Week No 39 2012

Tendring Topics.....on line

‘What goes around, comes around!’

 Michael Gove’s idea of an English Baccalaureate having English, Maths and a Science as compulsory subjects, with assessment of pupils dependent upon an examination taken at the end of the years of secondary education, without ‘modules’ and without course-work being taken into consideration, has been condemned by some of its opponents as ‘going back to the ‘80s’.   I would have been inclined to say that it was going back fifty years earlier than that, to the 1930s and would have been inclined to add, ‘and is none the worse for that!’

            I can see little, if any, difference between Mr Gove’s proposals and the examination that I took in 1937 at the age of sixteen, before leaving school at the end of my secondary education   Our exam was not called a Baccalaureate (though I remember our French master telling us that that was the name of the equivalent exam taken by school leavers in France) but the London University General Schools’ Certificate examination.  To gain that certificate we had to study and pass an exam in at least five subjects which had to include English (grammar and literature), Mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry) a Foreign Language and a Science.   I think that most of us took six subjects – the only Foreign Language taught at my school was French, and my other subjects were History, Geography and General Physics.  The last of these was reckoned to be the scientific ‘soft option’ as it was guaranteed to be about scientific principles only and to have no mathematical questions! 

The pass mark was 40 percent.  Those who achieved this mark in the four compulsory subjects plus one other, passed the exam and gained the certificate.  Failure in any one of those subjects meant failure in the whole exam.   Those who gained at least 50 percent marks in the compulsory subjects and one other subject, were awarded ‘Matriculation Exemption’.  Matriculation was the admission examination to London University.   We all aimed at ‘the Matric’ (and that’s what the exam was often called) and I was successful.  Very few of us though even considered the possibility of going to London or any other University.  In those days Universities were not for ‘the likes of us’ working class kids.

            Possession of that General Schools Certificate, especially with the added ‘Matric Exemption’ was the key to a ‘white collar’ job and perhaps the first step towards qualifying for a minor profession.  I would certainly not have been appointed to my first job as Junior Clerk/Student Sanitary Inspector (nowadays they’re called Environmental Health Officers) with Ipswich Council’s Public Health Department without it.  My school studies had been tilted away from the sciences, but my very creditable pass in ‘General Physics’ helped me secure that job and, many, many years later the basic knowledge of science that I had acquired at school certainly helped me to write half a dozen commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage!

            There are two myths (at least!) about Michael Gove’s proposals that need to be exploded.  The first was one that I heard put forward by a representative of the NUT on tv this (18^th September) morning.  This was that children, having had no previous experience of exams, would be suddenly faced with a vital life-changing one at the age of sixteen.   That simply wasn’t true in the ‘30s and doesn't have to be true today. At the end of every term at my secondary school we had written examinations taken under ‘exam conditions’ in every subject that we had studied. The results of these exams were included in an end-of-term report to our parents.  They also received a half-term report usually based on informal tests to which we had been subjected.  That surely was true ‘continuous assessment’ – and not just the teacher’s opinion.

            At the end of the term prior to taking the General Schools’ Certificate exam we had a ‘mock exam’, usually consisting of questions from previous General Schools’ exams.  From this, pupils, parents and teachers could get a good idea of the likely results in the real examination a couple of months later.

            The second myth is that children would swot away during the months, days, hours, before the final exam and would fill their heads with material that would disappear from their memories within days!

The Stour at Bridge Cottage, Flatford Mill, in the heart of the ‘Constable country’, where we exam candidates relaxed on the day before our exam ordeal began.  Under the wooden foot-bridge can be seen two of the skiffs that our school hired for the day. Bridge cottage once belonged to painter John Constable's father.         

That certainly didn’t happen in my school, the Northgate Secondary School for Boys in Ipswich.  Quite apart from the continuous assessment from end-of-term examinations, our Headmaster (Mr Alfred Morris) had a very strong dislike of ‘last minute swotting’.  He established a tradition that on the day before sitting for the first session of the General Schools’ Certificate exam all candidates would cycle (we all rode bicycles in those days!) from Ipswich to Flatford Mill where we would spend the day boating on the Stour, finally rowing up river to Dedham where we would enjoy a communal tea in one of the restaurants there.  We each took our own packed lunch but the school paid for the hire of the skiffs and for the tea!  Many of us took the exam next day with aching backs and blistered hands but, for all that, the results were usually pretty creditable.

