Britain bows to reality

Crackdown on High School cheating

Sweeping cuts to GCSE coursework were announced yesterday in response to widespread fears that it has allowed students to copy from the internet or to get their teachers and parents to complete projects for them. Coursework completed by pupils at home will be scrapped in English literature, foreign languages, history, geography, classical subjects, religious studies, social sciences, business studies and economics for courses starting in 2009. Instead, the examinations watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), said that there would be more external exams and controlled assessments carried out in the classroom under strict supervision and marked by teachers. Coursework will continue in art, music, design and technology, PE and home economics. No final decision about English language and information technology has yet been made.

The details followed an announcement last week by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, that coursework would be cut from GCSE maths from next September. The announcement was accompanied by new research findings showing that the majority of teachers were not overwhelmingly worried about the use of the internet for coursework. Four in five (82 per cent) of the 100 subject heads surveyed for the QCA disagreed that their students made too much use of the internet for their GCSE coursework. English and music teachers were most likely to view coursework positively; religious studies teachers were the most sceptical about its value.

A far bigger problem with coursework, as far as the teachers were concerned, centred on the burden or marking coursework and the extra work it generated for students who have to meet project deadlines for a large number of different subjects all at the same time. While most teachers agreed they would like to retain an element of coursework, there was disagreement over how much and how it should be assessed.

In response, the QCA recommended that new ways be found to make written examinations more "challenging and fresh" and to improve the assessment of coursework. The recommendations follow a review of coursework ordered by Ruth Kelly, the former Education Secretary - instigated because a two-year review by the examinations watchdog had found evidence of widespread cheating. Revelations about pupils copying or buying coursework from the internet or getting someone else to do the work for them cast doubt on continually rising grades and raised questions about the credibility of vocational qualifications.

Mr Johnson accepted yesterday that more needed to be done to assure parents that coursework assessed pupils' work in a fair and robust way. "The changes will toughen up the way in which coursework is assessed so that the hard work of the vast majority of students is not undermined by questions of validity," he said. However, he added that coursework still had a place in the modern classroom. Done properly it helped young people to develop research and presentation skills and demonstrate a practical knowledge of a subject. "It is important that coursework retains its place within teaching and learning but we must ensure it remains a reliable and effectiveform of assessment," he said.

Ken Boston, the chief executive of the QCA, insisted that the current system of GCSE exams and coursework was robust. "QCA has provided both teachers and parents with further information on the help that they can provide and how best to authenticate a candidate's coursework." GCSEs replaced GCE O level and CSE exams in 1988. The element of coursework was introduced with GCSEs to test "skills not easily tested in timed, written examinations" and because the three-hour times written examination was seen as narrow and off-putting to many candidates

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The Education Grind: Why is high school the new college?

When school officials in the ritzy suburb of Scarsdale, N.Y., announced last week a proposal to drop Advanced Placement courses from the high-school curriculum, parents throughout the land breathed a sigh of relief. At last, they must have thought, the rat race is coming to an end.

"Rat race," of course, is a phrase that used to describe the daily grind of corporate lawyers and investment bankers. It is now shorthand for the pressure-filled lives of their children--and the children of all professionals, from Beacon Hill to Beverly Hills. Parents, teachers and students have been observing this frenzy of activity for some time and have now joined their voices in a chorus of complaint: students take too many classes; they participate in too many extra-curricular activities; they suffer nervous breakdowns from the stress and back problems from the overloaded schoolbags.

The experts are worried too. The past few months have brought us books like "Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child" "The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids" and "The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids."

With such tomes piled high on their nightstands, it's no surprise that Scarsdale's grown-ups are wondering whether to let AP courses go. These courses were once intended to earn high-school students college credit by offering "advanced" (e.g., college-level) instruction in everything from calculus to German literature. Now they are mostly used as a learning credential: An AP course on a resume means that a student actually knows something in a particular subject area.

