Newsom (1963)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction, Principal recommendations

Part 1 Findings
Chapter 1 Education for all
Chapter 2 The pupils, the schools, the problems
Chapter 3 Education in the slums
Chapter 4 Objectives
Chapter 5 Finding approaches
Chapter 6 The school day, homework, extra-curricular activities
Chapter 7 Spiritual and moral development
Chapter 8 The school community
Chapter 9 Going out into the world
Chapter 10 Examinations and assessments
Chapter 11 Building for the future
Chapter 12 The teachers needed

Part 2 The teaching situation
Chapter 13 What should secondary imply?
Chapter 14 An education that makes sense
Chapter 15 Attainments and achievement
Chapter 16 The subjects and the curriculum
Chapter 17 The practical subjects
Chapter 18 Science and mathematics
Chapter 19 The humanities
Chapter 20 School organisation and staff deployment

Part 3 What the survey shows
Chapter 21 The 1961 survey
Chapter 22 The boys and girls
Chapter 23 The work they do
Chapter 24 The men and women who teach them
Chapter 25 The schools they go to

Acknowledgements

Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Sex education
Appendix III Deployment of teachers
Appendix IV Letter to Minister on teacher training
Appendix V Statistical detail

Index

A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 10 Examinations and assessments
[pages 80 - 86]

240. Boys and girls who stay at school until they are sixteen may reasonably look for some record of achievement when they leave. Some form of leaver's certificate which combined assessment with a record of the pupil's school career would be valued by parents, future employers and colleges of further education and should, we believe, be available to all pupils who complete a full secondary course. We are interested to see that a similar recommendation is contained in the report of a recent Working Party in Scotland (1), although we do not advocate any specific style of certificate such as is suggested there.

241. An assessment of the pupil by the school is essentially what we have in mind. Unfortunately, one of the most sought after forms of assessment, though one that is often misunderstood, is a public examination. We say unfortunately because we are convinced that for large numbers of the boys and girls with whom we are concerned public external examinations are not likely to offer a suitable means of assessment. Since we first began to consider our brief, the Minister has approved the proposals of the Beloe Committee for a whole new system of secondary examinations which will begin to operate in 1965. It will involve the teachers in new tasks, and create a situation in the working of the schools which is bound to affect all pupils in some degree, whether they are examination candidates or not. We think it important that the general public, especially parents and employers, should be kept well informed on the changes that are taking place and that they should understand the nature and the limits of the proposed examinations.

242. Many details about the new scheme are still uncertain, but some basic features can be stated. The examinations will be regionally not nationally organised. There will be room for local variations in the kind of papers set and for different methods of assessment or marking. The examinations will be open to pupils in the fifth year of a secondary school course. They will be different in character from existing GCE examinations, and aimed at a band of candidates extending from those who just overlap the group taking the Ordinary level of the GCE examination to those who are just below the average in ability. The new examinations are intended to be of such a standard that pupils above the average in general ability could hope to be successful in four or more subjects, while pupils a little below average might manage single subjects. Any pupil who is successful in one or more subjects will obtain a Certificate of Secondary Education.

243. Some points need particular stressing:

(a) These examinations are not intended for all boys and girls.

(b) The schools will be responsible for deciding whether or not it is in the interests of any pupil to enter for any public examination. No school is obliged to present any candidates and no pupil is obliged to enter.

(c) Despite its title, the Certificate of Secondary Education will not by itself symbolise the satisfactory completion of a secondary course; possession of a Certificate, or lack of one, will not necessarily be a measure of success or failure in school.

245. The general case for and against examinations has been set out both in the Crowther report and in the report of the Beloe Committee: we do not propose to repeat the arguments here. We accept the testimony of many schools that the introduction of GCE courses has stimulated their abler pupils to hard and enthusiastic effort, and that success has strengthened the morale of pupils and teachers alike. Similar claims will no doubt be legitimately made for the newer examinations when these are established. We likewise strongly endorse the warning that the tendency of examinations to limit freedom in the curriculum and to restrict experiment could be especially harmful to pupils in the lower ability ranges, at a time when freedom to experiment with new educational patterns is most needed. We would reiterate the statement of the Crowther report: (2)

'In some subjects a good modern school education seems to us very difficult to reconcile with an external examination. If it is right, and we believe it is, that the approach to knowledge should be as little abstract as possible for boys and girls of ordinary ability if full use is to be made of their environment, then a good deal of the approach to history and the social sciences, to geography and to biology will be dictated by the character of the place in which the school is. In practical subjects also, the right teaching approach does not lie through a series of graded exercises standing by themselves, which is what a large-scale examination tends to encourage, however much the examiners may wish to discourage it.'

247. Another feature which we should welcome would be an emphasis on oral work. Any test of the pupils' attainments ought to include their command of spoken English. Although the techniques of examining will need careful exploration, the tape recorder has made it possible to contemplate an assessment of the pupils' performance in the ordinary classroom situation: they might, for example, be recorded giving short prepared talks to the class group, and afterwards engaging the group in discussion. If this kind of examination practice led to schools paying more attention to oral work this would be one case where examinations were educationally beneficial.

