Along with millions of Britons, I occasionally shop “like a billionaire” through the online, Chinese poundshop, Temu. I’ve had a drone with two HD cameras for three quid, a Nintendo controller for a tenner, and some telescopic feather dusters for pennies.
But it’s just a bit of fun. The app for the drone never really works, the controller broke during a vigorous session of Street Fighter 2, and the feather dusters were… smaller… than I’d expected. I wouldn’t buy something I actually relied on, like a phone or a set of pans.
I’m the same about qualifications. I’ve recently been micro-learning my way towards certification in various programming languages via an app. I am under no illusion that any achievements will have any currency, in contrast to my quarter-century-old and largely-forgotten A level in Computing, which would still be my passport to the field, according to degree-apprenticeship entry requirements.
This is why I abhor the perennial calls for economically-disadvantaged students, who are nineteen months behind by 16, to be fobbed off with a different qualification, whether that’s AQA’s “let them eat Duolingo” or MEI’s “almostaGCSE”.
For a start, there’s an unpleasant prejudice behind such proposals. (Anyone seriously advocating separate-but-equal routes for subgroups needs to resit their history GCSE). And aside from that, there are very practical reasons why alternative English and maths quals will never work.
As someone who transitioned from secondary teaching to FE, I can tell you that having a common qualification between sectors was pivotal in that move, because I knew I wasn’t de-skilling myself from future opportunities in schools. The benefits of cross-pollination between 3,500 secondaries and 200 colleges shouldn’t be closed down for an insular approach.
New qualifications also require significant investment in training and familiarisation. Think about the £76 million the DfE awarded the Education and Training Foundation for T level CPD. How many 5.5-per cent FE teacher pay rises could that have funded?
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that some of those calling for new English and maths qualifications are also funded by the DfE to deliver CPD.
There’s an unpleasant prejudice behind such proposals
Then there’s the impact on timetabling. Let’s assume some students will still want to sit a ‘real’ GCSE, like the tens of thousands who resit each year despite already having grade 4s, for progression.
Then you are immediately hit with the timetabling and class-size inefficiencies of deploying staff across two qualifications rather than one. And this is being suggested while colleges are struggling to recruit for these subjects.
None of this is hypothetical, because we already have alternative qualifications in the form of functional skills (FSQs). If I had a pound for every time I’ve been told that they are “not fit for purpose”, I wouldn’t need Temu to feel like a billionaire.
FSQs already cause all of the problems above: isolating teachers in a niche qualification, necessitating bespoke training and causing inefficient deployment.
On top of that, they are on-demand qualifications available every fortnight, at five different tiers, offered by more exam boards than GCSE, but entered by a relatively tiny number, bringing inevitable issues of quality and viability.
FSQs were reformed as recently as 2019, but the truth behind the dissatisfaction is that the reforms didn’t magic up a 100 per cent pass rate. For any alternatives to be seen as “fit for purpose”, they will need to be easier than GCSE, and therefore worthless.
I’m certainly not saying the current GCSE is perfect. Not the maths one anyway. How it came through the 2015 reforms with three papers and still tiered is beyond me.
The English GCSE, on the other hand, with no tiers, complete freedom of text choice and built around creative writing is about as chef’s-kiss-perfect as we could ask for.
But whatever we choose as our acknowledged ‘gold standard’ should be open to all, without gatekeepers preventing other people’s children from getting in.
Worse, while we are continually distracted by the red herring of talking about qualifications, we’re not talking about pedagogy, curriculum or students.
Young people from low-income backgrounds deserve better than to be railroaded into poundshop English and maths just because it’s easier to blame qualifications than it is to improve quality.
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