'A' levels - the gold standard ?

On hearing Ed Ball's latest ploy to try to destroy objective information with his social engineering diploma scheme I was going to write a rant about why anyone needs 4.5 A Levels anyway - at least of the difficulty which was the standard when I took them in the mid 1980's. ( 3 A levels could get you into Oxford or Cambridge in those days ).

But then I saw a quote about Michael Grove referring to 'A' levels as the gold standard, and thought a bit more about what he was actually saying. Reference to a gold standard doesn't mean gold as in coming first or being expensive, but in terms of be convertible into something of intrinsic value. 'A' levels, at least in the sciences, used to lay the ground work for understanding science, defining its language and philosophy as well as a bit of history and a few facts. This had convertable value to many of the applied subjects that you could study afterwards as well as keeping on with a more narrow range of interests in the pure sciences.

I wonder if the new Diploma will be 'convertible' to something of worth ?

I worry as I see how my children are now taught. Arithmetic is now re-branded numeracy and is hidden behind a range of woolly concepts that are not clearly defined like number bonds, differences sharing out etc. Gone is the clarity - in is the muddle that many primary school educationalists probably felt themselves when they failed to get qualifications in maths and the sciences.

I am told by a science teacher that the situation is far worse in GCSE sciences and now A levels. A trip to the BBC's revision web site should show you that.

Gone are the convertible underlying principals. In are trendy subjects designed to make scince more relevant and interesting - but unfortunately impossible to carry out as you are not actually getting an education in science any more.

Our education system has suffered grade inflation, curriculum dumbing down, debasement by widespread and systematic cheating and even the subject of the curriculum is now longer valid.

The use, ie proof of convertible ability, skills and understanding, of these qualifications has been reducing for years. They are no longer held to any standard. You can only suspect that the diploma's will be worse as they are provided by the same liars and cheats who ruined the current system and whose motives for that destruction are the same as they were before.

Now what the government should do is let people choose whatever qualifications they like and let the market decide. But then it would be harder to damage middle class children's futures with you socialist hate and spite that way wouldn't it.

Labour implicitly admits education failure over exams

Ed Balls (he originally thought up the lets pretend to make the Bank of England independent wheeze ) is to repeat the trick by making a new independent body to oversee exams. [ We now know that really the bank of England was neutered, Gordon's appointees put on the board and when Alistair Darling finally said jump the governor said how high ? ]

The reports on this are full of the usual misdirection and straight lies about how exam standards haven't been falling, armed with the Labour smear on their critics that they are doing down "children,schools and parents".

But the brutal truth is that after 10 years the evidence that this is just untrue is too crushing even for the Labour spin doctors and hangers on to continue to push on the public.

So what does Ed Balls do - he identifies where the mistrust is - New Labour - and tries to pretend he's moved the body out of their control. But you can be sure that Labour favoured people, donors and party members will be on the board and will do their master bidding.

If this move is not to be seen as anything else than a repeat of the Bank of England independence dishonesty then why not have multiple boards. You know like they used to ?

Why not let schools and even pupils chose which exams to sit and Universities decide how they want to weight them.

A free market in education - with opportunity and fairness for all ....

... of course nothing like that could be further from the aims of the servants of the dead and vengeful hand of socialism.

Education, education, education ? Spin, spin spin. Lies, lies lies !

PS Man in a Shed is really going to have to get lots more work done for the rest of the week, so posting will be light. But I'll be back for Monday !

Update: Ed Balls on R4's Today this morning repeating the same matra. I wonder if his boss will like how much claim for the credit for the Bank of England misdirection move from 1997 ? He also just point blank refused to acknowledge the University of Durham survey that says A levels grades have inflated by one grade level in the last 10 years and 2 in the last 20.

Remember what these confidence tricksters came into power saying ? They have instead effectively inflated qualification grades as part of a great con on the public. Cheating children - odd that that didn't make its way into Gordon's conference speech.

Right - work today, not blogging. Comment moderation is back on for a bit as a spammer is trying to add links in comments to old posts.

Update: See John Redwood's take on this also - on much the same lines.