CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Season of fiascos
BILL KIRKMAN
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The private sector, motivated as it is by profit, is not necessarily more efficient than the public sector, especially in a field like education.
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One depressing recent tradition in Britain has been an annual controversy over school examinations. When General Certificate of Education A level results are published, there have been loud complaints, if results are better than the previous year, that standards are slipping. (Of course, if results were worse, that would be taken as proof that standards of teaching are slipping.)
This year there has been an additional examination controversy — the failure to get SATS tests (for younger children) marked by the time the results were due to be published. Concerns have been exacerbated by assertions that the actual marking of test papers has been poor. These were underlined when it emerged that some of the papers had been marked by teenagers who had just completed their own A levels.
Questionable competency
The marking of the SATS tests was awarded by contract to an American company, ETS. Their competence is being questioned in many quarters. Meanwhile, the government has set up an inquiry into the whole fiasco. Various organisations have responsibility for different aspects of the examination system, with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) being the body with the contract with ETS. The Secretary of State for Education, Ed Balls, however, did state that he shared the frustration and anger of teachers, children and parents about the delays.
Frustration and anger about the mess are real. It has been particularly bad for children who in recent years have been subjected to a plethora of tests, which have tended to take much of the pleasure and excitement out of education. The obsession with testing has been widely criticised. Four years ago, for example, the then Chief Executive of the QCA spoke of an “assessment frenzy”.
The present fiasco raises some fundamental questions beyond those of competence and efficiency in the conduct of the tests. Probably the most important — which I hope will be addressed by all who are responsible for the management of the country’s education system — is: “What is the real purpose of education?” No sensible person would argue against the importance of maintaining high standards of teaching. Similarly, no one would argue against encouraging children to achieve the highest standards of which they are capable. Education, certainly, must be about drawing people out (as the Latin derivation of the word indicates). It is not at all clear that this is best achieved by imposing an “assessment frenzy”.
Another question concerns the message that is conveyed when those setting and marking the tests are manifestly not doing it well. Intelligent children, like their teachers and parents, will quite reasonably wonder what sort of role model is being offered. “If I am expected to reach high standards, should this not apply equally to those who are assessing me?”
This leads to a third major question: the definition of expertise.
It would be ridiculous to deny the importance of appropriate expertise. We all rely on it in most aspects of our daily lives. The issue, however, is not about the importance of expertise, but about its relevance, and the quality of the experts.
Let me take a couple of, perhaps extreme, examples to illustrate this point. When I was running a university department, I needed and valued expert help — for example in handling finance. I would not have valued intervention by a management “expert” who had no idea of the department’s role. If I had a heart attack I would hope to be treated by a heart specialist. The help of a distinguished medieval historian would not be reassuring.
Wrong assumptions
Are these examples absurd? They probably are. There is nevertheless a tendency on the part of governments (in Britain certainly) to make huge assumptions about where expertise should be sought. There is an assumption, for example, that the private commercial sector will be more efficient than the public sector. Recent performance by some major international finance organisations hardly supports that assumption as being categorically right.
Moreover, the assumption often ignores the crucial question about purpose. What is the organisation for — and how should its success be measured? Anyone running a business, obviously, must be concerned about making a profit. By contrast, if a police service aims to make a profit, it will not, and should not, be trusted.
To return to the SATS tests, it is, I suggest, not unreasonable to hope that this year’s problems will lead to some fundamental questions being asked about the purpose of education, the need for tests, and, where they are needed, the nature of the expertise required to organise them.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, U.K. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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