The Telegraph reports that Dr Geoff Parks, Cambridge University's Director of Admissions,
… cast doubt on the rigour of the "gold standard" by claiming that five or six A grades proved only that students were "pretty good" at a range of subjects. To impress admission tutors at the elite institution, students must show they are "exceptionally good" at the subject they hoped to study by attaining deeper understanding and critical thinking. Time would be better spend (sic) sitting the more demanding Advanced Extension Award papers, reading outside the curriculum, debating and working part-time, said Mr Parks.
"The truth is there is no advantage to having a string of A-levels; in fact, a student with three As can be a much better applicant than one with six As."
Libby Purves, in The Times:
… we have, in the past two decades of educational upheaval, been brainwashed into believing that the only way to ensure the effect of education on the individual mind is to keep on measuring it with formulaic tests. We have been persuaded that a certificate or diploma is the ultimate product of the process — the more certificates the student can show, the better educated he or she is deemed to be. …
All this — though he may not have intended as much — is beautifully called into question by Dr Parks with his observations on the A-level overdose. He would like to see clever 17 and 18-year-olds reading outside the curriculum, debating, thinking, even working part-time. He would like them intellectually free, excited by their subject, curious, amused, anxious to explore. English literature and foreign language students should be reading voluntarily way beyond their set books (university tutors report that they rarely do).
Mathematicians and scientists should be devouring journals, noting discoveries, debating ethics; historians should be thinking about periods and people which will never turn up in their narrow, bitter little A-level papers. As for diversity, all these people should be peering interestedly into one another’s subjects, attending lectures or classes not because they are going to be examined on them but because they are interested.
But we don’t trust them, do we? We assume that every minute we do not hold their poor noses to the grindstone of set texts and compulsory exercises they will be out clubbing, watching reality TV or falling over drunk. Only when they present us with A-grade A levels do we believe them to be scholars. Which is rubbish. The best sixth-form heads know this, and organise debates and community work and theatre trips and outside lecturers and rich exciting libraries with time to use them.
But many sad schools are so focused on exams … that they do no such thing. And it makes Jack a dull boy.
Technorati tags: schools, imagination, curiosity, critical thinking, independence
