Exams: no earthly purpose in assessing education

Exams do not assess academic aptitude.

There I said it. Something that has been bubbling under my skin for years. I apologise now for what will inevitably become a series of sentences that one could label 'rant'.

But in all seriousness - what academic merit is assessed by a formalised test? Legitimate study provides many skills: debating logic, learning skills, constructing arguments and destroying others. This is a cursory list of assessing the true test of knowledge of an academic subject, granted.

The crux of my complaint with examinations as a whole lies within the origins of the entire system.

I seem to recall (but in my annoyance cannot find) a story that highlights the danger inherent in them. A Cambridge chemistry Professor in times of old, assessed his students degree classification based on a conversation. An interview-like session lasting several hours discussing various thoughts and theories in chemical scripture. At the end of the session, using his expertise as a guide, he would give a mark. That was it. As the years progressed and more people were admitted, the ageing Professor didn't have the time or the patience, despite the willingness, to sit with each of his growning number of students sipping brandy and discussing chemical philosophy. Too much brandy let alone time. So he wrote his questions down. Gave them a period of time to answer them. And the 'exam' was borne.

What started out as a resource:time efficient tool, now formalised, has since become a test of memory, and little assessment of understanding of the topic.

Psychologists have long debated the purpose and factors that affect memory (e.g. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1129522) as any A-level Psychology student will ironically tell you. Variants from stress on the day; home circumstances, the last time they went to the loo/ate food/drank drink; the temperature of the room; the time of year/day; the number of people in the are; the tone of the examiner; the clothes they are wearing; biological symptoms - the list is endless. All can reportedly affect a persons memory.

And all can therefore affect the outcome of the memory test that is an exam. What if you have memorised a factoid religiously and you forget it when the crucial 2-hour slot comes around? Tough. You can't analyse and demonstrate you're aptitude at the subject if you can't remember that which you were supposed to analyse.

As James Cleverley, London Assembly Member, succinctly points out:

When was the last time that you were asked to do a piece of work completely alone, with no input from your work colleagues, no reference material and with a claustrophobic tight deadline? I'm guessing never. Yet this is often the situation we create when we ask children to sit exams.

He is absolutely right. From UG dissertations and PhD theses; to journal or news items - none are expected to be written from memory alone. Could you imagine carrying out genuine academic research without using the internet or a variety of sources?

In truth: exams are a necessary evil. They are a way of society ranking, sorting and advancing some citizens over others due to a lack of resource. Not everyone can get into College/University so exams are utilised as a performance indicator. Like a management consultant using appraisal tools. Exams are here to stay, but their academic merit is certainly in question.

Research into the Challenges, Usage and Benefits of social media in Higher Education Institutions

Brilliant analysis of Social Media practices in HEI's - read it back in January so apologies for the delay in posting!

http://issuu.com/jadu/docs/hei_report

The Root of the HE Problem: Primary Education?

Highlighted perfectly on Newsnight last night was the plight of the modern day university applicant: aspiring; hardworking but according to most of the panel ironically ill-educated.

Ill-educated in the sense that their entire grounding in education is tailoring them for a Higher Education sector that, in essence, hasn’t the room for them. Not that they sector doesn’t want to. HEFCE’s cap on the number of students allowed at any one HEI is restricting national ambition on a scale that is seeing over 170,000 students fail at the first post. I could go on a rant that this is a good thing to preserve resources, but the pro-access lobby (which I am also a part of) would probably shoot me down…

The way we prepare young people for adult life revolves around a series of misinformed (yet I’m sure wholly well-intentioned) role models. Teachers, parents, friends, the media – all are pointing the way to the panacea that is Higher Education. Dale Bassett, from the Reform thinktank comments: “We need to get away from the assumption that university is the only way to go. It’s the right thing for a lot of people, but it is also not right for many others. We need to get out of the mindset that university is the way forward for everyone.”

http://www.notgoingtouni.co.uk/ welcomes visitors to its site by saying: ‘So you're thinking about not going to uni. Congratulations! You've just proved that you're not afraid to think differently. Contrary to what the masses may say, university isn't the only path to success.’ A representative of the site recently commented that “37% of young people are told that university is the only option by teachers, 28% by parents and 20% said HE was the only option for progression during careers guidance.” Where does this mindset originate? We don’t want to stop aspiration, but the reasons why people go to university need to be analysed and addressed.

