Douglas Carswell's Blog

Michael Gove is NOT planning new A levels

"Michael Gove planning new A levels" run the headlines.

Surely the precise opposite is in fact the case? 

The whole point about today's A level story is that Michael Gove wants to stop ministers and Whitehall technocrats from running the exam system.  He appears to want universities and others to do it instead.

This is excellent news and is yet another of the Gove reforms that I strongly support.  

It seems to me that the creeping nationalisation of the exam system under successive administrations over the past thirty or so years has been pretty disastrous.  Just as price inflation has devalued our currency, grade inflation sees to have devalued the exam system. 

Like tractor production targets, a state-run exam system is pretty good at telling us what officials want to see.  I suspect it has been less effective at ensuring children are equipped with the skills and knowledge they really need.       

Surely the main purpose of sitting exams is to measure what an individual has learnt before they move on to their next stage of education.  If so, it seems sensible that those institutions at "the next stage" ought to be put in charge of making the assessments, since they know what it is that they are looking for and have the greatest interest in making sure that the assessments measure what they are looking for.  

This means allowing university examiners to run their own exams system. 

Even better, perhaps we might have competing exam systems?  With different types of exam and different boards, we would see real innovation in learning.  New A levels oversee by different university exam board, pre-U's, IBs ..... the more, the better.  

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