The Commons: Does Britain’s education system prepare its children for the future?
Rebecca Campbell
The UK’s modern education system stems back to 1951 with the introduction of O-levels, designed to standardize and measure academic achievement. By 1986, O-levels were being replaced with GCSEs, a more succinct system that provided better opportunity for students who did not excel with the more challenging O-levels. This was done in order to keep the education system up to date and in line with what industries were looking for in job applicants. Nearly 40 years later, GCSEs are still the way we measure the success of British children, and many employers are concerned about how little the national curriculum prepares students for the modern world of work. A study done in 2021 by PwC Research found that 60% of employers ‘identified lack of preparation for the world of work as a challenge they face with recruits joining their organizations straight from school, college, or university.’ This is a huge issue in the UK – many jobs are moving to incorporate technology and AI literacy into their required skill sets, and if the education system does not adapt with the times, it could leave the next generation on the backfoot when looking for employment in the future.
The UK education system is obsessed with exams. The structure of GCSEs means a few exams (the exact number depends on the subject) determines your entire grade for that class. Grades are then assigned based on the number of marks accrued in the exams, and student are awarded a number on a scale of 1 – 9, with a 4 or above being a passing grade. Grade 9s are only given to the top results, with some exam boards requiring 90% to achieve the best grade. This system of grading is relatively new, with the old way of using letters from A* - F being phased out in 2017, however the process of grading remains very similar.
Percentage of students achieving grade 4 or above
The impact of this hyper-focus on exams is significant. Students spend so much time studying for what is essentially a memory-based recall test, and less time developing personal and social skills. This has significant knock-on effects for their development and mental health as they reach adulthood. “The Mix, the UK’s leading digital charity for young people, has revealed new research that the mental health of almost four in every five young people (79%) are negatively impacted by exams. Self-harm, alcohol and drug abuse were also reported as coping mechanisms in dealing with exam stress.” The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are simply not sufficiently equipped to deal with this amount of mental health illnesses. (If you would like to know more on the crisis in Britain’s mental health, have a read of last week’s article by clicking here)
Furthermore, many argue that GCSEs are simply not fit for purpose. They are designed to be a widely recognized method of rewarding students who have put in hard work to achieve their grades, and a means to display to employers and higher education providers (such as colleges or universities) students who have developed key skills like problem solving and critical thinking. However, there is very little recognition for students who are creative in their learning, or those with people skills as opposed to number or literacy skills. The current system is designed around a certain type of student – one who can quickly learn through logical thinking and who works well under pressure in exam conditions – any student who does not fit this mold is likely to fall behind. This is especially true when it comes to neurodivergent students who, according to Dr Emily McDougal of the Anna Freud center, may “often struggle with certain executive function skills, which are cognitive skills including cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, and working memory.” It should not be that students who are no less capable than others are penalized for not thriving in the current one size fits all approach to education and learning. Many jobs are now seeking skills that go beyond those typically gained from studying and taking tests. Project management and leadership are two incredibly important skills to achieve success in a person’s career which are completely overlooked by the monotonous grind of the exam-based system.
There have been some attempts to improve the education system as a whole since GCSEs were introduced. For instance, the creation of the regulatory body Ofsted in 1992 was intended to raise education standards across the board in order to improve the lives of students. A few years later in 1998, the national curriculum was introduced to address the inequality of teaching across different schools and ensure all children receive the same quality in lessons. But while these were landmark reforms for the time, the desperately needed continuous reviewing of the education system has not been happening.
The government have recently proposed a couple of pieces of reformist legislation to try to improve the situation. The proposed Children’s Wellbeing Bill is designed to support children in households with a lower income by, among other things, providing free breakfast clubs in primary schools and giving Ofsted more powers to investigate patterns of poor care. Simultaneously, the Skills England Bill will work towards boosting skills training and tackling skills shortages in employment by ‘simplifying the skills system’. While these may have positive consequences, it is unclear as to whether it will be enough to update the UKs education system and make it ready for the future of employment. Unfortunately, it does not currently address the impact exams have on student’s mental health nor the inability of the system to recognize other forms of achievement beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. However, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has recently stated her support to broadening the curriculum, speaking to the Confederation of School Trusts in Birmingham she said “A*s alone do not set young people up for a healthy and happy life. And where previous governments have had tunnel vision, we will widen our ambition … Every child should go to a school where they are free to be themselves, free to make friends, free to explore their talents … Exam results are only achieved when children’s wellbeing is prized too.” While this is good news for those who want to see mental health prioritized in schools, little substance has yet been published, and it remains to be seen what more the government will do to reform education in the future.