A criticism of Michael Gove’s proposal is that there’s nothing in it for academic ‘low achievers’.   They, so it is said, are set up for failure.   Perhaps so – but if the exam were to be in carpentry or practical electrics, or in any other activity requiring manual dexterity I, and many others like me, would also be set up for failure.  At school my total uselessness at every outdoor game and sport (except swimming) also set me up for failure – and derision! Don’t blame education. Blame a social and economic system that generally rewards ‘white collar activities’ (particularly in the field of finance) much more generously than even the most highly skilled manual work.

I found my secondary education and its culminating examination of great value to me in later life.  My two sons, educated in the ‘60s in the days of ‘O’ levels found the same.  No regular reader of this blog is likely to accuse me of being an uncritical admirer of the present government.  The words mendacious incompetents spring to mind! Nor do I share Mr Gove's enthusiasm for 'academies' and 'free  schools' - free that is from local democratic control, but firmly under the thumb of central government. He who pays the piper calls the tune!'

 I do think though that there is merit in Michael Gove’s plans for secondary education, even if they are nearly eighty years old!   It is strange to find myself on the same side as the Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph rather than the Independent and the Guardian, but there it is.  I remember Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:  ‘This above all, to thine own self be true’. It is advice that I do try to follow.

Policing the Police!

          Overseeing the operation of Britain’s Police Forces at the present moment are Police Committees, thoroughly undemocratic bodies that appear to be answerable to no-one but themselves. They need to be reformed, and since Police Force boundaries generally coincide with those of a local authority (either county or borough council) an obvious solution might have been to hand over their functions to the appropriate local authority.   That however is not the path that the Government has chosen.   They intend to have each Police Force under the wing of a single directly elected Commissioner – to be elected by us on 15^th November of this year!

           These Commissioners, says the government’s official web site, will aim to cut crime and deliver an effective and efficient police service within the force area. They will do this by:

·                            holding the chief constable to account for the delivery of the force

·                            setting and updating a police and crime plan

·                            setting the force budget and precept

·                            regularly engaging with the public and communities

·                            appointing, and where necessary dismissing, the chief constable

It will not be for the PCC to tell the professionals how to do their job - the legislation continues to protect the operational independence of the police by making it clear that the chief constables retain direction and control of the forces officers and staff. The operations of the police will not be politicised; who is arrested and how investigations work will not become political decisions.

            Do you fancy the job?  There’s no mention of the salary on the web site but I reckon it’ll be well worth having!  You’re not eligible if you have ever been convicted of an imprisonable offence, if you are a civil servant or are employed by a local authority in the Police Authority area (for Tendring District residents that means within the county of Essex).  Otherwise the field is open  to any registered voter in that area except that you’ll need to find another 100 registered voters to nominate you and you’ll have to hand over a deposit of £5,000 that will be forfeited if you don’t attract at least 5% of the votes cast.   Candidates may be independent or the nominees of a political party.

            There are currently six prospective candidates for our Essex area, three male and two female, three the nominees of political parties – Conservative, Labour and English Democrat, and three Independents.   Nominations cannot be made before 8^th October or after 19^th October.

            I shall undoubtedly vote, though I’ll need to know a lot more about each candidate before deciding to whom my vote will go. It is unlikely that it will be for one of the party nominees.  I would have preferred the Commissioner to have been advised by a directly elected committee but, since this isn’t going to happen, I shall want him or her to be truly independent; without, for instance, being subject to this kind of pressure: ‘Of course it’s your decision to make, no question about it, but - if you hope to retain Party support when it comes to re-election - you’ll………….

            This November election has a feature that some may find surprising.  You remember that referendum we had last year that firmly rejected the idea of listing parliamentary candidates in order of preference, in favour of ‘one man, one vote’ and ‘first past the winning post wins’?   Well, voting for our Police and Crime Commissioner won’t be on a ‘first past the post’ basis. We are to be invited to indicate our first and second choices, the second choice to be taken into account if the winner doesn’t get an overall majority; much the same, in fact, as the system for which I voted in that referendum but that was decisively rejected by a comfortable majority!