14 ***^ Friday 16 August 2019 The Daily TelegraphFront Bench
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front-bench1I
t is appallingly cruel to suggest
to the hundreds of thousands
of young people who received
their A-level results yesterday that
the examinations they worked so
hard for are losing their credibility
quicker than the melting of the polar
ice cap. Yet sometimes one has to be
cruel to be kind. There is something
rotten in our examination system,
and government action has not gone
to the root of the problem.
The symptoms are easy to see.
Nearly 76,000 students received
unconditional offers from universities
this year, in a clear rejection of the
value of A-level. Leading universities
are more and more tending to set their
own examinations, bypassing A-level.The value of A-level was further hit by
the news that, for some boards, only 14
per cent was required to pass A-level
Mathematics, and an A grade was
secured with just 54 per cent (in other
words, the student getting nearly half
the answers wrong). How would we
have reacted if the scientists in charge
of the moon landing had got half their
maths wrong?
A contributing factor to the
declining value of A-level is the
pressure the Government places on
universities to allow disadvantaged
students the offer of a place with low
grades – a worthy aim, but a classic
illustration of the law of unintended
consequences. Not only does it
devalue A-level, but it also encourages
schools not to improve standards and
to ensure that disadvantaged students
are as well taught as everyone else.
But if these are the symptoms of
a deep-seated illness, the cause lies
in the structure of our exam boards.
The five boards in England, Wales
and Northern Ireland originate from
a very different time and a very
different world. They are independent
organisations, which are profit-based.
Much noise is made about the
standardisation of results. The
fact is that the exam boards are in
competition with each other. Tryselling to a student the line: “I want
you to sit a harder exam, which will be
more difficult and make it harder for
you to gain a top grade”. It is not a sales
pitch that will appeal. Competitive
pressure on exam boards to get more
students taking your exams embeds
dumbing-down in the system.
A real problem, which means that
the power over standards lies with
the exam boards and not with the
Government, is the ability of the
boards to set grade boundaries – the
mark at which certain grades will be
given. Regardless of whether or not
the content of the examination can
be made harder, the actual results are
decided by these grade boundaries,
set by the boards and not mentioned
on the Ofqual website. Bragging about
exams being made more difficult is
pure noise unless the Government has
control over grade boundaries.
Another major problem is the poor
status afforded to those who mark
the examinations. Payment for this
is verging on derisory. University
lecturers have virtually vanished
from the system. A terrifying number
of essay-based exam results are sent
back for remarking, with one estimate
putting this at 40 per cent.
Advocates of the separate boards
argue that competition is good forStandards are slipping, and
with it the value of our
education system – it’s
time to raise the bar againMARTIN
STEPHENI
t’s half a century since Woodstock
took place and its legend seems
to grow with every year that
passes. At the time, it was a
spectacular music concert
marked by cheap drugs, free
love and (once the fences collapsed)
free entry. But Woodstock has been
remembered as a social big bang: the
moment where the young rebelled
against dogma and authority and
started to shape a new, more relaxed
world order. A party that started in
August 1969 but never really stopped,
eventually dragging politics and
culture along with it.
In truth, any number of events
in the late Sixties could be taken to
symbolise all this – but Woodstock
is as good as any. It marked the end
of a decade where social norms had
changed forever, reshaping the world
for future generations of politicians.
The guitar-strumming Tony Blair
and the saxophone-blowing Bill
Clinton were both examples. Their
“third way” politics morphed into the
“modernisation” of David Cameron and
George Osborne – which was, in truth,
quite dated by that time. Politicians
have a harder time changing the
records that are playing in their heads.
This became obvious whennew questions – about identity,
vulnerability, nationhood and
community – started to be raised by
voters. The Woodstock mindset is
to dismiss this as nostalgia for the
Fifties, rather than justified concern
for what the 2020s has in store. But
this not only alienates voters, forcing
them into the hands of populists,
but risks blinding governments to
deep-seated problems piling up in
front of them.
We saw a flash of this yesterday:
news that drugs deaths have risen
16 per cent over the last year. A
staggering figure, almost as shocking
as the surge in rough sleeping and
homelessness. Employment is surging,
material deprivation has fallen over
this decade: never before has there
been so much opportunity. Income
inequality hovers around a 30 year
low. So why are there so many
homeless on the streets? And why is
there still such a sense of despair in so
many small towns?
