I say ‘my’ because I am 17 and currently in the education
system, having just finished my AS levels. Incidentally something Gove wants to
scrap. The education overlord has deemed that students should take all their
exams at once at the end of the two years. This is a purposeful attempt to take
away second chances from those who deserve them, to take away the opportunity
to turn your education around. I have no idea how many hours of time I spent
revising for my AS’ but I assure you, they were not easy. I felt challenged and
frustrated by the subjects I took, having to learn huge swathes of information
from only one year. Moving this to after two years will only add to an already
large work load for students. The other advantage of AS’ is that you can reassess
your options. I know huge numbers of people who began their A level courses intending
to study a certain subject at university, only to find at the end of their
first year, they were not as suited to it as they thought or their grades were
not as high as they had hoped. Having the system split into two years allowed
these people to drop the subject and to focus on others which they were doing
better in. Without AS’ it’ll no longer be possible for students to re-evaluate
what they want with their education in such a manner.
I have not pointed out being able to resit as an advantage
of AS’ because I don’t believe it is. I’m sure to the outsider, resits must
seem like A grades handed to students on a dinner plate, but they are in fact
the ultimate Catch 22. If you don’t work hard enough the first time round, sure
you can take the exam again but the chances are it will be alongside other
exams which are likely to be more important. You’re then faced with the
challenge of either not revising for your resit or taking away revision time
from the more important exams. Resits do not guarantee your grade will change,
all resits do is give people who do not feel they worked hard enough first time
round to put the effort in and turn their education around.
The problem with our exams at the moment is the way they
test people. Gove has made no proposals on altering the format of them, only
taking away the coursework element, one of the few parts of exams which allow
students to be creative and inventive, exploring avenues within their subjects
which hold true interest for them. Gove is mercilessly ripping into a system
which although nowhere near perfect, is not going to benefit by these
unnecessary, bureaucratic and irrelevant changes. Yes perhaps exams should be
made harder, but not in the way most people assume. At the moment, the majority
of exams I have taken have been a mindless regurgitation of information onto an
exam paper, with little individual thought having to go into it. To improve
exams, you need to give students the opportunity to think for themselves and to
show off their intelligence, rather than being force fed every last piece of
information to impress an examiner. This is not what Gove is proposing, I repeat,
this is NOT what Gove is proposing.
Finally, this is the thing that infuriates me most of all. I
have had no say in any of this. If we ignore the fact we have a coalition, and
assume that we have what is effectively a Conservative government, I was not
allowed to vote against this government because I am under 18 and I am deemed
not intelligent or politically minded enough to vote. None of this was
mentioned in a Conservative manifesto, so even the fools who did vote for the
Conservatives did not vote for this. There appears to have been no consultation
with any students even though we are the people who will be affected by this.
Michael Gove is not going to have to go back to secondary school and resit his
A levels, nor are any of the current government going to have to pay £9000 to
go to university. Yet, they continue to believe that it is acceptable to decide
what is the right pathway for those mindless, idiotic under 18 year olds who
are hardly conscious, let alone literate. I feel like I am watching an
educative dystopia unfold, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
