News

Date: 06.09.05

Transcript of interview on BBC Radio Derby, 10.15 am, Tuesday 6 September 2005.

Exams ? are they getting easier? 

Transcript of interview on BBC Radio Derby, 10.15 am, Tuesday 6 September 2005

Voice General Secretary Jean Gemmell interviewed by Shane O? Connor during feature on Education 

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SOC: We are joined by Jean Gemmell from the Derby-based Professional Association of Teachers. Jean: good morning to you. 

 

JG: Hello, good morning. 

 

SOC: We?ve got Edward Gillday, who?s a former head teacher of Village School in Derby. No longer works as a teacher ? we?ll find out exactly why in a little while. 

 

SOC: [Following discussion between SOC and EG on how the pre-GCSE O Level system was "designed to fail two thirds of the population", with the pass mark adjusted accordingly ? "norm referencing".] Is there anything wrong with that? Isn?t that a good idea? Shouldn?t there be a filter? What?s the point? If everybody passes, there is that inference that this thing is worthless.  

 

JG: Do you drive?  

 

SOC: I do. 

 

JG: Right. When you took your driving test you were criterion referenced.  Could you do a reverse turn? Could you do an emergency stop? Could you do your hand signals? And if the answer was ?yes? to all of those things, you passed. That?s criteria referencing. Driving testers do not decide to fail two thirds of the people who take their exams.  They decide to let pass the people who have acquired the skills. 

 

SOC: But they do do that. They do say, ?there?s too many people passed, we?ll fail a few?, kind of thing. 

 

JG: Well, in terms of the state of the roads, actually norm referencing might be a jolly good idea! But in terms of people who are just about to take them, they wouldn?t like it very much! These days when young people take exams, if they actually can do what the exam asks them to do, and they have successfully got things right, then they have passed the exam.  

 

SOC: So shouldn?t we raise the standard then?  Shouldn?t we say that we should continue to raise the standard? Isn?t that norm referencing? Because the two things that happen is that the greater general public, and I don?t know if this makes a difference or not, the greater general public find it difficult to believe that standards are increasing, that pupils are getting brighter, because they experience them out on the street and they think, ?well, they don?t appear to be getting brighter; they seem to be the same youths that were there ten years ago, 20 years ago?.    

 

JG: You cannot compare two things that are not alike, and the problem is that, annually, in this round, that is exactly what the media do. The media do compare two things which are not alike.  

 

SOC: Meaning what ? this year and the previous year? 

 

JG: No, this year and the rosy time past that probably didn?t exist, so people say that standards are going down. But, because what the young people are being asked to do is different, and because actually they and their teachers are being very successful at doing what is asked of them, then you cannot say that that is wrong and the other system was right. They are different. You can have a debate about which it should be, which is perhaps what we are beginning to do now, and it doesn?t matter as long as people don?t have illusions about the one being the other. Most of the general public probably have never actually thought about norm referencing, criterion referencing. Why should they? But it is different, and even what is tested in the exams is different. In the days when I did O Level, we were mostly testing the ability to recall ? memory.

These days, if you?ve got access to the Internet, you don?t really need to recall a great deal. What you do need to do is to understand what you are reading and what you are finding, what information you?ve uses for, so it?s a different skill, largely, that?s being tested.   

 

SOC: But one of the problems is ? and I?ve said there were two problems ? one is the great British public don?t believe that kids are getting brighter; the other problem that people have is that they think ?well, there is no differential between one youth and another youth?, as it were, if they?ve all got the same set of examinations, what?s the point? Because the worry is then, we?re seeing it already, there?s a shortage of plumbers, there?s a shortage of builders, there?s a shortage of electricians. People are not going into vocational training ? 

 

JG: The whole Tomlinson debate ? Mike Tomlinson ? actually proposed a quite different system ? the Diploma system ? and many people in education were quite excited about that, because the need for vocational skills, and the need for them to be approved of and appreciated, is considered to be urgent by very many people. But, unfortunately, a lot of people at the top, Ruth Kelly in particular, didn?t go along with that plan and the plan got greatly watered down, though the indication is that more of the plan is likely to be implemented than first seemed possible. 

 

SOC: But don?t you worry about that? Don?t you worry about, as an educationalist, that we are, in essence, by kidding ourselves that we are doing such a great job in teaching our children and giving them these qualifications, that, in actual fact, what we are doing is quite the converse of that. We are actually failing our children because we are forcing them down an academic route where it?s artificially inflated and ? 

 

JG: No. I do worry about the fact that the Mike Tomlinson plans were shelved. I think that was a political mistake. I also worry greatly about the fact that education is so politicised. And it bothers me that, if there are Machiavellian manoeuvrings going on, it isn?t the people that are doing the manoeuvring who actually get the bad press, it?s the teachers and, more particularly, the young people who have worked extremely hard to achieve what they have been asked to achieve this time. You have to remember they haven?t been asked to do what older persons, like myself, were asked to do. They?ve been asked to do something different and, being asked to do it, and working hard at it, and doing it well, neither they nor their teachers deserved to be rubbished.

 

SOC:  Thank you.

pressoffice@pat.org.uk

 

Media Coverage 2005