WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.520 In introducing our thinking about the relationship between exams and the curriculum, I want to focus on the way in which exams have, I think, come to define the curriculum and suggest that we need to reverse that, and in fact, it needs to be the other way round. 00:00:14.600 --> 00:00:21.920 Now, shortly before Christmas, as you may recall, the Daily Telegraph ran a series of stories about exam boards and their inset training. 00:00:22.880 --> 00:00:26.360 An undercover reporter had attended teacher training days 00:00:26.360 --> 00:00:29.380 where it appeared attendees had been given advance warnings 00:00:29.380 --> 00:00:31.500 of what questions were likely to come up 00:00:31.500 --> 00:00:34.860 and where a senior examiner and subject head for one of the boards 00:00:34.860 --> 00:00:37.360 had boasted about how easy their papers were. 00:00:38.280 --> 00:00:40.080 There was naturally a public outcry 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:42.700 and the House of Commons Education Select Committee, 00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:45.520 already conducting an inquiry into exam boards, 00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:48.920 held a special hearing to try and shed further light on the matter. 00:00:50.160 --> 00:00:51.620 Now, why was this so disturbing? 00:00:51.920 --> 00:01:03.540 I think for all the criticism of the exam system, it is still generally accepted as fair, as providing a level playing field on which students can demonstrate their capabilities and compete. 00:01:04.380 --> 00:01:11.400 That's very important because we live increasingly in a credentialist society where all exams are high stakes. 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:16.380 Success or failure can decisively affect a young person's life chances. 00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:20.980 Any suggestions, therefore, of shortcomings in exam security 00:01:20.980 --> 00:01:24.740 or a lack of integrity among those responsible for administering them 00:01:24.740 --> 00:01:27.980 are rightly matters of very grave public concern. 00:01:29.320 --> 00:01:31.980 However, I think the story raised for me another issue 00:01:31.980 --> 00:01:33.780 that received rather less public attention, 00:01:34.300 --> 00:01:38.600 and that was the implicit assumption that exams have become extremely predictable. 00:01:39.880 --> 00:01:43.440 Gone are the days when a conscientious student might go into the exam room 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:45.780 after months of diligent preparation 00:01:45.780 --> 00:01:57.015 and possibly years of excellent teaching and simply find that the questions they had prepared for didn turn up Certainly dread of this happening was a regular feature of my own and many other people youth 00:01:57.675 --> 00:02:00.795 spurring one either to have greater efforts to cover more of the curriculum 00:02:00.795 --> 00:02:04.315 or a resigned fatalism that one would be exposed 00:02:04.315 --> 00:02:06.975 when the great day came to the hazards of luck. 00:02:07.795 --> 00:02:10.935 Now, however, we quite regularly receive letters from students 00:02:10.935 --> 00:02:12.235 and sometimes even teachers 00:02:12.235 --> 00:02:15.775 complaining that the questions they prepared for have not come up, 00:02:15.955 --> 00:02:18.995 as if that were not a legitimate thing to happen in an exam. 00:02:20.155 --> 00:02:23.875 Now, behind those complaints, I think, lies a depressingly instrumental view 00:02:23.875 --> 00:02:27.455 that it is not worth learning anything unless you are to be examined on it, 00:02:27.895 --> 00:02:31.475 and that an exam is not fair if it strays beyond the strict parameters 00:02:31.475 --> 00:02:33.735 of what has been covered in textbooks and lessons. 00:02:34.615 --> 00:02:36.995 In the terms of the issue we're considering today, 00:02:37.435 --> 00:02:40.095 it assumes that exams and the curriculum are coterminous, 00:02:40.495 --> 00:02:43.535 rather than recognising that exam questions can only sample 00:02:43.535 --> 00:02:46.675 the key concepts and body of knowledge associated with a subject 00:02:46.675 --> 00:02:49.015 and do not constitute its totality. 