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| You are humming to the tune of: Home > News | 12th October |
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Diplomas for all proposed in major education shake-up17 Feb 2004 by Malcolm Drury
Teachers across England have welcomed proposals to overhaul the confusing system of A-levels, GCSEs, vocational qualifications and Blue Peter badges that help guide entry to higher education, employment, or Her Majesty's penal system depending upon the level of attainment. At the same time potential employers and universities have welcomed a re-focussing on the "three Rs".
In a radical departure from the present system students would have to demonstrate basic skills in English and maths, a requirement that appears to have been abandoned since the great "comprehensive" reforms of the 60s. The proposals would also see GCSEs and A-levels becoming components of a new diploma. A-level grades would be replaced by a seven-point scale, with the top point being impossible to achieve, while every student would obtain at least the lowest point simply by turning up for the exam and getting his or her name "mostly right". Blue Peter badges would become much more difficult to obtain, and possession of one would be a mandatory entrance requirement to the more prestigious universities such as the University of Bootle. Awarding of the badges would be taken over by the government on the grounds that the BBC is utterly incompetent, as Lord Hutton has recently verified. The new diploma would also see an overhaul of course work. For example, A-level coursework would be scrapped and replaced by a dissertation that would test students' skills in research, analysis, synthesis and Internet plagiarism, a change that has been particularly welcomed by those who have to teach the coursework. "Great," said Brenda Shuttleworth, an A-level history teacher from the Midlands. "That will give us much-needed extra time to prepare for classes ... oh, wait a minute, it looks like there won't be any, will there?" Douglas Ramsbottom, a spokesman for School Standards Minister David Miliband, and a former pupil at the Bootle Comprehensive School, told our reporter that the proposed changes aim to reduce the burden of too many exams and make sure that all students get a piece of paper with the word "diploma" on it. "At present there's too many exams," he said. "They are costly to run and unfair to the less able since high marks are biased towards them what know the answers." "We've done a bit of an informal poll on this notion of core competencies in maths and English and so far 83 percent of people are in favour of it and the other, er, let me see, er ... 37 per cent are not," he added. "And them what's not are probably Tories or Lib Dems who are just opposed to it because we thought of it," he noted. However, the current interim leader of the Conservative Party, Michael "I believe" Howard, offered cautious support to the proposals. He told our reporter that he believed the current chaos in the education system is directly the result of the Labour government's tampering over 30 years ago and for that reason he welcomed the proposals if only because they represent a tacit admission that Labour had got it all wrong "as usual". Lord Hutton is understood to be satisfied with the proposed changes.
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