Gove Levels

Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, is going to announce changes to the exam system, in what have been described as "Gove Levels". Gove and his pals in the DfE don't like the relatively recent trend in modular GCSE courses and want to go back to the "old" system of just one exam at the end of a course. This is the latest in a long run of changes that Gove is attempting to impose on the schools of England.

There are a few issues with this in my view, that will mean that these moves won't be overly popular in the teaching profession.

1. This is going to cost a huge amount of money, buying specialist resources for the new courses, as currently there are a number of exam boards from which all schools choose, and the plan is that there will only be one. Where is this money going to come from. School budgets are being pushed to the limit in the current climate and have little to spare. Centrally the government are trying to save money wherever they can in order to reduce the national deficit, including attacking public sector pensions and wages through suggesting that a regional system is the way forward. I actually think that having just one exam board is a decent idea, because as Gove himself says, choice just means that there's a race to the bottom. Modular exams are also not ideal for a number of reason, but the main one being that they give an artificial impression of a student's ability in a subject due to the ability to retake exams that have been failed, occasionally numerous times. It is going to be very costly for schools, and there has been no explanation of where the money is coming from.
2. It's all well and good to change the qualification, but at the same time the government has said that schools achieving less than 50% of students gaining 5 A*-C including English and maths will be forced to become academies. The new exams are going to be graded by percentages of people at each grade, although no-one really knows how. It could be that 10% achieve the top grade, 15% the next and so on. This presents a major problem for teachers who are given targets. Currently each grade is topic or skill based, meaning that a teacher could say with some confidence that if a student had mastered a certain skill then they should achieve a certain grade. With the new system the teacher cannot predict with any certainty as they have no idea what students in other schools are capable of. Schools will therefore fall under the 50% line without realising it and be forced, probably against their will, into sponsored academy status. And let's face it, people are no more intelligent now than they have ever been, all that's changed is the availability of education for all, if not the attitude towards academia. The move smacks of forcing more schools to become academies in a back-door fashion.
3. New qualifications take a while to bed in, and with the recent (and ongoing) GCSE fiasco, public, or more importantly employer confidence in the exam system is at an all time low. Is this really a good time to make such huge changes? People do understand the GCSE, and what they indicate. Whether they like what they indicate is irrelevant, they know what they are dealing with. A new qualification is an unknown quantity, and often start off being too easy easy. Now is not really the time, although I suppose if it's got to be done, no time will be a good time.
4. Politicians like to tinker, and do so on such a regular basis that teachers often don't know whether they are coming or going regarding the latest policy directive from Whitehall. If you talk to most teachers they will tell you that all they desire is to be left alone to teach, rather than mug up on the latest theory coming out of Westminster.

Gove has done his best in the few years he's been in post to really make a mark by changing education at an alarming rate. Anyone who makes changes to anything ends up annoying someone, but the skill is to persuade those it effects  that it is the right thing to do. The problem is that Gove comes across as supremely arrogant and is almost universally disliked by those in education.

Gove, as ever, is bullish and hell-bent on forcing this through, but one good thing about the coalition is that it won't come in until 2015, meaning that if the Conservatives lose the next election, this can be reversed.