00:02:49.615 --> 00:02:52.615 And it's the implications of that that I now wish to discuss. 00:02:53.695 --> 00:02:56.455 I think it's worth remembering that written public exams 00:02:56.455 --> 00:02:59.255 are a relatively recent phenomenon, at least in the West, 00:02:59.755 --> 00:03:01.835 and people have been educated and educated well 00:03:01.835 --> 00:03:04.315 for many hundreds of years without taking any of them. 00:03:05.075 --> 00:03:06.755 In the 19th century, however, 00:03:07.295 --> 00:03:10.095 as more of the population gained access to education, 00:03:10.615 --> 00:03:12.215 there was increasing demand for them 00:03:12.215 --> 00:03:16.835 as they were seen as a method of promoting uniform standards and codifying the curriculum. 00:03:16.835 --> 00:03:22.655 They then swept the board in the 20th century, being a feature and to some extent I think 00:03:22.655 --> 00:03:28.355 organizing principle of nearly all public education systems, completing the transition 00:03:28.355 --> 00:03:36.115 that led Foucault to characterize school as, I quote, a sort of apparatus of uninterrupted examination. 00:03:36.115 --> 00:03:41.775 What will happen therefore in the 21st century? In England, of course, we're in the middle of an 00:03:41.882 --> 00:03:47.402 National Curriculum Review. My colleague, Tim Oates, in the audience here today, who's 00:03:47.402 --> 00:03:51.882 leading the expert panel responsible for this, will no doubt be familiar with the reform 00:03:51.882 --> 00:03:56.902 cycle described by the American educationist and philosopher John Dewey at the beginning 00:03:56.902 --> 00:04:01.122 of the last century, in 1901, as follows. I quote, 00:04:01.302 --> 00:04:06.302 Someone feels that the school system is falling behind the times. There are rumours of great 00:04:06.302 --> 00:04:10.702 progress in education elsewhere. Something new and important has been introduced, and 00:04:10.702 --> 00:04:14.662 education is being revolutionized by it. The matter is taken up. 00:04:15.022 --> 00:04:18.062 The school board ordains that the particular new subject should be taught 00:04:18.062 --> 00:04:22.762 in the next year, possibly the next month, there comes an outcry that children 00:04:22.762 --> 00:04:25.962 do not write or spell or figure as they used to. 00:04:26.622 --> 00:04:30.902 I think a fairly familiar refrain. Now early findings from the curriculum review 00:04:30.902 --> 00:04:34.562 were already out for consultation, but I think its themes would be familiar to 00:04:34.562 --> 00:04:38.242 Dewey. What is the right balance between skills and knowledge? 00:04:38.742 --> 00:04:40.282 which subject should be compulsory, 00:04:40.862 --> 00:04:42.962 what should be determined centrally and what locally. 00:04:44.122 --> 00:04:47.202 A curriculum's legitimacy and relevance 00:04:47.202 --> 00:04:49.942 need to be firmly grounded in local conditions, 00:04:50.142 --> 00:04:52.262 but we live in an age where the curriculum needs also 00:04:52.262 --> 00:04:54.262 to look at best international practice 00:04:54.262 --> 00:04:56.522 and to cultivate an awareness in students 00:04:56.522 --> 00:04:58.162 of the impact of globalisation. 00:04:59.322 --> 00:05:01.202 The curriculum can also become, I think, 00:05:01.242 --> 00:05:02.342 and we're all familiar with this, 00:05:02.442 --> 00:05:05.642 in the words of the American Education historian Herbert Klebard, 00:05:05.642 --> 00:05:11.142 an arena where ideological armies clash over the status of deeply held convictions. 00:05:11.702 --> 00:05:16.182 Not always, I think you'll agree, the most helpful basis on which to conduct discussion 00:05:16.182 --> 00:05:19.622 and arbitrate between the many and competing demands for school time. 00:05:22.102 --> 00:05:25.682 The social context for this discussion, also I think very important, 00:05:26.082 --> 00:05:41.377 is that nearly 50 of young people leaving school now go to university so that there are in fact many more people getting degrees today than would have taken A only a generation ago Now we mirror in that and indeed I think it likely lagged behind international trends 00:05:42.197 --> 00:05:46.677 This increase in the number