A quick test: My brother is 15 years old and is currently doing his GCSE’s. Two years ago he passed his common entrance exam, which is roughly equivalent to 11+ SATS.  If he decides to go to University how many national exams (mock exams are not to be counted) will he have to sit?

I am asking because the government is once again reforming the blighted and benighted examination system. From September students will be able to choose to do a Diploma, roughly analogous to the International Baccalaureate of our Gallic cousins. The British Diplomas will first be introduced in more vocational areas such as Creative + Media, health and social care ad so on. In 2009 my brother will also be able to choose to do Hair and Beauty.  Ed Balls, the education Minister has also stated that academic versions of the diplomas, in Humanities, Languages and Sciences, will become available.

The Idea is to provide a broader base of education for the participants. So a student will be required to continue studying maths and English even if they are doing Sciences or Information Technology. They will now be known as ‘Functional Elements’ presumably so that pupils, or teachers I suppose, aren’t scared of them.
 
I fully support this. I think it’s a brilliant idea, one that smacks of having been birthed from a mind that values education over qualifications. I hope that it means that future generations will be better than previous ones, more rounded in their thought. Maybe a bright new day is dawning.

Call me a cynic if you will, but I don’t see that happening.  Crablike, this new exam will sit alongside the many other possible qualifications, like the BTec, which I’ll come back to later. A few ill informed and brave students, taught by teachers who have had a massive 3 days of training, will take it. By the time the 2013 reappraisal of the A-Levels comes around (when the government is probably planning to end the sickly beast that is A2s) the diplomas will be as leprous and abused as all the others.

Jerry Jarvis, the head of Edexcel, is not to be applauded for his decision to come forward. Ulterior motives entirely besmirch his supposed noble duty to protect the lickle childwen. Edexcel is the company that owns the BTec, a competitor to the diploma. Its is going to lose the sole rights to this vocational qualifications, and eventually their qualifications will be folded into the diploma to simplify. He is attempting to sabotage an already ailing exam. Surely this will harm the young folk that he pretends to care for.

Anyway the answer to the introduction’s questions is a rather staggering 42. And that is a conservative estimate at a school that attempts to minimize exams as much as possible. If he were to do a diploma he is looking at closer to the 60 mark since it will have to completed alongside the more traditional and ailing qualifications.  That works out as one a month for his five years at the school. Perchance he is examined too much. Can’t someone please think of the children?