Coursework is falling from fashion.    QCA “wants to scrap coursework in many GCSE and A-level subjects within four years.”    It will remain “only where it was the most reliable way of ranking pupils”.    And if it were so deemed to be necessary, then it would become compulsory, not optional.

All this emerged in an interview with QCA boss, Ken Boston, reported in TES.    It comes as no surprise.    As TES reminds us, coursework’s critics have been whittling away since John Major attacked it in the early 90s.

True, the assessment of coursework is fraught, time-consuming and open to abuse.    So a return to exam-only GCSEs and A-levels may well make assessment more robust.

But coursework develops different skills:   research, independent learning and, if managed properly, teamwork as well.    Exams can’t measure them.    Abandoning coursework may make the qualification more robust.    But it will also narrow its focus: it may measure more accurately, but only because it measures much less.

Even worse, if such skills are no longer necessary to gain a qualification, then they may no longer be encouraged, or even recognised.    After all, in today’s hard-pressed schools and colleges, you teach to the test, not to some vague ideals of educational excellence.

Yet industry and commerce keep carping on about the lack of these very skills in school-leavers and graduates.    Remember the “Market Failure in Skills” report I raised in quodlibs 198?    That, like many reports before it, argued that the skills employers need are “generic skills such as teamworking”.

Indeed, industry keeps telling us that, even academically, formal education isn’t doing a particularly good job.    Take the new report, out this week, from the Royal Academy of Engineering entitled, unsurprisingly, “Educating Engineers for the 21st Century”.    They found significant deficiencies amongst new graduates in “problem solving and application of theory to real problems, breadth of knowledge and ability in maths.”

The debate about what should be taught will go on.    But at least, if we move to an exam-only regime, employer’s will know what a GCSE means in the future.    Won’t they?

Well, new research from Durham University, reported in TES, shows clear differences between different subjects.    If you want to get a GCSE, do drama.    It’s the easiest, apparently.    Closely followed by PE, media studies, English, and sociology.     No surprises there.

At the other extreme, if you want a real challenge, try science.    Biology is 3rd hardest, physics 2nd and, for the ultimate challenge, try chemistry:   that’s the hardest of all.    I wonder if there’s a link there to the closure of university chemistry departments (see quodlibs 199-201)?    Either way, it’s yet more evidence of a swing away from science, and all that that endangers.

Actually, the TES report is a tad oversimplified, since the ranking order varies with the grade.    Thus, according to the BBC, Latin is the hardest in which to get a grade C at GCSE, and child development the easiest.    Down at grade G, German is the hardest.    Indeed, if you peer behind the headlines to the report itself, inevitably such simpleminded statements become more complex.    As the authors state:

“We do need to be cautious in interpreting these differences as straightforward differences in difficulty.    They reflect the differences in the grades achieved by the students who take that subject and their grades in other subjects.    There could be a number of reasons . . . to explain the phenomenon.

“It is also possible that other general factors, such as the quality of teaching, or overall levels of students’ interest, motivation and effort, could vary systematically in different subjects.”

If we really want reliable qualifications, we need to take account of all these factors.    We also need a mix of assessments.    Exams by themselves are not the answer.    Nor is coursework.    TES in its editorial calls for more emphasis on ongoing assessment by teachers, but “in the course of normal lessons and homework, not through special assignments and projects which constitute coursework”.    And why isn’t such marking included in overall grades?    Because, argues TES, of “minister’s reluctance to trust teachers”.

I think we need all three: exams, ongoing routine marking, and special projects or coursework.    Alright, that makes for more work.    But it also makes the whole process more meaningful and reliable.    And if we can’t rely on our qualifications, what are they for?

Sources:    TES 31 March, pp1, 16, 22 (editorial);   Market Failure in Skills;   Educating engineers;  
TES 31 March, p3: comparability of GCSEs;   comparability of GCSEs;    GCSE report