May 31, 2005

(Educators) Our education system has been in a state of almost perpetual revolution under New Labor. The introduction of the useless A/S-level... easier modular assessments... and, arguably most damaging, imposing targets on universities to broaden the social mix of undergraduates.

Colleges must now favor students from low achieving state schools even if their grades are significantly worse than those of their rivals at better ones.

Independent schools already feel the effect of this crude social engineering - last week we reported how several students with three top grades were turned down by all their chosen universities. Stories like this have led to the lunacy of some privately educated children being sent on expensive courses to disguise their background.

But, irony of ironies, students at high performing state schools are also losing out in the relentless and arbitrary pursuit of 'positive discrimination' - and this has even enraged the head of the school to which Tony Blair sent his two older sons.

Of course all children should have the chance to fulfill their potential, but there is a repellent whiff of class warfare about this. The solution is to improve teaching standards, not to penalize those who have earned a place at our top universities.

Isn't it characteristic of New Labor’s education policy that it should try to suppress the symptoms of its failed policy rather than address the cause?

And nowhere has that been more evident than in the continual tinkering with exams. Now Education Secretary Ruth Kelly, who only in February rejected proposals to replace A-levels and GCSEs with a continental-style diploma, suggests she may change her mind.

Whatever the merits of such a system, the tragedy for the current generation of school children is that they are faced with yet more uncertainty.

And worst of all is that any changes in the A-level system will be driven by New Labor’s obsession with social engineering rather than a desire for real academic excellence.