Education is not just about how many As you score

The following blog was originally published in Tribune Blogs, 4th Feb, 2013.

Education is not just about how many As you score

Recently, the British Education Secretary announced that students starting their A’ levels in England from fall 2015, will return to the previous system of an “all or nothing” exam at the end of two years of study.

Eventually, these changes will not only impact exams in England, but will also trickle into tweaks to the manner in which Cambridge International Examinations and EdExcel International exams are organised. It is still not clear whether Wales and Northern Ireland will adopt these changes; Scotland has a separate system.

The current system of units or modules has been criticised for allowing examination retakes and grade inflation. Policy makers hope that a return to the two-year exam cycle will help make A’ levels more rigorous and help prepare students for higher education. Universities have criticised the quality of GCSE and A levels in the UK, rather than preparing students for higher education or vocational training; A’ levels train students to succeed in exams.

This is a criticism that may sound familiar in Pakistan.

Over the past fifteen years, the mushroom growth of tutoring and a proliferation of schools and colleges that judge their reputation and success on exam results, a vicious cycle has been created where students seem to appear in exams perpetually during their O’ and A’ levels. A perverted mix of peer pressure, aggressive advertising and devaluing education to a series of grades, ensures that each year students are nudging more and more towards sitting exams in a wider array of subjects.

Whether it is in the UK or Pakistan, tinkering with syllabuses and changing exam timetables is a swift and neat way to “reform education”.

Politicians love such interventions as these are easily implementable and success can be declared once the changes are made. However, the outcome of these changes is someone else’s headache.

Over the past couple of years, a lot has been made of abolishing foreign qualifications and implementing a uniform curriculum across the country. Such rhetoric means well, but like the changes to A’ levels announced in England today, such measures don’t reform – they just tinker with the status quo. Across the globe, the best educational systems cater for a devolved curriculum and provide greater focus on pre-school and primary education.

An example would be that of Finland, where the system caters on fewer exams, recommends little or no homework, and recruits teachers from amongst the best candidates. In Pakistan sadly, debate on the curriculum revolves around how much importance the chapter on jihad should have, whether illustrations of boys and girls playing together is Islamic or not, or whether the chief minister’s message to students should appear at the front or the back of the textbook

Adopting the Finnish system of education or any other “model” is still a very far off goal. A massive number of school age children do not attend school and our first goal should be to ensure that no child is deprived of education. However, for education to be “fixed” we require a change of attitude towards what we mean by an “education”.

This will have to start amongst the affluent, partly because education providers for lower income groups aim to emulate their affluent peers. If the schools at the top consider exam success as the gold standard of a quality education, the same attitude trickles down, shaping the attitudes of both schools and parents.

While examination success is indeed important, the appropriateness of what we are taught and how we are taught is also important. Some imperfect albeit illustrative examples include students who complete O’ and A’ levels, but then struggle to appear in Central Superior Services (CSS) exams due to the perception that they favour the pedagogy of matriculation and Faculty of Science (FSc) students. Students hoping to attend state-run medical schools are encouraged to complete FSc rather than A’ levels as it is believed that it provides better preparation for competitive admission tests.

It is here where an examination focused approach towards education fails us. Education should aim to widen choice and facilitate flexibility.

Students should not have to bear the costs of short-sighted educational reform choices; their choices from five years ago should not impact their higher education pursuits in the present.

We must appreciate that education reforms take a long time to implement, and that changes to exams schedules or efforts to unify curricula (as favoured by politicians) will have limited impact. Instead, investing in teachers, focusing on basic and primary education, and recognising that the learning requirements of each and every child is unique, will truly usher in a much needed reform.

Utopian idealism? Perhaps. But the first important step must be the recognition by policymakers, education providers and parents, that such concerns are worthy of consideration.

The tutoring academy: A quick buck or a necessity?

Malik Hassan Ahmed, posted an interesting question to me on Twitter,

I never went to an academy, my parents never did, do we really need them? Where were they 15-20 years ago? Commercial purposes only?

So I thought that it would probably be best to bring this discussion to the blog so that we can add more detail to it, which is not possible in 140 characters.

My initial response to the question "Commercial purposes only" is to hesitate from drawing a blunt, sharp conclusion.

Perhaps Hassan can detail below what types of tutoring agencies/academies is he talking about? Are they those Rs. 200-500 a month, rote learning, Metric/FSc centres where students face the wall and memorize page after page? Does he refer to the various tutorial agencies which borrow their names from different Greek alphabets? Or is his reference to one on one home tutoring?

As far as the question: "do we really need them"? Individual students learn differently, and a classroom in itself is a very bad place for learning as teachers have to teach to the lowest common denominator, ignoring those that need to be challenged, and the very worst, that need help and support. Tutoring can aid learning due to its focus, and in most cases in an environment where students are more comfortable in.

In Pakistan, however, tutoring academies also perform a social function, where peer pressure comes into play. It becomes an after school hangout, where people meet up due to a lack of alternative activities available.

The relationship between students and teachers is more relaxed in an academy setting which also aids learning, and there is also a lot of evidence to suggest that, especially for teens, the 8 am to 3 pm, school day/timetable is extremely inefficient. In some schools in America and Scandinavia, many of them open up at 10, 10:30 because they believe that a later start is more beneficial. After all the school timetable, is not set to benefit students, it has been created to benefit working parents who can drop of their kids before work. A rigid, structured, period based timetable with classes divided into 45-50 minutes slots is for the benefit of administrators who need to slot teachers around, not students.

After school tutoring functions best when it breaks this rigidity in the system, and is held at a time when learning is more conducive.

Now the flip side to all of this is based on some valid observations.

a) Teachers dumb down lessons in class and want students to attend their academy later:  This is ethically suspect and morally wrong. This questions the professionalism of the teacher involved, and can be argued is bad practise and teaching. However, this is hardly surprising given the pressures and expectations, especially in private  schools, where teacher reputation sucks students in and teachers can face massive class sizes where learning is unpractical. However, to demand students pay to attend lessons after school is inexcusable. 

b) Heaving subject loads: Back around 2003-2004, atleast in Rawalpindi and Islamabad the craze of sitting 12-14 subjects in O levels 8 or 10 A levels began slowly. Now I believe this practise has proliferated. A levels is meant to be focused study of four subjects. That’s how the curriculum is developed and time allocated. Students who have pushed themselves to take extra subjects do themselves no favours and land up in tutoring agencies. Now, you may say that, 'well the student is showing initiative and doing hard work', but there is also a risk that universities will look at a wide range of subjects as a sign of lack of focus. The ability to sit exams and get good marks or grades, does not automatically translate into the ability to excel as academically or later, professionally. These practices have created a large market for tutoring agencies. 

c) Tutoring students you teach: There is also alot of criticism of teachers who tutor their own students and consider such practise bad. But then, if the student is comfortable with that teacher is it then wrong to deny them that option?

Below, I hope to hear from Hassan and then continue in the comments with this discussion. 

Full disclosure: I have been a tutor in Pakistan, both one-on-one and in an academy setting.