In the United States, schools in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, have ended the academic year in crisis. Investigators probing test results over a 10-year period found a culture of cheating involving half the schools. Teachers accused of altering pupil answers to boost results blamed pressure from administrators. The Federal Government’s No Child Left Behind legislation rewarded schools for hitting central targets and punished those who did not. The problems only emerged two years ago when success rates showed an unexpected surge.
It is an ominous lesson for English schools policy. Reliance on league tables resulted in the pressures that have crippled Atlanta schools. No Child Left Behind inspired Labour’s National Challenge, with its floor standard of 30 per cent of secondary schools achieving grade C or above in 16-plus exams. Michael Gove upped this to 35 per cent when the coalition took office. Last month, the Education Secretary announced this would become 40 per cent in 2012 and 50 per cent in 2015. Schools are threatened with closure or becoming academies if they fail to meet the targets. However, head teachers will be handsomely rewarded if national targets are met.
Under the last Labour Government, results improved dramatically, particularly in academies. Notwithstanding this, in January, the Department for Education recalculated league table results using Gove’s new English baccalaureate – an arbitrary return to an old grammar school curriculum of five subjects. On this basis, schools slipped back, with five out of six failing to meet the Ebac target. The worst performing schools were academies.
This drew attention to the methods used by schools to improve results, notably the use of qualifications “equivalent” to GCSE in league tables – an entirely legal practice. In fact, it was decreed by Labour in 2004 that non-GCSE vocational qualifications could be used. The practice has been widely criticised by both right and left for denying working-class pupils the right to take academic subjects. But it has been used to boost assertions that academies improve results.
Gove made a curious and little-noticed claim in a speech to the National College of School Leaders on June 16. He said: “We also need to change the way we use data in our pursuit of accountability. As Professor Alison Wolf’s review of vocational education has made clear, the introduction of large numbers of vocational equivalents in the GCSE performance tables in 2004 has led to widespread gaming of qualifications. The 4,000 per cent increase in the number of such qualifications in just six years is testament to this”.
Testament to what? A culture of manipulation similar to that in Atlanta?
The Atlanta crisis stemmed from teachers changing pupils’ actual pupil scores. But gaming, as Gove calls it, is perfectly legal. Soft subjects are substituted for hard subjects, and students attain qualifications which are not, in fact, equivalent to GCSE. While this is supposedly all above board, it means students cannot then go onto A levels or what are regarded as better jobs. It also means schools rise up the league tables, money and prestige flow to head teachers and senior administrators, and in academies in particular, the results are used to downgrade comprehensives. Schools which don’t play the game are deemed to be failing, putting them in line for National Challenge penalties.
Gaming puts Gove on the horns of a dilemma. It is strange that he stated the increase in soft subjects was 4,000 per cent over six years. In her review of vocational education, Alison Wolf actually stated that the increase in vocational exam entries in school 2004-10 was from 1,882 to 462,182 – which I calculate as a staggering increase of more than 24,558 per cent, or more than six times greater than Gove stated. Why should he underestimate by a factor of six?
The reality is that the Government has inflated exam results by including equivalences, especially in academies. The National Audit Office and the recent London School of Economics report both use 16 -plus exam results to show that Academies are more successful than other schools. There are few sixth formers in academies and no primary schools are academies. Take out 16-plus exam results and there is no hard evidence that academies work.
Gove has set his sights on all schools becoming academies and, more immediately, how schools can meet his enhanced floor standards without using equivalences. Dare he take them out of league tables?
As in Atlanta, the pressure to get results and justify national government policies has undermined education. Nothing can be taken at face value in English education. In Atlanta, a crude manipulation of results has been exposed; in England, gaming is more subtle.
If the equivalences were taken out of league tables to let schools stand on their GCSE results alone – withdrawing the Ebac straightjacket as well – then a start would be made to put objectivity back into English schooling. Politicians have manipulated exam results – and not just in one city of the United States.