of people staying on to study in HE has been accompanied by 00:05:46.677 --> 00:05:50.677 several major changes to both the national curriculum and the structure of A-levels and 00:05:50.677 --> 00:05:57.097 GCSEs, in particular the introduction of AS levels and the widespread adoption of modularisation, 00:05:57.097 --> 00:06:00.837 though recent policy changes are now taking us away from this. 00:06:01.637 --> 00:06:04.277 These changes, I think, reflect in a rather important way 00:06:04.277 --> 00:06:06.437 the age of change in which we live. 00:06:07.197 --> 00:06:11.537 The printed word is no longer the principal method of knowledge transmission. 00:06:12.277 --> 00:06:15.137 Subject domains have been transformed by new discoveries, 00:06:15.297 --> 00:06:16.317 especially in the sciences, 00:06:16.957 --> 00:06:20.017 and multidisciplinary approaches in HE have become the norm 00:06:20.017 --> 00:06:21.037 rather than the exception. 00:06:22.077 --> 00:06:23.937 Also, of course, underlying all that, 00:06:23.997 --> 00:06:25.517 the economy has changed dramatically, 00:06:25.517 --> 00:06:30.037 demanding different and more flexible skills of school leavers and the graduate workforce. 00:06:31.097 --> 00:06:32.977 Now this leads, it seems to me, to a paradox. 00:06:33.417 --> 00:06:36.497 Most of us here in this audience today are educational practitioners 00:06:36.497 --> 00:06:40.577 and I think we're therefore familiar with the fact that successful changes in education 00:06:40.577 --> 00:06:43.877 generally take a long time to get established, to get off the ground. 00:06:44.817 --> 00:06:47.477 Now that's sustainable when there are very low levels of change 00:06:47.477 --> 00:06:50.417 but that hasn't of course been the case over the last 25 years 00:06:50.417 --> 00:06:54.137 and that's created great scope for politicians to become involved 00:06:54.137 --> 00:06:57.637 as only they are able to deploy the resources to accelerate change 00:06:57.637 --> 00:07:00.437 and mobilise disparate interested parties, 00:07:00.437 --> 00:07:03.137 as they can provide a focus for accountability. 00:07:03.137 --> 00:07:07.337 And I think one has to, in order to understand the magnitude of that change, 00:07:07.337 --> 00:07:11.137 reflect back on the fact that it was only as recent as 1976 00:07:11.137 --> 00:07:14.637 when Jim Callaghan gave his famous speech at the Ruskin, 00:07:14.637 --> 00:07:18.637 and his policy director, Bernard Donoghue, recalled after that 00:07:18.637 --> 00:07:21.137 that the Department of Education, as he put in his memoirs, 00:07:21.137 --> 00:07:23.637 was deeply shocked that a Prime Minister 00:07:23.763 --> 00:07:27.203 should have the impertinence to trespass into its own secret garden, 00:07:27.503 --> 00:07:29.723 a complete universe away from where we are now, 00:07:29.803 --> 00:07:31.763 in a space only of 35 years. 00:07:32.383 --> 00:07:33.843 And what's that meant in practice, 00:07:33.943 --> 00:07:36.983 in particular in relation to the balance between examining and the curriculum, 00:07:37.083 --> 00:07:38.923 which is one of the things we're focusing on today? 00:07:39.643 --> 00:07:41.943 I think one of the major consequences 00:07:41.943 --> 00:07:45.063 has been an excessive focus on exams and examining, 00:07:45.463 --> 00:07:48.323 because exam results are so easily used as instruments 00:07:48.323 --> 00:07:50.843 to measure change, to measure the velocity of change. 00:07:50.843 --> 00:07:53.543 And that has been at the expense of coherence 00:07:53.543 --> 00:07:54.343 and of the curriculum. 00:07:55.043 --> 00:07:58.023 I think we need to start thinking of education as an ecosystem, 00:07:58.743 --> 00:08:03.123 and of course this ecosystem will be destroyed or damaged 00:08:03.123 --> 00:08:05.463 if these major elements of it fall out of balance. 00:08:06.203 --> 00:08:09.223 I think that lack of balance has been further aggravated also, 00:08:09.283 --> 00:08:11.703 I would suggest, by a preoccupation 00:08:11.703 --> 00:08:15.083 with trying to achieve a precision in measurement 00:08:15.083 --> 00:08:17.763 and at the same time to make exams accessible, 00:08:18.143 --> 00:08:19.943 and that has sometimes worked, I think, 00:08:20.003 --> 00:08:21.583 to the detriment of what is being measured. 