Former Ofsted inspector JOHN BALD reveals disease in our education system
The seriousness of this scandal cannot be overstated, for what we are witnessing is the systematic betrayal, not only of successive generations of children, but also of universities and employers who can now have little faith in the credibility of their qualifications.
From exam boards to the watchdogs who are meant to guard standards, the modern taxpayer funded education system has been exposed as rotten to the core.
It pains me to say, as a former Ofsted inspector, that the whole thrust of this episode reveals how deeply the cancer of anti intellectualism has spread through our schools. The very institutions which should be spreading knowledge, encouraging creative thinking and promoting essential skills, have been caught in an exercise of cynical, commercially driven deceit. Their behaviour is the very opposite of the purpose of education.
Betrayed: Last week it was reported that supermarkets have to send new recruits to special numeracy and literacy classes, even though these ex pupils had passed their GCSEs
This crisis over exams has come about entirely because of politics and people in the sector acting for commercial gain. During Labour’s 13 years of rule, there was insidious collusion between the exam boards and government to mislead the public into thinking that standards were on the rise.
Labour politicians could trumpet ever higher grades as evidence of the success of their spectacular increases in spending. Meanwhile, the exam boards also had a vested interest in this mass deception; the more pupils passed, the happier the schools would be and the more schools would choose to use those exam boards. In turn, this would increase the boards’ profit and turnover. So a huge commercial racket came into being driven by greed.
Effectively the boards have been running a lucrative cartel, with the aim of raising productivity rather than knowledge and understanding. Though the examiners and markers themselves are often badly paid, those at the top have reaped huge rewards for this strategy. One Edexcel chief was on an astonishing 327,000 a year, while salaries of 200,000 are common, an excess all too typical of the self serving quango class of bosses that New Labour created.
Paul Evans told teachers he was ‘cheating’ by revealing exam topics in advance
The tragedy is that those who should have blown the whistle on this racket have instead connived in it. The qualifications watchdog Ofqual knew about the courses in which exam boards told teachers how to boost exam grades, which are publicly advertised, but did nothing. What has been grievously lacking at Ofqual is both a sense of leadership and an understanding of education.
The current head, Glenys Stacey, is a public sector bureaucrat who follows the great British tradition of people being appointed into top jobs in [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] areas about which they know little. Nor, up until now, have Ofsted or schools distinguished themselves by their determination to root out abuses.
Tragically for our young people, this squalid saga is part of a wider pattern of decline in British schooling. Subjects have been dumbed down, as grade inflation has soared.
This process of dumbing down can be seen all around us. The idea of intellectual inquiry has been replaced by a destructive obsession with ticking boxes and reaching arbitrary targets.
Exams are undoubtedly less demanding than they were in the past. Research by the University of Durham in 2024 found that A levels overall are two grades easier than they were in 1988 and [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] in mathematics modern A levels are 3.5 grades easier. Shamefully, work worth an E grade 20 years ago is now worth an A.
So far have standards sunk in the state sector, in some cases, a scholarship entrance paper for a public school at the age of 14 can be harder than an A level paper.
Paul Barnes was filmed apparently telling teachers they could ignore some parts of the syllabus as they wouldn’t appear in the exams
The deliberate campaign to drive down exam standards explains one of the fundamental paradoxes of our society: that pass rates have never been higher, yet employers and universities have never complained more bitterly about the low calibre of supposedly well qualified students. In fact, universities now have to run remedial classes in the basics of English and maths for those who have failed to attain the proper standard, despite having A level qualifications.
Similarly, last [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] week it was reported that supermarkets have to send new recruits to special numeracy and literacy classes, even though these ex pupils had passed their GCSEs.
It was Mike Tomlinson, the former head of Ofsted, who admitted that a modern maths [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] GCSE is no genuine indicator of an essential mastery of numeracy which makes you [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] wonder what the exam is for. In the same vein, the battery of vocational qualifications has been severely compromised. It has long been an absurdity that a single National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) can count as four GCSEs, when it is barely worth one.
What we need now is wholesale reform. At least the current Coalition, unlike the last Labour government, has demonstrated a genuine willingness to clean out the stables.
In Education Secretary, Michael Gove, and the new Head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Willshaw, the Government has exactly the right people for the task but, as this scandal illustrates, it is going to be a huge job.
[عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا] [عزيزي الزائر يتوجب عليك التسجيل لمشاهدة الرابط للتسجيل اضغط هنا]
