The refusal of the government to recognise IGCSEs is surely because the Labour Party wants to obscure the fact that the private schools generally vastly outperform government-run schools. It is nothing to do with good government. It is everything to do with propaganda. It is not the first time that the league tables have been fixed to make the private schools appear to be doing less well than they are.
However there is a hope that this time the measure is so obvious that it might backfire. The sight of St Paul's and Winchester and Westminster at the bottom of exam tables will strike all but the most prejudiced observer as being as ridiculous as placing Manchester United and Chelsea at the bottom of the Coca-Cola League Two.
Footnote: We have here another example of how civil servants have been turned into spokesmen for the Labour Party. When questioned about it, the spokesman does not confine himself to explaining government policy. He talks like a party fighter. He calls the argument for counting IGCSEs 'fatuous'. Note also the tone of scorn towards private schools. This is not the language of someone who wants the best for all children in Britain. It is the language of someone who has a political agenda that government schools are a good thing, government frameworks must be of prime importance and private schools deserve no consideration. Here is the final para of the article in the Telegraph:
But a spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "This is a fatuous argument. The IGCSE does not meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and so it is not approved for use in curriculum in state schools - it would make absolutely no sense for it to be included in the end-of-year tables just because some independent schools choose to offer them."
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Education
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The government has no business in determining what academic qualifications any young person wishes to pursue. It should confine itself to approving the content and level of competence to be displayed by all children by the age of 14. This examination (or series of examinations for each of its constituent subject areas) should be called the School Leaving Certificate - a certificate of competence to deal with the adult world that they are on the threshold of entering, NOT of academic prowess. Apart from reading, writing and arithmetic, it should include speaking (solo and in a group), listening, financial management (mortgages, insurance, income and expenditure etc) history, geography, law, home management and so on. Each of these subjects may be taken at any time up to 14 and once passed, the time hitherto allotted may be devoted either to further exploration of the subject, or to extra study of other elements of the certificate that they find more difficult or to a new subject altogether - entirely at the child's discretion.
Apart from the School Leaving Certificate, the government should leave other qualifications to those for whom they are required: university entrance to the universities, legal qualifications to the lawyers, engineering qualifications to the engineers and so on.
Centralised government control of 'school' qualifications benefits nobody except for the government who can brag that 54.2% passed these exams last year but 56.3% passed this year therefore we are a good government and you should continue to vote for us. Inevitably it leads to 'league tables' with the underlying assumption that academic prowess is the greatest good and that those who fail to gain 5 'good' (i.e. grades A* to C) GCSE's are exactly that - failures.
The question is, are they failures or have we failed them?
To find out more about these radical ideas and how young people may gain an education once school ends at 14, visit wotnoschool.com
John Harrison, co-author 'Wot, No School? How schools impede education'
Posted by: John Harrison at January 14, 2010 10:33 AM