Sir Angus Deaton, a Princeton
academic and Nobel laureate, has a
phrase for it: the “deaths of despair”- those men (and it is typically men)
who die at their own hands, either
by suicide or alcohol and drug abuse.
These deaths are soaring in America
and in the UK, defying a trend of
general improving health. This puzzle
cannot be solved by consulting
economic charts, he says. You have to
look at loneliness, despair and social
capital: not the amount of cash flowing
through a society, but the strength of
the bonds that people have with each
other. The kind of bonds that have
been weakened by the individualism
of recent decades.
In his latest book, The Second
Mountain, David Brooks traces the
decay back to the “I’m free to be
myself ” Woodstock era. It achieved
many necessary things, he said, but
its side effects are now visible – at
least, for those with an eye to see
them. A sense of duty, to family
and neighbourhood, was replaced
by individualism or downright
selfishness. Part of this was right
wing: stressing individual freedom.
Part was left wing: leaving each to an
unregulated lifestyle. The result is
fractured families, unvisited elderly
parents, loneliness and isolation.
The Church of England says
loneliness is now the biggest problem
faced by parishioners. There are
plenty of other signs of social decay.
Six years ago, for example, 15 per cent
of Brits with long-standing illness said
mental health was their main problem.
Now, it’s 20 per cent. Then comes the
widespread feeling – which could be
heard in the Brexit vote – that people
feel their towns are being run down,
neighbourhoods weakened.
There are signs that Jeremy Corbyn
understands this. Now and again, his
Labour Party talks powerfully about
the fate of decaying small towns and
how their people feel abandoned
by politicians. Boris Johnson is a
liberal to his fingertips, but is also
entrepreneurial enough to see the
concerns that lay behind the Brexit
vote. And that a focus on family,
home, culture and community is not
old-fashioned, but back at the centre
of politics.
When Professor Deaton was last in
London, he said it’s hard to understand
UK inequality without asking if certain
liberal trends have led to chronically
unhappy people. “You have men in
their fifties whose kids are all living
with other men and he doesn’t know
them any more,” he said. “No wonder
people are turning to suicide and
drugs.” It would be a brave British
academic who made this point. But ifA new generation of young
people is seeking stability
- rebellion is no longer
high on their agenda
FRASER
NELSONROWAN PELLING
The devaluation of A-levels is a major loss
A wedding isn’t
complete without
a baby bridesmaid
going rogue
I
hounded my favourite
uncle throughout my
childhood, asking him
when he would get married
so I could be a bridesmaid.
Most of my friends had
photographs of themselves
in bouffant frocks and floral
coronets looking like Disney
princesses. The glory of
being picked for flower
girl duty was on a par with
appearing on Blue Peter,
or winning a pony.
I failed to realise until
I was 14 that uncle John
was happily in love with
his “great friend” Ross
(this was decades before
civil partnerships) and
my hopes were comically
misplaced. When I got
married in my mid-twenties
none of my close friends
had reproduced and there
were no young relatives
whose reveries could be
bolstered with taffeta. The
closest vision I mustered
to a flower girl was my
16-year-old sister, Dorcas,
whose teen tastes included
boxing, military jackets and
Rambo-style headbands. It’s
safe to say, I made none of
her dreams come true when
I put her in a silk dress.
It’s sad to learn I was
spearheading a trend.
According to a new survey,
fewer than half of modern
brides now choose to
have flower girls, while
only 38 per cent opt for
page boys. Which seems
counterintuitive at a time
when women marry later in
life, meaning cute kiddies
aren’t in short supply.
But today’s affianced tend
to be fiercely possessive
about their wedding
“experience”. When I got
married, ceremonies were
still largely family occasions:
you asked relatives and old
family friends, no matter how
wayward, boring, ill-dressed
or young. I had infants
wailing during the vows and
an ancient drunk heckling
the speeches. We didn’t sign
up an official photographer
for wedding line-ups, as
there’s nothing drearier for
guests than hanging around
while newly-weds fake
romantic poses.
But 21st-century weddingsthe system, and that it gives teachers
a range of choices to fit the exam to
the individual needs of their students.
