The current ever-recurring symptoms of the UK secondary education exam system are set out in the previous article. Now it's turn for some commentary on the reasons.
It's easy to blame the government, and rightly so. Less to blame on their wish to make their education goals look 'accomplished', more on how the ministers view the purpose of exams.
Back in Hong Kong, it would be lucky for someone to get an 'A' grade in public exams (HKCE, HKAL) - they are as low as 1.6% and only as high as 4% among all candidates by subject. The purpose of exam is clear - putting each candidate into relative strength against fellow candidates, so that the cream of the cream could be spotted and bestow upon them best education and training opportunities. It's a competitive exam structure, and in the process candidates learn the essential knowledge and skills.
In the UK, my suspicion is that given the increasing abundance of further education opportunities (sixth form and university/college education), they are less anxious to grade students competitively to put only the best into the next step of the ladder. Instead the focus of the exam is a 'certificate of attainment', kind of non-competitive, 'see how much you have picked up in the curriculum' attitude. A bit like 'certificate of attendance', but with a simple exam at the end to see how much you have learned.
Without the urge to distinguish among candidates, there was no desire to set ultra-hard questions for the sake of discovering the best from the better.First step in decline of exam standards. Then as exams were viewed as 'attainment test', then testing the concepts individually/superficially would suffice. Hence easier questions to crack as variations and combination of concepts in a question became rare.
The third step is the establishment of the 'soft subjects' - so that candidates need not be trapped in the hard 'traditional subjects', but instead choose to seek attainment in subjects they may wish to pursue. Good in principle, but doing no good to candidates in terms of a rigorous education.
With these three steps in the set-up of exams, it would be hard to really tell who is good and who is really good. This serves the purpose of 'certificate of attainment', but does colleges and universities no favour in deciding who is suitable for what course. And with the easier exams and soft subjects, there is less motivation for students to study seriously, so the attainment becomes ever more superficial and irrelevant (think about an A level in law - how useful can it be in terms of knowledge attained or promoting rigorous study?)
Even worse, the brighter students suffer. An easy exam paper is like testing top chefs through the task of cooking up plain pasta as opposed to a complete circuit of cooking up plain pasta, preparing the meat, cooking up the sauce, and finally putting them nicely on a plate and selecting the right wine to go with. The slightest statistical error (e.g. having read a number wrongly) which has nothing to do with knowledge or skills would have deducted marks from a bright student, with no way of making up (as one of the few who could answer the last question). The ideas of using marks from these simple exams to put students into 'A*', 'A' etc. is absurd.
Furthermore, the emergence of those soft subjects is doing serious students no good. if someone is serious about a career in law, should he/she take A level in law? it would certainly help him to learn about law earlier, but given a lot of easy-learners choosing that subject for the sake of having an easy time, the good exam results would mean nothing, and probably put him in a not so good university. The purpose of those alterntive subjects is not fulfilled.
If the UK education needs fixing, they should fix their view on the exams' purpose - make it a competitive exam across the board, no more soft options, no more easy grading. Then confidence will flow back. Perhaps a 10% of candidates attaining 'A' wouldn't be too outrageous then.
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