Why schools should tackle the growing gap between top and bottom
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Your support makes all the difference.The traditionalists who constantly complain about grade inflation in exams should be bringing out the bunting and cracking open the champagne.
The traditionalists who constantly complain about grade inflation in exams should be bringing out the bunting and cracking open the champagne.
GCSE results, out today, show the overall pass rate has fallen for the first time since Labour came to power and is at its lowest for more than a decade.
A drop of 0.3 percentage points does not, in itself, signal a crisis. But when coupled with the rise in the A* to C grade passes, it means that the gap between the high-flyers and the strugglers is growing.
According to heads and teachers' leaders, the fact that the main measure of a school in the Government's league tables is the number of pupils gaining A* to C grade passes is causing schools to concentrate on those likely to get a C grade pass at the expense of the less able. If schools are doing that, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, they say. The teachers are there to educate all the pupils in their charge - not just the high-flyers.
Teachers' leaders also say the results appear to show that the school curriculum does not offer enough to those youngsters who have switched off from academic subjects. They mean that the new era of the Tomlinson reforms - with high quality vocational qualifications for those aged 14 to 16 - cannot come too soon.
Meanwhile, the GCSE exam is the only passport to a job for thousands of youngsters who leave school at 16. For their sake, heads and teachers should redouble their efforts on behalf of all their pupils to make sure they get the best grades possible.
Ministers could help, of course, if their targets - and their big stick - were not restricted to measuring schools in terms of their grade passes.
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