The truth is that many decent and
honourable teachers will see their first
priority as entering their pupils for
the exam that will give them the best
result. That pressure is increased by
heads and governing bodies having
an increasing eye on league tables,
and hence their school’s standing
and reputation.
If we are to save A-level we need
a single exam board for the UK, with
standards as its priority, and which is
merely required to break even rather
than make money. We need a carrot-
and-stick approach to universities
so that they reinvolve themselves in
A-level setting and marking. We need
to raise the status of markers and to
ban the offer of unconditional places,
which have been shown to have a
disastrous effect on motivation. For
our disadvantaged students, we do
not need to lower the standard of the
A-level results they need, but rather
to improve the quality of teaching in
their schools, so there is no need to
make excuses for them.Dr Martin Stephen is a former
High Master of St Paul’s School and
Manchester Grammar SchoolFifty years on from Woodstock,
the times are a-changin’ again
such “deaths of despair” keep rising,
it’s the sort of difficult question we
might not be able to avoid asking.
For today’s young voters, the
culture of Woodstock is a world away.
Smoking and drug-taking are losing
their cachet. The number of under-25s
who say they don’t drink at all is rising
fast. At the last count, pensioners
now spend more on alcohol than
the under-thirties and are the target
of a new NHS plan to distribute
free condoms. The world imagined
by Jennifer Saunders in Absolutely
Fabulous – decadent, priapic parents;
sober and hardworking children – is
fast becoming a reality. Except it’s the
grandparents who are on the Bolly,
while the young ones binge on study
drugs and count their student debt.
Anarchy might have had its appeal
in 1969, but young voters now want
stability. They don’t want to overthrow
the system, they just want a system
that works, one in which they might
be able to earn enough to afford their
own home. They aspire to the settled
bourgeois lifestyle that the Woodstock
generation rebelled against. Last
month, I met a young woman who had
rebelled by quitting her high-paying
City job and moving with her wife
back to her hometown. She earns just
enough to get by, but wants to live
with her children near her parents
and enjoy the bonds of family and
community. This was, to me, radical
and inspiring.
It’s hard to imagine the opposite to
Woodstock’s free love, but there was
something close in the Glastonbury
concert a few years ago when Beyoncé
asked women to wave their left hands
in their air if their boyfriend had
not yet proposed to them. Her song,
Single Ladies, is about how such men
ought to commit. The times certainly
are a-changin’.To order prints or signed copies of any Telegraph cartoon, go to telegraph.co.uk/prints-cartoons or call 0191 603 0178 [email protected]don’t necessarily prioritise
celebration. They’re often
focused on the spectacle
and an Instagram-perfect
event instead.
The term “bridezilla”
resonates because we’ve
all witnessed women who
want to micromanage their
big day in the manner of
Madonna taking to the stage
at the Hollywood Bowl.
The last thing a control
freak in a veil wants is a
host of small anarchists
stealing the spotlight: surely
one of the reasons why
an increasing number of
wedding invitations specify
no children. I can’t help
feeling a marriage ceremony
without any roaming
infants is like Midsummer
Night’s Dream with no
rude mechanicals – all the
slapstick comedy’s gone.
Just think of recent Royal
weddings where onlookers
relished the naughty smalls.
When Prince William kissed
Kate on the balcony of
Buckingham Palace in 2011
their smooch was torpedoed
by three-year-old Grace
van Cutsem, who scowled
and clamped her hands
over her ears because of the
crowd’s roars.
But William should have
anticipated the photobomb
after he drew every eye as
a four-year-old page boy at
Prince Andrew’s wedding
to Sarah Ferguson by
rolling his order of service
into a trumpet and poking
his tongue out at fellow
attendant Laura Fellowes.
Prince George trampled
on aunt Pippa Middleton’s
train and threw a hissy fit at
her 2017 ceremony, while
another page boy picked
his nose.
How much duller is
the fashion for grown-up
bridesmaids in maxi dresses,
looking like Avon ladies
dressed for the school prom.
If Insta-weddings had user
ratings like TripAdvisor,
I predict stroppy, young
train-bearers would scoop
all the star ratings.FOLLOW Fraser
Nelson on Twitter
@FraserNelson;
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