18th January 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Amongst the furore surrounding the recent GCSE English results, there seems to be quite a crucial unanswered question. So many teachers, tutors and students are complaining that the exam boards ‘moved the goalposts’, either because grade boundaries were lowered, or because the boards used different criteria to grade the exams. What we’re not asking is ‘what does this mean about the standard of English in the UK?’ Shouldn’t it be impossible for an A* student to receive a D in his/her English GCSE?
The answer lies in a common problem faced by private tutors on a regular basis, which is whether to genuinely teach a student, so that his/her understanding improves, or whether to focus on exam technique, and ensure that the student is aware of the accepted method of answering questions, and what examiners are looking for. Of course, the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and a student with fantastic exam technique, but no understanding will not do well. However, it is a student whose skills are the opposite that really creates a difficult problem.
The suggestion of the criticism of the GCSE results is that a student who has exceptional understanding of a subject can still perform poorly if he/she doesn’t have good exam technique. It seems as though we have lost the idea of what an exam is supposed to be. An exam is supposed to measure someone’s skill of the subject in question; no more, and no less. Instead exams appear to be created under the banner of: students will need to understand the ideas to do well, but will have to meet some slightly abstract criteria to get a top grade. An Exam Board’s job should not be to tell us what to learn, it should be to test how well we understand what we have learnt.
It is the most depressing thing that a tutor can encounter when we turn up to our first lesson with a student, and all they’re concerned with is how to pass the final exam. Most of us are extremely passionate about our subject, and it’s very difficult when Newton’s theories or Shakespeare’s plays are seen as no more than means to a 6 figure salary.
Tutors do have a responsibility to make sure that students do well in their exams. After all, the parents are footing the bill, and probably wouldn’t do so if the end result was an amazingly intelligent student with no exam technique. This means that tutors have to learn the skill of identifying when it’s time to focus a little less on deep understanding, and more on how to pick up easy marks.
For every “wow, this is so cool!” moment, tutors probably get about ten “will this be on the test?” moments. However, it would be remiss not to mention that most students do still want to learn, and it’s probably the pressures on them that make them so exam focussed, rather than actual disinterest. Also, occasionally you will find a student who can’t help but want to talk for hours about a subject, which gives a tutor back his faith in what he’s doing.