Why it’s time to bin GCSEs for good

The pandemic gave us the chance to rethink our education system, so why do we persist with this pointless ritual? Simon Jenkins gives his thoughts

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on The Guardian

Two years ago I prayed that the government might make permanent the cancelling of GCSE exams because of COVID. This wasteful, costly, cruel and pointless ritual of teenage evaluation could at last be binned; schools could revert from being testing machines to actually educating children.

No such luck. Thousands of young people will now be doing their ‘mocks’, driving through to exams beginning in May, then results in August to prepare for further examination at A level; for some, half a year will have been spent being measured. Ever since Michael Gove abolished continuous teacher assessment, the exam hall has become the high temple – or torture chamber – of schooling, the great God of metrics rules.

This year, in case the chaos of the past two years has not been ‘fair’, education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has decided to make things a bit easier. Maths and science exam papers will include formulas – which are normally memorised – and humanities papers will allow a wider range of essay topics. In addition, examiners are being asked to be ‘more generous’ to allow for the disruption of the pandemic. Lower scores can fit higher grades. We might ask if, in future, individual children can have their results upgraded if their personal year has been ‘disrupted’.

On the other hand, Zahawi is angry that teachers who have been ‘informally’ assessing their pupils over the past two years have been biased in their favour. How dare they think their pupils might have done better outside the diktat of Zahawi’s sacred regime? Indeed, how dare they know their pupils better than he does? That is a job for statisticians, not teachers.

Zahawi is retaliating with proposed tests at 14, as well as at GCSE, with increased central inspection and a state national tutoring company, costing £25m, whose ‘catch-up’ tutors actually sit in schools. It should do wonders for teacher morale. The truth is, only exams matter.

No other European country has subjected its state education to such total nationalisation. The irony is that China, whose dirigiste schools have long entranced Whitehall, is now moving in precisely the opposite direction. President Xi last year ordered an end to early years testing and homework; he cracked down on private tutoring and promoted practical courses at the expense of academic ones. Whitehall should catch up with its hero.

We can only weep to think how much learning relevant to a child’s life in the community is being sacrificed in favour of Zahawi’s maths formulas – which not one child in a thousand will ever see again. I cringe to look at a GCSE curriculum; compulsory maths and science, but no compulsory health, economics, law, civics, computing or human relationships. History and geography are mere ‘options’. What cult is in charge of this monastery?

We have passed through three years of a golden opportunity. Without GCSEs we could have seen whether three years of a different sort of schooling – one involving home and school, online and in-person, individual as well as group experience – might have given a cohort of children a better preparation for life.

Instead, all we have demonstrated is that we have a public service in the grip of archaic interests and lobbyists with too much to lose – that, and an education secretary lacking the guts to stand up to them.