248. Thirdly, we hope some means may be found to take account of the teacher's opinion of the candidate, especially where this may be at variance with the examination performance. Many other European countries do accept the principle of referring to the special knowledge the teacher has of the pupil - just as they also commonly include oral work as a recognised part of examinations.

249. The Certificate of Secondary Education will be based on a fifth year examination. The returns from our own schools survey showed that fifty-seven per cent of the modern schools were taking in 1961-62 some form of fourth year examination, and that thirty per cent of the boys in the lower half of the ability range in those schools, and thirty-four per cent of the girls, were fourth year examination candidates. All the arguments against fourth year examinations have particular force in relation to the less able pupils, even though the examination in some cases may have been a bait to persuade the pupils to stay an extra term or two. As long as boys and girls are leaving school after four years, there is little time available anyway in which to attempt the more adult work which we have been urging; the demands of an external examination at that stage would impose a further limitation. When the school leaving age is raised to sixteen, the natural tendency will be in any case to take whatever examinations are thought to be appropriate at the end of the school course, i.e. at the end of the fifth year. Meanwhile, we strongly urge that schools should not enter pupils for external examinations before the fifth year, and that they would be well advised to look forward to a future situation in which the minimum secondary school course must be planned to the age of sixteen.

250. Over the next few years, the schools will be exceedingly busy with the problems of devising and operating examinations of a kind and on a scale which they have not known before. The responsibilities of the teachers will be heavy. The more seriously they take those responsibilities, the greater will be the danger that their energies will be diverted from non-examination work and from the educational needs of their pupils as a whole. For those pupils who are only slightly, or not at all, involved in the external examinations, it will be more than ever urgent to experiment with interesting and demanding forms of work, if they are to be convinced that what they are doing is of any consequence.

251. Historically a good deal of prestige has attached to external examinations in the non-selective schools. The schools have been anxious to do fairly by their abler pupils, and their success, particularly with GCE courses, has helped to strengthen the confidence both of parents and of the teachers themselves. There has been a tendency for the 'examination forms' to acquire a disproportionately high status, unless the schools have been particularly sensitive to this danger. It may be that this exaggerated regard for examinations will disappear as examinations of one kind or another become more commonplace. On the other hand, the more pupils who enter for examinations, the greater the risk of creating a sense of rejection among the dwindling numbers of those who do not. If the schools are not to have a seriously depressed class of pupils on their hands, they will need to give a more positive, distinctive character to the programmes of these non-examinees.

252. Here, a choice of subjects or of courses with some unifying theme such as we have urged earlier; projects which include some short-term but intensive work, the object of which is clear to the pupils themselves; a deliberate policy of giving publicity to these activities in the school and among the parents; even the simple matter of giving a distinctive title to the form or the course, will help to maintain morale as well as interest. Most boys and girls are able to accept realistically differences of ability among themselves; it is not the fact that they all cannot attempt the same work, but the realisation by some pupils that what they are doing is not valued by the community, which is most likely to produce a sense of rejection, apathy or hostility.

253. When classes contain a mixture of pupils, some of them entering for examinations in some subjects, and others not, a real teaching problem will arise. Where numbers allow, separate examination and non-examination sets drawn across two forms may be the best answer. Where this is not practicable, much organisational skill will be demanded of the teacher to ensure that the non-examinees do not merely trail along on a syllabus which is geared to examination requirements. The difficulties are probably less in craft subjects, where work is on a largely individual basis, than in subjects like English and history, where set reading or periods of study may be involved. The selective schools have had some dispiriting parallels, in the pupils who 'drop' a GCE subject half way through a school year, and who then remain nominally in the class, merely filling in time till the end of the year.

254. For all pupils, balance is needed between those activities which are examined and those which are not. No pupil, however able, ought to be occupied exclusively with examination work, or to feel that time and energies spent on anything else are wasted. Still less ought the pupils who attempt only a small amount of examination work to feel that this is the only part of their course that counts. Subjects like religious instruction, literature, art and music could be particularly affected, or activities like class discussion, whose value generally does not lie in any measurable results. The attitude of the head and of the staff will be decisive here. Only if they show that they value parts of the curriculum that are not examined or examinable will the pupils value them also. They may show it in various ways - by ensuring, for example, that the heads of department take some non-examination work, and by encouraging public displays, exhibitions, and activities such as concerts and plays and conferences, whose interest lies in themselves. A pupil's programme will be justified only if it makes educational sense as a whole, whether it is subject to external examinations or not.

255. If the schools are to act wisely over this, they will need understanding support. They will need to be free of external pressures to put as many pupils as possible through as many subjects as possible, as a matter of local prestige. We should deplore, for example, any practice of publishing lists of external examination results, thereby indirectly promoting local competitive rivalries which would tend to reduce the freedom of action of individual schools. And we should strongly champion the right of any school to abstain altogether from public examinations if the head and staff were convinced that the best interests of the pupils required this.