00:08:22.323 --> 00:08:27.703 The fearsome apparatus of very detailed mark schemes and qualification and subject criteria 00:08:27.703 --> 00:08:32.103 that are a feature of public exams and A-levels help ensure fairness 00:08:32.103 --> 00:08:36.723 and provide a robust basis for calibrating levels of demand and ensuring comparability. 00:08:37.263 --> 00:08:39.123 However, and I think this is really important, 00:08:39.523 --> 00:08:43.743 they also give rise to a rather mechanistic approach to learning of the sort I mentioned earlier 00:08:43.743 --> 00:08:47.563 when I was describing those letters of complaint we got from students and teachers 00:08:47.563 --> 00:08:51.503 who thought it was unfair if they encountered things that they didn't expect to in their exams. 00:08:51.583 --> 00:08:57.303 So how do we deal with that and how do we shift the focus back from exams to the curriculum? 00:08:57.303 --> 00:09:01.623 I think the most important thing we can do, particularly in relation to A-levels, is reconnect 00:09:01.623 --> 00:09:03.823 exam boards and higher education. 00:09:03.823 --> 00:09:09.303 OCR, our UK exam board, is currently running nine subject consultative committees with representatives 00:09:09.303 --> 00:09:19.818 of HE and Learned and Professional Societies And that was a model we also used when we were developing the Cambridge Pre I would also like to see universities and learned societies involved in monitoring standards 00:09:20.458 --> 00:09:23.998 I think the simplest way to achieve this would be for the regulator, Ofqual, 00:09:24.478 --> 00:09:28.078 to convene major subject committees each autumn, 00:09:28.478 --> 00:09:30.898 which could review the previous summer's exam session 00:09:30.898 --> 00:09:34.138 and comment on whether the exams have been too easy or difficult, 00:09:34.578 --> 00:09:36.498 whether one board's paper was better than another's, 00:09:36.758 --> 00:09:38.358 and whether the content levels were right. 00:09:38.358 --> 00:09:44.558 They might also indeed look at some of the script evidence, evaluate how the students were responding in each of these cases. 00:09:45.198 --> 00:09:52.778 As I said above, and I think this would be key if one were to introduce such a reform, it takes a long time for educational change to establish itself. 00:09:53.098 --> 00:09:55.518 And I think if one were to do this, one would need to give it the space. 00:09:55.618 --> 00:10:01.098 You'd need a few years to build up a stable base of praxis so that it operated as a stabilizing mechanism. 00:10:01.198 --> 00:10:05.058 So it would need not to be rushed, but I still think it would make a big difference. 00:10:05.058 --> 00:10:07.498 and I think it would be a much better way ultimately 00:10:07.498 --> 00:10:10.338 of maintaining standards than the current set of arrangements 00:10:10.338 --> 00:10:12.978 and would also offer a much more effective way 00:10:12.978 --> 00:10:16.058 and this is the key thing of grounding exams in the curriculum. 00:10:17.258 --> 00:10:20.278 So I want to finish by quoting Claude Elliott 00:10:20.278 --> 00:10:23.178 who was the headmaster of Eton College during the Second World War. 00:10:23.998 --> 00:10:26.038 Greeting new boys in 1942 00:10:26.038 --> 00:10:30.178 he described a remarkably reductionist view of the curriculum. 00:10:31.058 --> 00:10:33.478 You are here to be kept off the streets 00:10:33.478 --> 00:10:35.278 during your difficult years. 00:10:35.938 --> 00:10:38.818 So you will be made to work every hour God gives you. 00:10:39.438 --> 00:10:42.098 If you are dim, you will be helped over the hurdles. 00:10:42.858 --> 00:10:46.198 If you are clever, your potential will be assessed 00:10:46.198 --> 00:10:48.738 and you will be punished if you don't fulfill it. 00:10:49.358 --> 00:10:50.698 I wish you good luck. 00:10:51.298 --> 00:10:52.418 You are going to need it. 00:10:53.118 --> 00:10:55.138 Now, I think for all that we have some improvements 00:10:55.138 --> 00:10:56.818 to make on current arrangements, 00:10:56.818 --> 00:10:59.418 we've come quite a long way from that point. 00:10:59.698 --> 00:11:00.138 Thank you. 00:11:00.138 --> 00:11:05.518 Thank you.