{"id":7609,"date":"2020-01-31T07:52:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T07:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7609"},"modified":"2020-01-31T07:52:23","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T07:52:23","slug":"can-tomlinson-replace-gcses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/01\/31\/can-tomlinson-replace-gcses\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Tomlinson replace GCSEs?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders [ @RealGeoffBarton ] thinks so. \u00a0What follows is the beginning of his article<\/a> in the TES late last year:<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\"In Bristol this week, at the annual conference of the Girls\u2019 Schools Association, headteacher Rose Hardy used some vivid imagery to describe GCSEs. Here\u2019s what she said<\/a>:\u00a0'I think many heads would say that in 30 years\u2019 time, maybe sooner, we\u2019ll look back and say what we\u2019re doing now with young people is the equivalent of what the Victorians did \u2013\u00a0building their\u00a0school rooms with windows so high up pupils couldn\u2019t look out, and putting them in dunce caps'.<\/p>\n

The report of the debate about GCSEs led to an editorial in The Times<\/em> under the headline: Tested to Destruction<\/a>. The newspaper said that these troubled<\/em> exams no longer served a useful purpose: 'Scrapping GCSEs would free up time that could be spent working towards richer qualifications at 18. At present it encourages schools to teach pupils to tick boxes rather than to educate them imaginatively.'<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good that the leaders of some of our longest established independent schools are leading the drive for qualification reform. It\u2019s good that one of our oldest newspapers is doing the same. \u00a0After all, as I\u2019ve written before<\/a>, an examination designed in and for a different era, is looking increasingly irrelevant. As technology takes on so much of the heavy lifting in other parts of our lives, surely the days of sports halls being filled with old school desks, armies of invigilators, and exam storerooms akin to Fort Knox is an anachronism. ... \"<\/p>\n

Just so; as I may already have argued. \u00a0Imagine the time that will be released for education and learning once all that revision and examining has gone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders [ @RealGeoffBarton ] thinks so. \u00a0What follows is the beginning of his article in the TES late last year: \"In Bristol this week, at the annual conference of...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}