We have all failed the test on education

10:23am Wednesday 23rd July 2008

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HUNDREDS of anxious East Lancashire teenagers are a few weeks away from the GCSE and A level results that will most likely decide their future career paths.

Although it was a long time ago I can still remember being overcome by nervousness waiting for the postcard to come through the front door with my results.

But in truth the stress that faced me and my schoolfriends really cannot be compared to the package of pressures imposed on today’s pupils.

Instead of years building up to two big exam hurdles the present generation have spent their whole school careers sitting annual tests.

We, as parents, seem to have become obsessed with assessing them.

We’ve put them in league tables as individuals, as class groups, as schools and as colleges.

And when they think they have done really well and truly achieved what happens?

We tell them the exams are far easier than they used to be and that basically today’s A* A level is probably about the equivalent of a C grade of 20 years ago.

As an exercise in demoralising people that’s probably as effective as the ‘waterboarding’ the Americans stand accused of using to extract “confessions” at Guantanamo.

Then if they have worked hard enough to get themselves into university it goes without saying that their courses are nothing like as rigorous as they used to be.

And that's assuming they are conventional degrees like English, Maths, Physics, Chemistry or languages and not these "Micky Mouse subjects" they teach today's youngsters.

"You know, the sort of degrees that would barely equip you to empty wheelie bins," we sneer condescendingly.

We also make disparaging remarks, and I'm as guilty as anyone, about today’s schooleavers being barely able to spell, manage basic grammar or carry out the rudiments of basic arithmetic.

But hang on a second. Who is responsible for overseeing our education system and making sure it is, to use the phrase of the moment, fit for purpose?

Us, the parental generation, that's who.

It's us, not the youngsters, who've allowed things to slide, chiefly because we've not been prepared to pay the taxes necessary to make it happen. And we've allowed politicians to interfere with teachers and constantly tell them what to do.

On top of all that there’s the total mess- up with exam marking.

In our quest to get everything done for the least possible cost we've produced an environment in which an American company has been able to turn the process of marking into a total shambles.

Whether SATs tests are an accurate measure of the ability of 14-year-olds at St Augustine's, Billington, in maths hardly matters when all 205 of them have been incorrectly recorded by Educational Testing Services (they're the ones who at the time of writing still have a £165m contract) as being absent!

In short as a generation of parents we've let our children down by putting them through all this. We should collectively hang our heads in shame.