Let's ban exams

8:55am Tuesday 22nd April 2008

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The exam term is beginning, but are exams necessary? Should education be student-centred, rather than dictated by teachers and syllabuses? Owen Amos meets one ex-teacher who thinks it should

SUMMER is approaching, the air is warming and nights are turning light. For teenagers, it means one thing. Exams.

Across the country, teachers will tell pupils it's never too early to revise.

Pupils will feel a brief knot of anxiety, then think, I'll start next week. Or maybe after.

For 14-year-olds, it's new. For 18-year-olds, it's familiar: SATs in Year 9, GCSE mocks in Year 10, GCSEs in Year 11, AS-Levels in Year 12, A-Levels in Year 13. That exam treadmill is set uphill and the speed gets faster each year.

But one ex-teacher and examiner would chuck the treadmill and banish exams. It sounds appealing: including university, last summer was the first since 1997 I hadn't sat exams.

Bill Morehead, of Darlington, taught in the Navy for nine years then, from 1974, taught business studies, economics and social studies across the North- East until 1992. He was on exam boards and worked with the TUC to promote life-long learning.

He argues that our education system is "prescriptive and testing-orientated". Pupils drilled to pass exams succeed; the rest are written off. "As Sir Mike Tomlinson (chairman of the Working Group for 14-19 Reform) argued, we teach people to take penalties, but not how to play the game," says Mr Morehead.

He recalls a distant day teaching in the Navy. "We had new entries, and I asked them what they did after work. They said they were often in bed by 8pm.

I got them to look at the facilities. One picked up Shackleton's Boat Journey (by Frank Arthur Worsley) from the library.

"The lad said This is fantastic, can I take it out of the library?' I said That's what libraries are for' Where in the education system had this not been explained?"

Mr Morehead believes learning, currently determined by syllabus, should be student-centred. "I once had a group that were very difficult to teach,"

he says. "For the first week or two, we just talked about anything. One said You're supposed to be teaching us'. I said Yes, and you're supposed to be learning'.

"Then we looked at the subject, worked on a system of work that took them forward. Four years later, one came back in his Army uniform and said If it hadn't been for you I don't know where I would have been'.

"He had been in a children's home, in a place that was institutional, but through this subject he was treated as a person. We have all got our different talents, and this allows people to realise them. There are so many students who work hard but don't achieve in exams, but nowhere does it record that hard work."

"Depth and breadth of knowledge" - and the lack of it - is a recurring theme. Students who pass exams don't necessarily have it, Mr Morehead says.

Students who fail exams don't necessarily not have it. Why else are more universities increasing their own entrance tests?

Only by engaging students, he says, will their talents and confidence emerge. This democratic ethos would carry on to the workplace, making the economy more efficient and inspired. Workers would do more than obey.

"The Lifelong Learning in the Workplace's national development project (in 1996/97) placed the agenda in the hands of those taking part," he says.

"People would say This is the first time someone has listened to me'. Or I pointed out we had not reset a machine to meet the new customer's specifications and was told the customer would not notice.

They did notice and we lost a contract worth millions'.

"This is backed up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report which says our efficiency is low compared to other countries."

Student-centred learning works well, Mr Morehead says, in some states of the US, parts of Australia and Finland. But how would it work here?

The teacher sets work based on students' needs.

Class work, carried out in controlled conditions - no getting answers from the internet - would be assessed by teachers. A range of work would then be assessed by groups of three moderators: some grades would improve, fewer would worsen, but most would stay the same. Results would arrive, as usual, in August.

But don't exams teach students how to deal with pressure? Student-centred, softly-softly, is all very well, but wouldn't employers rather have someone who had entered an exam hall, head full of stress, and emerged with a string of A grades?

"In my Navy experience, the way most departments ran was prescriptive," says Mr Morehead.

"Recruits were needed to memorise, as that was what they were examined on. But when you entered a high-pressure situation, the breadth and depth of thought was missing. Often mistakes were made, and those mistakes could have been fatal."

The problem with student-centred learning, Mr Morehead says, is convincing two rather important groups: teachers, and politicians. "Parents expect to see results and tables, and that's what the politicians don't want to disappear. It's not hard, but if you advance change, teachers see it as another burden.

They prefer what they know. But when you get into student-centred learning, the respect improves and that carries on into other areas of life."

The Government has, in the past, shown interest, but has never fully trusted student-centred learning.

Come May's warm nights, when playing out is replaced by revising in, pupils may wish they had.

"We should learn to measure what we value," Mr Morehead says. "Not value what we can easily measure."