256. We believe that the support of parents will generally be given, if the schools and local education authorities take parents sufficiently into their confidence about what is happening. There is evidence now that parents are increasingly willing, and even anxious, for their children to stay on at school, without any special bait of examination certificates, if the school has a real policy for the less able pupils and makes it known. Parents and the general public must be kept well informed if some dangerous misconceptions of what the new examinations and certificates stand for are to be avoided. Examinations, however carefully organised, are at best rough and ready measuring instruments, useful enough, as long as their limitations are appreciated.

257. The hope is expressed in Examinations Bulletin No. 1 that all concerned with the CSE 'will do all they can to secure a wider understanding among parents and users of the Certificate of the limitation of public examinations', and that 'they will encourage users of the Certificates to seek other evidence of the qualities and potentialities of school leavers'. Similarly the Beloe Committee expressed the hope that while employers and those concerned with selection for further education courses will obviously find the information contained on examination certificates useful, they will treat this as 'only one piece of evidence among others, notably school records'. The youth employment service can be of valuable assistance here, both in urging employers to pay attention to the schools' assessments and in advising the schools on the kind of information and the manner of presentation which is likely to be helpful to employers. In the field of further education, too, there is a double need for information, both in the selection of a boy or girl for a job which may be associated, we hope increasingly, with a course of training or part-time education; and in direct selection for courses by further education institutions. Here personal links between the college principals and the schools are essential.

258. For many pupils, 'other pieces of evidence' may be the most important: employers, as one headmaster reminds us, 'do not always want clever people'. Other qualities, whether in employment or in private life, may count high: patience and persistence in seeing a job through, for example, where care matters rather than speed; general attitudes to learning, rather than performance in a single test; honesty, cheerfulness, pleasant manners and an ability to get on with people.

259. For the more personal qualities, we doubt whether any public document is desirable, although some schools have told us of interesting experiments with 'character certificates' which they find have an incentive value for all their pupils in the last year at school. We should feel some reluctance for sixteen year olds to be saddled with a permanent record of their past inadequacies. Entry into employment or into further education is for some boys and girls an opportunity to start afresh. In general we should feel that the best means of conveying purely personal information about the pupils, where it is legitimately requested, is still in confidential letters from the head, and that this will be easier where contact between the schools and the neighbourhood is close.

260. There is, however, other information about the pupils' work and progress, and general participation in school life, which might usefully find a place in a purely internal leaving certificate such as we proposed at the outset of this chapter. And here, despite experiments by some schools, we believe important work remains to be done in discovering the best form and manner of supplying the information. We can see the certificate meeting several needs. For the pupils who have taken no external examinations, it could contain some assessment of progress based, perhaps, on the whole final year's work at school, rather than on one examination. For other pupils, it could supplement the Certificate of Secondary Education by recording what studies had been followed other than in subjects externally examined. Or again, since the introduction of elective 'courses', such as we advocate, may involve the dropping of some subjects entirely from the beginning of the fourth year, the pupils might find it helpful to have on record that they have followed a basic course in school for at least three years in a subject which does not appear in the final course or in any external examination certificate.

261. We see no simple formula offering clear-cut policies to the schools for dealing with examinations. In as far as the teachers are able to assume fully the opportunities and responsibilities that are offered to them under the new Certificate of Secondary Education proposals, they have it in their power to shape the examinations which will inevitably assume importance for large numbers of boys and girls, rather than to allow education to be shaped by the examinations. But the more pupils there are who acquire examination certificates, the more squarely the schools are faced with a duty to deal faithfully with the rest - a very substantial number of boys and girls. Living sensibly in a world which prizes examinations means taking the mystique out of their results, and making education worthwhile to the unexamined.

Recommendations

(a) All pupils who remain at school till the age of sixteen should receive some form of internal school leaving certificate. This need not follow a uniform pattern, but local consultation between schools, the youth employment service, further education and employers would be helpful in arriving at a form most likely to be useful to the pupil. Such a certificate for some pupils would include a record of achievements in public examinations. (paras. 240, 260, 261)

(b) No pupils should be entered for any external examination before the fifth year; schools should look ahead to a situation in which all pupils will be in full-time education to sixteen. (para. 249)

(c) In relation to the new public examinations for the Certificate of Secondary Education, each school has an individual decision to take. The new system offers a tool for teachers to use where and as they judge appropriate. It should not be allowed to shape the whole education offered by the schools. (paras. 250, 255)

(d) We are convinced that many of the pupils with whom this report is concerned ought not to be entered for public examinations; and that for all the pupils a substantial part of the curriculum should be unexamined. (paras 244, 254)

(e) For those pupils who do enter, we hope that oral work, 'course' work, and the teacher's assessment will play a significant part in the new examinations. (paras. 246-248)

(f) There is urgent need to keep parents and the general public, especially employers, well informed as to the nature of the new examination schemes. (para. 256)

Footnotes

(1) From school to further education (HMSO 1963).

(2) 15 to 18 paragraph 127.