'Sat-nav' A-levels enter the debate

The Reform group has secured a lot of publicity today on a report which talks of ‘high maintenance’ students who are ‘spoon-fed’ with ‘sat-nav’ A-levels that they ‘learn and forget’.

I’ve just done a comprehensive survey of the staff in the office and 8 out of 9 say they learnt and forgot their GCSEs and A-levels, even though most did them in the ‘good old days’ of ‘rigor’ and ‘proper academic’ standards. So no surprises there! I am pleased that Reform have started a campaign Educators for Reform, promoting ‘rigorous education and an educated society’ (who could disagree with that!) because they seem to be advocating an alternative view to that of Edge, RSA and all the members of the Open Source Alliance (a group of organisations who share a similar perspective on education). It helps provide some traction to the debate.

Without yet having read their manifesto in detail, my beef is that we need to avoid a sterile debate about so called ‘traditional’ academic standards (and the implication of rigor) versus a more skills or capability-based curriculum (and the implication of wooliness). The need for really high quality academic or largely theoretical courses of study that test critical reasoning, broad understanding and flair is beyond question. And the evidence that standards have slipped with some A-levels needs to be taken very seriously. BUT there are many paths to success. And there is no reason why we cannot have other paths that combine theory with practice that are just as rigorous, just as important for developing flair and critical reasoning … and just as well resourced and recognised.

Also in the news today is the statistics on the shortage of jobs for young people, as released by the DCSF. I am pleased to have joined this debate on the Reuters Great Debate blog pages.