On 5 January, the government cancelled all GCSE and A-level exams in England for the summer 2021, following similar decisions by the devolved governments of Wales and Scotland. The announcement was greeted with an outcry by many pupils and their parents. The cancellations were called a ‘big disappointment’ by some, apparently potentially preventing students to reach their full potential and endangering their future career prospects (BBC, 5 January 2021). Why is it that many pupils and their parents are so unhappy about the cancellation of an enormously intensive set of exams?
Over the years, I have seen at first hand with my own children how learning at School has increasingly become focused on passing exams well. Rather than putting the contents of subjects at the forefront of education, it is all about acquiring the right technics to do well in tests. Coming back to school last September, our daughter first had to sit a set of tests in order to ‘make up for’ the missed end of year exams in summer 2020. This was followed by tests in all subjects in November 2020 supposed to be a preparation for the real mock exams after Christmas, which in turn were the preparation for the GCSE exams in summer 2021. Test follows test follows test.
The pressure on pupils has become so strong that it was apparently quite common that someone would burst into tears and leave the classroom in the middle of a session. Where is the joy about learning? Where has the interest in exploring new areas of knowledge gone? Education has clearly been subordinated to a narrow focus on future employment and individuals’ career prospects and this from a very early age. The fact that parents and pupils alike are unhappy about the cancellation of exams indicates the extent to which we have already internalised this individualistic understanding of education.
Unsurprisingly, higher education at university too has become affected by this narrow, individualistic, means to an end understanding of education. It is rare that a student asks me a question about the contents of a particular topic or theory. Instead, most conversations are about what students need to do in order to get a particular mark in a module. ‘How do I need to change my essay in order to get a first’?, is one of the most common questions.
With education increasingly instrumentalised, it has become all the poorer for it. Real life experiences are now made outside the classroom, as education offers less and less in support of the development of students into well rounded human beings. This is damaging to individuals, but it is also damaging to society as a whole. At a moment when we would need independent minded, critically thinking people to confront the challenges of climate change and Black Lives Matter, our education system excels at producing ‘robots’, who are good at sitting exams. And not to forget those, who cannot cope with the exam pressure and fall by the wayside.
Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net
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Narrowness at that age may be appropriate. Young people do well to focus on acquiring basic skills and knowledge. Plenty to time to broaden their scope later on.
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