A Tangled Web

THE DESTRUCTION OF BRITISH EDUCATION.



Whenever New Labour replaced the excellent Chris Woodhead with the poodle Mike Tomlinson, the prospects for UK education looked grim. Now this is being made manifest in the form of Tomlinson's plans to scrap GCSE's and "A" Levels.



Of course both these academic qualifications have already been detrimentally dumbed down (to the point where 45% qualifies as a Grade A in Maths, for instance) but rather than try to RESTORE academic excellence through rigorous examination, Tomlinson proposes fewer exams, assessed by teachers, with higher vocational content and reduced "core" academic substance. Disastrous, I'm afraid and even the CBI seem to recognise this catastrophy in waiting when they comment that "Half our members are dissatisfied with the basic skills of school-leavers, and a third of them are having to provide them with remedial training." It won't ever get better with radical egalitarians in charge of the levers of education.