is a strong case for ensuring that every young person has a solid academic education up to the age of 16. The strongest case however is for not cheating pupils out of core subjects, and the public into thinking things are better than they are.

Anastasia de Waal, 2011