Could the cause of Higher Education’s difficulty in maintaining its reputation nationally and internationally be in flawed aspirational constructs in Primary Education?

Ben Goldacre’s blog today comments on the reasoning and the content of compulsory education and crucially highlights the need to change the mindset that it is instilling in the adults of tomorrow. ‘A lot of these things are down to culture and institutional inertia, but a lot of science and tech education seems a bit fossilised to me.’ He postulates further that this inertia will eventually create a nation intent on educating itself to a high standard, frustrated with the ‘fossilised mindset’ of the educational system. He may have a point – those early years are when we discover a passion for academia, be it learning language/literature or experimenting with basic science, this is the time when we are taught the value of learning. Could this also be the time where we teach our children about choice and value-based judgments – skills crucial in making the right decisions in their future lives.

Choosing the next step post-compulsory education is one of the first major life decisions that anyone has to take – going to university should not be the default for the indecisive.

Getting the A* Grade - not just for the rich.

Imagine that you are a state educated kid. You’re about to start your final year of secondary school, and thus your GCSE exam year. For almost your entire life you have heard around the place that going to university is the only way to improve your life. Stats from HESA indicate that 88.5% of entrants to universities in the UK are from state schools and colleges. Encouraging stuff.

You know that you don’t have to go to university, but you want to. So you choose a college and start you’re A-levels. You then read this:

‘Universities could turn away increased numbers of state school pupils from the poorest backgrounds as a number of elite institutions begin asking for the new A* grade at A-level, the government's watchdog on fair access to higher education has warned.

Sir Martin Harris, director of the government's Office for Fair Access, said the new grade could strengthen private schools' hold on elite universities.’ The Guardian, Monday 2 August 2010.

What does this mean for you now? You still want to go to uni so do you work any less? No. According to the HESA stats you are still likely to get into university only now you are trying to get 90% of your marks rather than 80%. More difficult? Certainly. Should you therefore give up? Certainly not.

It has long been argued that asking for AAA entry requirements may be too difficult for some state educated pupils to achieve. Before the election Lord Mandelson was reportedly looking at reducing the entry requirements for ‘poorer kids’. But HESA’s stats seem to indicate that state educated’s need no favoritism.

Kate Purcell, who led the research at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research, prepared a paper for HECSU which argues that there is "a public and professional need for a more precise taxonomy of universities". "The tariff points required... are generally indicative of the comparative status of the institutions and the competition to enter them," it adds. So entry requirements are constantly evolving, Kate argues, is the A* A-level requirement the next necessary step in the evolution of the system?

In the Tweet conversation that inspired this blog, Martin Hughes (@universityboy) and Newell Hampson-Jones (@NHJ_HE) both agree that beneath Sir Martin’s concern for widening participation is an even greater problem waiting to explode within the sector: what comes next? When students are getting three A*’s how will the system cater to the increased demand? All three of us agree, that a fundamental reform of the current A-level system is desperately needed, something I think is very nicely highlighted by Reform’s paper ‘A New Level.’

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), said in The Guardian in April: "Students from poorer backgrounds do often need more support in terms of mentoring as well as financial support at university. Research has shown students from state schools outperform their independent-schooled contemporaries when they reach university. It is absolutely vital that students are not priced out of university by any new measures from the forthcoming fees review."

Provided that the financial situation is communicated effectively as not being a barrier to HE, I believe that state educated students are more than capable of overcoming any hurdles between them and their goal provided that they are bright enough. They conquered the A grade. They can conquer the A*. We should really have more faith in them.

Updated version: What is social media NOW?

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What is social media NOW?

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What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

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What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

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