6th April 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Michael Gove recently announced that universities will be consulted over plans to increase the difficulty of A Levels, but this hasn’t been met with widespread support from the teaching community. Obviously the implementation of Gove’s idea is yet to be made clear, but at Blue Tutors, we think that the motives for the changes are good, and we’re unclear about exactly why some teaching unions are annoyed.
Essentially what Michael Gove wants to do is prepare students better for university, so that graduates are better prepared for when they begin their working life. For a long time universities have insisted that many undergraduates begin their degree course without the necessary tools, and that extra classes are needed for these students, so that they can ‘catch up’ to learning at the level required.
So, what could one say in argument against this idea? The most obvious is ‘what if an A Level student doesn’t intend to go to university?’ This is a very good point, because at the moment many students study A Levels until they are 18, and then choose a route other than an undergraduate degree. However, this is a problem with the system rather than Gove’s specific idea; what should happen (and the way things are changing) is that, after their GCSEs, students have the choice whether to pursue A Levels and eventually a degree, or to take vocational qualifications with a view to beginning work when 18. Clearly we don’t want 16 year olds to be making decisions which will pigeonhole them for the rest of their life, and many students will study A Levels ‘in case’ they decide to go to university, but it would be difficult to argue that A Levels provide nothing for a student who eventually decides not to study a degree. You wouldn’t say the same about a university student who doesn’t continue to study for their PhD.
Are academics at universities the best people to decide what level students should be at before university? Certainly we have to respect the intelligence of university lecturers and tutors, and the academic level to which they have risen. It could be that their motives are solely the success of their university, and so their advice would not consider the prospects of a student deemed ‘not university material’. However, it is difficult to think of a group of people better equipped to advise on this subject.
The criticisms of Gove’s plan mainly come from teaching unions, and the message is that the government must consult those who will be charged with teaching these new A Level syllabuses. Christine Blower has made the most noise about this, and it really is starting to sound like a broken record; every time an education reform is announced, she criticises it if there is even the suggestion that it may reflect poorly on a single teacher. Blue Tutors has the greatest respect for teachers, and for what they do, but, as we’ve said before, let’s not forget that the majority of teachers didn’t excel academically. It’s a sad truth that the majority of our most intelligent graduates seek careers that they see as more rewarding than teaching, which means that the people who understand academia the best are not those who are teaching it in our schools.
The A Level reforms appear to make a lot of sense, but surely we want experts to decide on the content and difficulty of the courses. Of course teachers should be consulted over the implementation of the new A Levels, once the syllabuses have been decided, but not before.