Private schools spurn trendy subjects for tougher courses

What we want to do is accelerate towards GCSE. We think children could do them a year earlier and that would give more time for A-levels
Michael Spinney, chairman of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS)

A quarter of a century ago, the education system was simple. The brightest teenagers studied for O-levels, rigorous exams recognised the world over. O-levels were followed by A-levels, tougher still, which acted as a gateway to university. Contrast this with today, an era when parents worry about ever-rising GCSE pass rates, punishing government targets and a profusion of trendy subjects, such as media studies, and it’s small wonder that many yearn for a more traditional curriculum.

It’s not just parents who have worries. In November 2007, Michael Spinney, chairman of the Independent Association of Preparatory Schools, announced plans to devise an alternative to the state’s national curriculum. “Increasingly, we are living in an era where pedagogy and epistemology are sacrificed in favour of fashionable causes,” he said, “often with disastrous effects upon standards of learning.”

All rhetoric?

A few months on and in conversation, Spinney’s rhetoric lacks the grand flourishes of his set-piece speech to the conference of the Independent Girls’ Schools Association, but his concerns come through just as clearly.

While the national curriculum is largely ‘very good’, it’s also ‘restrictive’ for more able pupils and parts of it are ‘plain bonkers’. The review he announced, which will shape an alternative curriculum for children aged between five and 14, is currently at work.

“What we want to do is accelerate towards GCSE,” Spinney says. “GCSE is a fairly straightforward examination. Quite simply, we think children could do them a year earlier and that would give more time for A-levels.”

It would be easy to interpret the tone of Spinney’s words as a call for a return to a world of spelling tests, times tables and history dates. The truth is more subtle. At the Beacon School in Amersham where Spinney is headmaster, the motto is ‘traditional values, contemporary education’.

Skills for life

By contemporary education, Spinney says, he means encouraging such skills as an ability to analyse, to work in teams and to use IT. When he talks of traditional values, he emphasises ‘a positive habit of work, where children set themselves high standards’ rather than remembering exactly when the Battle of Trafalgar occurred.

But perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising. Wanting to see a more rigorous, tougher curriculum isn’t the same as wanting to see a wholesale return to the exams and educational ethos of a previous era.

At a nostalgic remove, it’s easy to forget that one of the main criticisms of O-levels was that they were seen as divisive.

“Times have changed, we’re trying to get more pupils qualified and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all,” says John Newton, headmaster of Taunton School. “I think you have to serve the needs of the whole nation and not just put them all through O-levels or say, ‘Stuff you, you’re no good’.”

The challenge of the iGCSE

But what about brighter pupils? As Newton adds, in adopting “a more humane examinations system,” we may have “risked losing a little bit of the edge at the top end”. A worry over this is one of the reasons that an increasing number of independent schools are turning to the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (iGCSE), a more challenging alternative to GCSE. More than 60 subjects can be studied to iGCSE level, including many languages.

In contrast, while some state schools offer iGCSE in extra-curricular classes, the qualification isn’t taught as part of the school day, largely because results don’t count towards school league tables so there’s no funding available. Universities, though, recognise and value the qualification, leading to worries that a system of ‘educational apartheid’ may gradually develop.

These fears have been brought into even sharper focus by the government’s new diplomas. Currently being piloted, these are intended to unite vocational and academic qualifications, and perhaps eventually to replace GCSEs and A-levels.

However, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) recently withdrew its support for the new qualification, citing a lack of appetite among employers for change. Some in the independent sector are sceptical about the qualification too. Going forward, one possible scenario is that state schools will focus on diplomas while the independent sector follows more ‘academic’ courses.

Encouraging independent thinking

For parents struggling with a plethora of choices, it all makes for confusing times. That’s not a situation that’s likely to go away. John Newton predicts that we’re heading for a ‘mixed economy’ of qualifications.

As with so much in life these days, it seems we’re going to have more choice – whether we like it or not. Then again, perhaps parents should worry less about pieces of paper than what individual schools are trying to help their pupils achieve, education in a wider sense.

“If you look at the challenges of the 21st century, they’re not for people who have got exams, they’re for people who have got problem-solving skills,” says John Newton, “people who can look at malnutrition, disease, political issues, financial issues, environmental issues and not just go through a formulaic process to get to an answer.

"The questions haven’t been formed yet never mind the answers and we’ve got to have people who can think for themselves, who can form that world of the 21st century.”

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