Newton Emerson: North’s grading mess shows pointlessness of GCSEs

It feels as if all the long-denied problems with Northern Ireland’s education system have suddenly come to a head.

Attempting to calculate A-level results by algorithm has emphasised social divisions in school achievement, which are worse in the North than in any other part of the UK.

Scrapping the algorithm, as DUP Minister for Education Peter Weir announced this Monday, will require more university places.

Northern Ireland is unusually ill-equipped to manage this, as it caps places for local students to subsidise tuition fees.

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England and Wales have no such caps, while Scotland has a cap but no fees.

Weir also performed a U-turn on Monday over the algorithmic prediction of GCSEs, the set of exams pupils sit at age 16.

This caused little controversy, because GCSE results have not mattered for decades. However, nobody wants to say so and all children are still expected to devote two years to studying for them.

GCSEs, previously known as O-levels, and before that as the Senior Certificate, are a vestigial tail of the days when most children left school at 16 and needed a final set of qualifications to take them into the workforce.

Today, everyone in the UK is meant to remain in full-time education or training until 18. GCSEs serve only to break the last four years of schooling up into two halves, generally GCSEs followed by A-levels, each a complete set of academic exams. In Irish terms, it is as if children have to take the Leaving Cert twice – once from ages 14 to 16, then again with fewer subjects from 16 to 18.

Alternatively, children can take vocational subjects from 16. But these have to be squeezed into the two years after GCSEs, with predictable effects on scope and standards.

Lack of reform

Successive Sinn Féin and DUP education ministers have declined to reform this legacy mess on the grounds that qualifications in Northern Ireland need to be compatible with those in Britain, for the sake of students, employers and universities. Yet Scotland ditched its version of the GCSEs in 2013 and has managed to keep its qualifications fully compatible with the rest of the UK.

If Northern Ireland could wean itself off the anachronism of exams at 16, it could transform its faltering school system.

The final four years of education could be devoted to a broader, deeper academic curriculum, or proper vocational training – including introductory professional training – or a syllabus that meaningfully combined both, blurring the toxic social distinction between them.

A-levels seem to be regarded by most parents and pupils as a "gold standard" that should not be abolished, which is why Stormont is so reluctant to change the system. However, Northern Ireland could keep A-levels and still drop GCSEs, following the Republic's model of replacing them with one or two transition years.

How long before a school sector or part of a school sector breaks ranks?

The transition year skills of independent learning are particularly valued by employers, and reportedly absent among a large cohort of northern school-leavers.

Another option would be for Northern Ireland to keep A-levels, drop GCSEs, and follow the Scottish model of shortening secondary education by a year, with students entering university at 17.

Either way, it is hard to see a public revolt over losing GCSEs. Nobody calls them a gold or even a silver standard. They are vaguely perceived as an entrance test to A-levels, which are an entrance test to university. The needless duplication of this should be obvious, but the rationale for an ingrained tradition is rarely questioned.

Debate in England

Debate over GCSEs does occasionally occur in England.

Kenneth Baker, the Tory peer who introduced the current version of the exams as UK education minister in 1986, now chairs a think tank that wants to abolish them and move all pupils to "a programme of studies for 14-18-year-olds where academic and hands-on subjects are combined".

This argument has failed to gain traction and there is neither sign nor hope of Stormont starting a similar debate.

The best chance for change in Northern Ireland lies, perhaps unexpectedly, in the fragmented nature of its education system.

There are four major school sectors: state, Catholic, integrated and Irish-medium, plus a small independent sector. All have several models of funding and management, split between the education authorities and boards of governors. There are also splits within and between sectors over academic selection at 11. North Armagh has selection at 14.

Rows over selection have caused Stormont’s Department of Education to lose control. Further education colleges, accepting students from 16, are secular, self-governing and under a different department.

How long before a sector or part of a sector breaks ranks? It is a statutory requirement to follow the Northern Ireland curriculum up to 16, but the presumption this will culminate in GCSEs is not mandatory. Potential exists to offer alternatives and if the system is seen to be failing, other approaches are bound to be explored.

Stormont’s choice in the end may be whether to steer this or watch it happen.