The "rat race" complaint is that AP courses put a strain on students--too many facts to memorize, too much reading. And teachers complain, too. They say that AP courses force them to "teach to the test." In this case, though, the test is a pretty good one. Conceived in the early 1950s by educators from three prep schools (Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville) and three universities (Harvard, Princeton, Yale), the AP curricula demands that students acquire real knowledge. Unlike the SAT's, which measure mental aptitude, the AP tests ask students hard questions about content. Even the essay questions on the history exam require students to place quotations and documents in their correct context and to identify events, dates, historical figures and ideas.

This is exactly the sort of knowledge that is often said to be in short supply among college graduates these days, and not without reason. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, conducting a survey of college students over the course of the past year, has just issued a report on college learning. One major conclusion: Four years in college classrooms don't seem to make much of a difference. When students were asked a series of questions--like what is the source of the sentence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,"--seniors scored an average of 53.2 and freshmen earned a 51.7. But it's worse than that. The report concludes that "at many schools"--in U.S. history, foreign affairs and the economy--"seniors know less than freshmen."

Why? Because college increasingly offers a crazed social experience at the expense of rigorous study. But high school does better: It is often the last time that students are forced to learn something. Parents make their kids show up at school. More than a few teachers convey basic skills and knowledge. After-school life centers on burnishing a college application, not binge drinking. AP courses, where they exist, exploit these structured years for maximum learning.

Critics will say that "rat race" kids no longer play soccer for the joy of the game or master the violin for the beauty of the music or study history for the love of learning. Maybe. But who cares? At least something worthwhile is going on. These kids have four years of college ahead of them during which they may take as few classes as they like in subjects that require no difficult exams. They can spend their time outside the classroom drinking and "dating." They can opt out of the rat race, and they do. And there is no penalty. College-admissions officers go over high-school lives with a fine-tooth comb--Why didn't she play a sport junior year? Why didn't he continue in Spanish? But most employers don't scrutinize a college courseload or a college GPA. The degree is all that matters. So before the good people of Scarsdale move to end the rat race, they should reflect on its value. High school is the new college. Once those college-admissions letters arrive, their kids will stop learning and start living on easy street.

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Australia's most Leftist education system produces kids who cannot do basic math

Incoming national mathematics standards expect 10-year-olds to be able to add and subtract numbers in their thousands and deal with fractions in their hundredths. But in Western Australia, the curriculum demands much less, requiring students only to recognise simple fractions such as halves and quarters. A comparison of the West Australian maths course with the national standards reveals a huge variation in the knowledge expected of students, reinforcing the call yesterday by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop for a national curriculum.

The mathematical abilities required of students in Western Australia is well below national standards, with the state slipping even further behind in the past two years. Under the outcomes-based education system in Western Australia, students are graded at eight levels of achievement, which span all years of school. Two years ago, students were expected to have reached level four by the end of Year 5, which in maths would mean being able to rewrite 0.35 as 35/100 and knowing that 3/4 is less than 7/8. But revised targets mean today's Year 5 students are expected to reach between levels two and three. Students at level two can divide into equal thirds, recognise and write 1/3, 1/5 and 1/7 but cannot consistently write 2/3.

The national standards expected are still more demanding, requiring the 10-year-olds to add one-quarter to one-half and describe 2.12 as two and twelve hundredths. Ms Bishop said the differing expectations clearly demonstrated the inconsistency and falling standards that had prompted her call for a national curriculum. "It's even more reason for us to focus on raising standards and making curriculum accountable," she said.

Ms Bishop said the states and territories had come a long way towards a national curriculum with an agreement in August on National Statements of Learning that set out the core and essential elements in five subjects. The statements of learning for students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 were approved by all state and territory education ministers and must be incorporated into their individual curriculums by 2008 as a condition of federal funding. In addition, a common national literacy and numeracy test will be introduced from 2008, replacing the individual tests the states and territories now set

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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