Island Life Magazine Ltd October/ November 2012 | Page 12
ANDREW TURNER MP
The ‘all must have prizes’
approach should end
In 1996 the controversial journalist
and author Melanie Phillips published
an influential book called All Must
Have Prizes.
The title came from Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The Dodo marked out a circular race
course and competitors started where
they liked, ran when they liked, in any
direction they liked and stopped when
they liked. The Dodo declared the
race over – and when asked who had
won said: “Everybody has won, and all
must have prizes.”
Melanie Phillips likened our
education system to the Dodo’s race.
Rewards handed out willy-nilly and
nobody allowed to feel they had failed.
Now as I said, she is a controversial
figure, but there are many who will
recognise at least a kernel of truth
in her argument. GCSE exams
may or may not have got easier that controversy rages on - but it is
unarguable that more and more pupils
have been awarded higher grades each
and every year.
The various boards that set and
administer the GCSE examinations
seem to be taking part in their own
surreal race - to the bottom of the pile.
Some schools choose the easiest exams
and allow students to re-sit parts of the
exam until they pass.
Much of the final mark is determined
by coursework and the courses
are modular – bite-size learning with students not understanding a
complete picture. Coursework is often
undertaken at home – so who knows
who actually produced the work.
That all leads to higher pass rates but makes it impossible to identify
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genuine high-flyers. In July we heard
from University Vice Chancellors
(including Prof. Sir Leszek Borysiewicz
of Cambridge) that many maths and
science students are given ‘remedial’
classes on arrival at university.
Of course, the real losers in this
system of unrealistic expectations and
false rewards are the young people.
They have no mechanism to test their
true abilities and skills, and if everyone
is a winner then any sense of success
and achievement is fundamentally
undermined.
With the Olympics and the
Paralympics this summer that culture
began to be questioned. Britain’s
achievements on the sporting fields
were outstanding and recognised
internationally. If only the same were
true of our education system. The
most recent OECD league table of
results in 2010 revealed that the UK
fell from 24th to 28th position in
maths, 14th to 16th in science and
17th to 25th in reading.
That is why I was so pleased to
hear the announcement that GCSEs
in core academic subjects will be
abolished and replaced with English
baccalaureate certificates. Each
exam will be administered by a single
examination board and marked on
final exams with no partial re-sits. It
will certainly not be popular with
some parts of the teaching profession,
but if we are honest we know that
unless we reward only genuine
achievement then all prizes are
meaningless, and our young people
will continue to be disappointed and
let down by ‘the system’.
The Riverside Centre,
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www.islandmp.org