Teach Secondary - Issue 14.6

FAILING to make the grade Without rapid reforms to the existing GCSEs system, we risk failing to prepare our children for the future, says Dr Nikos Savvas T his summer, another 650,000 students across the country underwent the most stressful time in their lives so far, by sitting their GCSE exams and experiencing the subsequent results day. According to multiple studies, the mental health impact of these examinations on our young people is bad, and getting worse. Last year, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) found that more than three quarters of teachers and school leaders reported seeing mental health issues related to exam anxiety among their Y11s (see tinyurl.com/ts146-G1) . In light of this, politicians have promised to ‘reduce assessment volume’ – but these reforms miss the fundamental problem. We’re using an assessment method that actively undermines everything we know about learning, development and what young people actually need to succeed in the modern economy. Fear of failure In the world of work, you’re rarely required to sit an exam. Instead, most employers will typically want their employees to be capable of problem-solving, collaborating well with others and thinking creatively and critically. These skills are highly sought after, with 61% of senior figures and talent acquisition specialists at the UK’s FTSE350 listed companies stating that more creative thinkers are needed in their businesses (see tinyurl.com/ts146-G2) . This is because businesses are rapidly changing, with the world of work having undergone a fundamental transformation, particularly in the last few years. Technological advancement, globalisation and shifts across the wider culture have changed the game, meaning our education system is now assessing 16-year-olds in entirely the wrong way. Rather than living in a world where information is scarce and access to knowledge is limited, students now carry the world’s information in their pockets. Why, then, have the cognitive demands, logistics and timings of GCSE exams changed so little since their introduction in 1988? The answer lies in the fact that no government in the intervening years has been bold or brave enough to make the significant reforms that the secondary curriculum so desperately needs, for fear of failing in the task. It’s an uncomfortable truth that GCSE examinations, in their current format, remain one of the cheapest assessment methods we have available to us. With a written examination, there’s no requirement to fund tailored one-to-one feedback provided by experienced and qualified assessors, nor any need to assess students’ ability to engage in collaborative processes when appraising their progress. However, it doesn’t take an experienced educator to realise that students learn best when they collaborate with others, receive meaningful feedback and find themselves part of a supportive learning environment – none of which can be achieved by simply tasking students with recalling facts in isolation. Next level learning What, then, would a solution that genuinely suits the needs of 21st-century learners look like? I firmly believe that we first need to completely redesign the current assessment system. Let’s consider for a moment what’s involved in learning how to swim. Swimming instructors will seek to teach swimming techniques over a series of gradual stages, with learners having the chance to practise the skills they’re developing in a safe, controlled environment before applying them independently. This is because the act of swimming quite literally puts one in a life or death situation. As such, students only get to progress to the next level if they’re completely ready. My message to our government would be, why can’t learning in school be the same ? All educators recognise that we need some sort of assessment method. How else will universities be able to identify the highest performing students? But when considering what that assessment method should be, we ought to look at how it’s been done elsewhere in the education system for guidance and inspiration, rather than back to our own history as an industry. Restricted to silence Take PhDs – the pinnacle of academic education, for which students will usually be assessed via a combination of written work and an oral examination. Some universities may also require their students to reflectively track their own skills “Dowehonestlybelieve that high-stakes,memory- basedassessment serves any educational purpose in the 21st century?” 36 teachwire.net/secondary