Education is about more than league tables
‘What a sad and stunted view of human potential’
Last week, I wrote about the crazy pressure that sees some exam-factory schools dropping subjects in which pupils have “only” got a B. (This, by the way, is one reason modern languages are in the doldrums. It’s very easy to lose marks in French and German, both are seen as “hard” A-levels, so the word on the street is for kids to avoid them altogether.) In extreme cases, I warned, a child can be turfed out if he or she jeopardises the school’s precious league table position.
What do you know, here comes St Olave’s grammar school in Orpington. Sixteen pupils were told this summer that their places for Year 13 – the final year of school – had been withdrawn after they failed to get three Bs at As-level. How appalling.
Many teenagers choose subjects that are entirely new to them for sixth form. By the time the first lot of exams come around, they have barely discovered where their locker is, let alone got to grips with the unfamiliar material. Such kids often go on to do very well in the final exams, a year later.
On its website, St Olave’s boasts: “Our outstanding record of academic excellence consistently showing around 95per cent of A-level results at A*/B grades, places the school amongst the nation’s top three grammar schools.”
Well, bully for St Olave’s. But you planned to chuck 16 young lives on to the scrap heap. However brilliant your results, if you treat young people like faulty widgets on a conveyor belt then you are not outstanding at anything – except ruthlessness.
Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I have seen it in action. My daughter’s friend went off the rails in her first year at sixth-form college. The school warned that it might kick her
out. I took her under my wing and, in the run-up to the exams, she had a private tutor to help with two of her subjects. Soon she was back on track, feeling happy and confident. She got a more than respectable A, B and C in her As-levels, confounding her predicted grades.
It was devastating, then, when she received a letter saying that she would not be allowed to complete her A-levels, having violated the terms of some contract. A reply was sent to the principal pointing out that a teenager with huge personal difficulties had triumphed against the odds. Anyway, wasn’t she running a state school that was supposed to cater for all sorts? No dice. She was asked to leave.
It is one thing to exclude pupils for disruptive behaviour, quite another to sacrifice them because they are a bit behind the rest. What a sad and stunted view of human potential.
One formidable mother I know was told that her latedeveloper son also had to leave the same sixth form. My friend told them where to get off. Dopey Boy went on to take a First at King’s College, London.
So, congratulations to the parents who launched a legal action against St Olave’s and had the expulsions reversed. It’s high time the exam factories were taught a lesson: education is bigger than a position in a league table.