Exams in education

I AM writing to thank Redland High student Priyanka Raval for this insightful sentence in a recent

“I, with many other young people, am beginning to see that schools are becoming increasingly constricted by exams; knowledge is dispensed on a purely need-to-know basis; questions are ignored in class on the basis that ‘it won’t be in the exam’, and education has stopped being the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and more an indoctrination of how to comply with a mark scheme.”

Turn these words into a positive description of what learning is all about and you have the foundation of a properly reformed education policy.

In view of Michael Gove’s difficulties this week, I propose Priyanka as next Secretary of State for Education.

And another thing Priyanka, get yourself to a reputable university and you’ll find that exams can indeed reward astute comment, originality and profound thinking.

It’s not exams in themselves that are bad, rather it’s the fact that exams have been hijacked for political purposes.

The system has been constructed so that it’s in the interests of the schools to focus on a lightweight gaining of easy marks rather than fostering deeper understanding.

Obliged to meet grade targets with all speed, schools have arguably been forced by government policy into abandoning important dimensions of a culture of genuine learning.

David Sutcliffe.