The extent to which conforming to the national curriculum is the best way to educate students remains controversial in Britain. There has been an argument that it is most efficient to teach them the necessary techniques needed for examination processes, on one hand. On the other hand, a fair number of teachers have sustained that learning is not and should not be exam-based. Whether one method is less fruitful than the other is subject to debates. However, in our society today, those who have experience on a certain field are the ones more valued by employers on that field. By this, we deduct that the best people to discuss education-related matters are not David Cameron, Michael Gove and teachers but rather students. A person born in an upper-class family who went to Eaton is not the one that should decide for the lower-class ethnic minority child who of course has a very distinctly different view on how they should be taught. Giving the minority rich responsibility over policies on the ‘education’ sector is encouraging a future generation of failed citizens. This current government under Cameron as Prime Minister has done palpable damages, not least on education. The number of times we students have had to miss school this year because teachers were on strike is simply unimaginable; not to count how many unnecessary half-days we have been forced to have due to ‘teacher-trainings’. One wonders whether these factors will be taken into account when exams are marked; whether the official ‘mark-schemes’ include the number of missed topics for which failure should be excused. Before any discussion is turned into a policy, the government should be brought to seek opinions. Michael Gove as a Secretary of State for Education has no power to rule our lives as he pleases – reducing teachers’ salary on one hand, abolishing January exams on the other. Students have to be given the choice on what will shape their future. Not only should we have the right to choose what to study; we should also be given the right to decide the best methods our studies should include.
The current curriculum for A Levels is made of coursework and exams. Mostly, AS subjects are exam based with coursework only being introduced in A2. Whether or not coursework is of any use is what needs to be discussed with individual students. As far as I am concerned, I would have wished that I had the opportunity to have all coursework-based subjects with no exam included. It is a shame that no matter how happy I was about my coursework essays, it only amounts to a total of 40%. The advantages of a coursework are that it gives one the chance to think on a project for a period of time longer than the two hours we have for exams, it allows one to free from cages of predefined and close-ended exam questions, and it encourages students to improve their final work by constantly seeking advice from teachers. Giving students the chance to work on a question for a period longer than a month gives them room to prove themselves at their best; it is only reasonable that some of us argue that we would rather have coursework than exam. I have had a total of fifteen drafts before I could produce my last English piece of coursework; you do not get this opportunity in an exam – you either fight and win in two hours or fail completely. However, there are a number of problems about coursework that we would like to see redressed. Just like education as a whole, coursework does not really open doors for creativity. Yes it is meant to be a student’s ‘project’ but we students are no more than those who build houses. Our job is to reproduce a final piece according to what the architecture had designed in the plan. As much as I had to say with the four poems I had to analyse, none of what I said would have mattered if I was not following the ‘examiner’s criteria’. It doesn’t matter how much I know about Sociology; as long as my answer answers all but the question asked, I have no more marks than a missed score. Nevertheless, I would still advocate forcoursework. Exams should not be forced on every student – itshould be made one of the many options from which we have the right to choose the method that suits us best.
My reasons for standing against exams are straightforward. Some exams are simply ridiculously conducted. How they expect students to pass is what I still need to figure out. In my GCSE English year, I was scoring full marks for nearly all controlled assessments. As tricky as the mock exams were, I nevertheless managed to have As and occasionally I managed to achieve an A*. With all confidence, my teacher predicted me an A/A* only to be met by a shocking reality after my exams. Where the ‘D’ I had came from nobody really knows. It can only make students want to scream and break all the schools’ windows. It is very dehumanising to have your work marked by a person who has absolutely no idea who you are. It is even worse to know that those who are marking your exams are not necessarily teachers. Then tell me how one is supposed to react when they learn that on top of this disaster, examiners are paid according to the number of papers they mark. The problem with exams is not really, as some argue, the time allowed. With three-quarters of an hour, one has the capacity to produce a highly academic essay. But this can only be so if the question asked has some sense. Sometimes when you read the exam question and the extracts produced, you simply wonder whether those who selected them have human hearts. You really doubt that they truly understand that these exams determine our lives in many ways. No matter how much revision one manages to swallow, it takes resilience and faith to accept the reality met in exam rooms. It is only understandable that the majority fails.
Then when they have failed their exams, society is very rapid on labelling them as ‘deviant’. Of course it is hard to climb the social ladder in a society so influenced by a division between social classes. You only have to send an average working-class student to apply to Oxbridge to realise what we truly mean when we argue that the system has become more ‘equal’. Why is it that the upper-class and middle-class students make up for more than 80% of those admitted to Oxbridge when they are only 3% of the population? Don’t you wonder how and why even the brightest of state educated student is very likely to be rejected from the ‘top universities’? I myself have experienced the Oxbridge interview processes. I have had the chance to meet these privileged few who are believed to be born on another planet. What you discover when you meet these people is that they are absolutely no more intelligent than you are – I do not believe in arguments that they have a higher level of IQ. Instead, they have simply been subjected to the best interview preparation there is in order to be admitted. The difference between them and us is that we have been accustomed to close-ended questions that do not encourage creativity hence why when one faces situations such as interviews at Oxford, they simply cannot come up with arguments that are very much their own and creatively independent. It is not so much the institutions, they are not to blame. It is the system that is constantly making sure to sustain the gap between classes.
Finally comes the whole issue surrounding university. I still do not understand how we are expected to pay £9,000 a year when until very recently the amount was three times less. Some emphasise that paying this money back will not be a very huge charge on the borrower since it will only be 9% when one begins to earn a total of £21,000 a year. But I wonder how much it becomes the more you earn. Unless they expect the working-class to remain in less-paid jobs, university fees are exploitation. Moreover, I am amazed by how much we have to go through before being offered a place at university. After all, aren’t we the ones that are giving them money? Aren’t they the ones that need student or rather customers? It is only to show how confused we all are in this society. University fees were this government’s way of discouraging the lower-class students to move their way up to university. They know that if they are able to get a degree, with the demands of equality and fairness in the work sector today, they would move to equal the middle-class. Little do they know that it is really less than 10% of ethnic andworking-class people that are able to move up the social ladder.
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