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Mrs Pattison’s Blog

Robert Halfon has recently spoken out to advocate that young people should be given the opportunity to develop personal skills alongside the subject knowledge and skills required for their academic examinations. He has suggested we ‘scrap’ GCSEs and create a new 14-18 curriculum. (The Guardian)

Firstly, it is fantastic to see the government engaging in strategies to ensure young people are securing the kinds of skills they will need after they leave school. Long may this conversation last! This outside-of-the-box thinking was woefully absent in the recent curriculum reform championed by Mr Gove in 2015 and any school would argue that helping young people build the best foundations for their futures lies at the very heart of their existence.

It is exactly for this reason that so many schools and further education colleges already do much of what Mr Halfon is suggesting. For example, Croydon High School’s Neligan Programme expects of Sixth Form students that they complete regular activities to either complement or enhance their studies. They take on leadership responsibilities by supporting younger pupils or create teams to participate in competitions and attend workshops and masterclasses.

Furthermore, schools are keen not to leave it too late to start developing these skills. Our bespoke cross-curricular programme for 11-14 year olds, Enterprise Technology, bridges the technological skill students will need in the future with essential ‘softer’ skills such as creativity, working collaboratively, thinking critically and problem solving. These are just the kind of skills Mr Halfon wants to promote with his new scheme (although he appears to be focusing on the curriculum at age 14+.) I therefore doubt he will find many critics in the sector telling him that he is barking up the wrong tree.

My question to Mr Halfon would be; haven’t the government already missed the boat? Surely, the recent wholescale curriculum reform offered the perfect opportunity to have conversations of this nature. My worry would be that Halfon’s proposals will fall on the exhausted ears of teachers who are, still now, in the throes of rolling out this last government initiative (candidates will sit the new A level Maths and Design Technology for the first time this summer.) The comprehensive transformation for the entire sector that his proposals would bring about would send hugely committed and already overworked teachers into a tailspin. Probably not the best advert for the profession in the midst of a teacher recruitment crisis!

Of course, no school (nor any teacher) would allow any consideration to come above the best interests of its students. The new exams are content-heavy and demand more of candidates, thus piling further pressure on our 16 year olds and any programme that looks to ease the burden at this stage merits exploration. Furthermore, schools are seeing a narrowing of their curriculum, reducing the exposure to creative subjects which at Croydon High we believe to be crucial in an increasingly automated future. Again, if Halfon’s ideas seek to redress this imbalance, I am sure the entire sector would be all ears!

However, his proposals seek to examine skills which an examination mark scheme would find it very hard to quantify. How do you test a candidate’s level of ‘adaptability’? How do you assess ‘personal skills’ in the context of an examination? The government does not have a great track record in experimenting with less traditional methods of testing; the disastrous experiment with controlled assessment at GCSE is best forgotten. Shouldn’t some parts of school life remain test-free?

The one significant benefit that such a scheme could bring about would be to ensure schools in all sectors were given the resources to ensure greater priority was given to programmes which help students develop just these skills. It is a great shame to see schools having to make far too many compromises in the face of ever-decreasing budgets and unfavourable financial headwinds, such as the unprecedented and sudden hike in employer contributions to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme for September 2019. I am not suggesting by any means that our current system has reached perfection but what the sector does not need is yet another set of reforms to an examination system which works admirably. What we do need is an inspectorate which champions the stellar work schools are already doing to develop these crucial skills and the funding to ensure all schools and colleges can prioritise the development of the skills that Mr Halfon champions.

Mrs Emma Pattison

Headmistress