I had some correspondence from someone who
read my recent post on the limitations
of testing and who asked how I could possibly be a Principal if I did not
care how students did academically or what they learnt. I was rather staggered, because I see academic
success as absolutely central to education, and was surprised at the reaction; I had meant to explore in my post the difference between genuine
academics and teaching to tests (they are very, very different). So a
good lesson for me in terms of writing more clearly J! I want to set the record straight this week,
and address the very notion of ‘academic success’. Of course education is not only about even genuine academic
success. It's equally important that students graduate with secure senses of themselves, and strong moral
compasses, and these things are often found outside the
classroom – but still, the right kind of academic success is unequivocally
necessary.
So what’s the wrong sort of academic success?
I came across a most striking example of a different paradigm many years
ago, when as a Head of Department in another school, I was engaging colleagues
in a discussion on how to be sure that we were preparing students for
university as well as for excelling in exams.
The conversation was galvanized by some feedback from recent graduates;
they had told us that the extremely rigid and structured pedagogies that were
employed in that school at the time did not really help them succeed in the
unstructured university environment where independent and self-motivated study was
expected. One colleague argued quite
passionately that this was not our
problem as teachers; our job was to get the students the grades to get into
the best universities and it ended there.
Academic problems after that were, he claimed, for the University to
deal with (or presumably, the students whose lives we were after all talking
about).
I remain as dismayed– as a professional and
as a parent – by that view as I was then.
It seems obvious to me that we cannot neglect the non-exam, intangible
qualities of curiosity, love of truth, independence, determination and so on –
the skills that count after the school years. We cannot say that students who leave with decent grades without these skills have had a good education. But – and here is where I think some confusion might lie – that does not
mean that these skills are all that
counts. Despite what I have said elsewhere about
the need to take the long view of success, and of the importance of things
other than grades, there is a lot of be said for knowing a great deal of stuff,
and even for excelling in exams, and I want to say a little bit about both of
these. They are both needed.
Knowing
a lot of ‘stuff’. There is a lot of nonsense spoken about the changing need to know brought on by IT – ‘you can Google it’ being
the most commonly cited reason for focusing more on skills than traditional
knowledge. But there are massive differences
between things on your phone and things in your brain. In particular, you can actually use the
latter much better than the former – that is; unfashionable as it may sound,
knowing stuff is actually central to developing the very skills and qualities that
the OECD and other national and international bodies are always saying are needed for the modern
economy. I'll say more about this in another blog, as the 'you don't need to know much' myth seems to be so prevalent. For now, let's just ask ourselves if we want our doctors to know a lot about medicine, or our teachers to know a lot about the subjects they teach, or our engineers to know a lot about materials. It's clearly not all we want, but I take the answer here to be a resounding 'yes'.
Passing
Exams. I
have heard it said that exams are anachronistic and meaningless in the
modern world; that they only give a picture of what someone can do in a
compressed timeframe, and so should be replaced by other modes of
assessment. There is some truth to
this - complementing exams with coursework is generally a good idea – but as with any extreme statement, there's always an element of well it depends..... If a high
stakes exam were simply sprung on students by surprise, and simply consisted of
factual recall, then it would indeed be lamentable. But instead consider exams that are scheduled
well in advance, with probing original questions that test understanding and
insight, in schools that support increasingly independent student preparation
by practicing over an extended period.
Success in exams like this will come for students who genuinely
understand, and who have the organization, determination and discipline to
prepare well over months. These are, I
suggest, some of the same skills that are required at university and in the
workplace - so these high quality, carefully planned exams can indeed tell us a lot. I am reminded that for a time
British Airways used the proportion of planes leaving on time as a key success metric. It’s not that leaving precisely on time itself was
really that important (what with headwinds and air traffic control it does not guarantee landing on time) - but for planes to leave on time so many check-in, luggage, fuelling, engineering, scheduling and
safety systems have to work seamlessly that this single
statistic made sense as a single, easy to measure proxy. Similarly, intelligently administered exams
serve as genuine measures of a great deal more than just what happens in exam
halls. Put it another way, would we not have significant questions about a school that appeared to be doing good things but could not support its students to doing well in exams?
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I guess I am arguing that that the ‘it’s all about exams’ ßà ‘it’s all about skills and qualities’ debate
is predicated on a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other. Academic success in our current system involves both; and education
is, I believe, increasingly moving to a situation where we have both.
I want to end by also pointing out that
there is also no tension between deep scholarship and broader holistic excellence. On the contrary, there is a huge convergence,
because scholarship is not something dull that only happens in dusty libraries,
in silence. It’s what happens when
active minds are at sufficiently at peace with themselves that they can engage
with the world, with ideas, and with other people – when the excitement of
making a connection gives a new perspective, and most likely, raises a whole
series of questions, thoughts and possibilities. Genuine scholarship often leads to wonder, and even awe; and
while the mechanism may be traditional essays and tests, it may also be solo reflection, group work, or deep conversation. And that means that scholarship can happen up a mountain, or on the sports field, or in a play or concert as well as in a classroom.
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