Schools should fast-track best pupils, suggest Conservative MPs

Tory group proposes keeping back students who fail and replacing exam boards with single independent body Pupils should be held back a year if they fail to reach a minimum standard while more able pupils should be “fast-tracked”, under proposals to transform England’s education system outlined in a book written by a group of Tory MPs. The most able pupils could be accelerated through the system by taking courses in advanced mathematics while others take a more basic GCSE, the book, After the Coalition, proposes. The booklays out a Conservative agenda on a range of policy areas including the economy, public services and defence. On education, the MPs advocate that Britain should adopt Canada’s “escalator principle” under which the most able can move faster through the system but students who fail to reach a minimum standard will be held back. “This will guarantee that all students receive a core general education while stretching the most able. It would also put more responsibility on to the student for their own motivation. This has been lacking in Britain for too long.” The book calls for exam boards to be replaced by a central board controlled by universities to “tame grade inflation”. “This body should be free from the distortion of either government interference, or having to appeal to schools looking for lenient marking. While both schools and government would want some say in content and standards, the central focus of our independent body should be a board of the country’s top universities, setting out exactly what level of knowledge they are looking for.” The MPs also back the expansion of successful grammars. While they do not advocate a return to the 11-plus, they say that Britain has become less meritocratic since “the rise of the flawed egalitarian consensus of the 1960s”. “Although unpopular, grammar schools gave working class children a historically unequalled chance to get the best in academic education. By the end of the 1960s, only 38% of places at Oxford were afforded to privately educated pupils. The proportion is now back up to around 50%. “British politics has never been particularly logical about education, and in no area is this truer than the issue of grammar schools.” The MPs raise the prospect of allowing some selection in schools. They point out: “While selection by ability for secondary schools remains taboo, selection by ability for universities is seen as no more than best practice. At the very least, we should look into expanding currently successful grammar schools.” The education secretary Michael Gove said earlier this year that he wanted to scrap restrictions on the expansion of the most popular state schools. Ministers believe local authorities are in some cases deliberately preventing good schools from raising their “planned admissions numbers” because it becomes harder to sustain a weaker school if pupils defect. Schools GCSEs Private schools Conservatives Michael Gove Jeevan Vasagar guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.