There is a continual discussion in education about the purpose of exams and how it will often under-value or over-value students in terms of their value to the world. For example, we probably know many students who are very good at passing exams but are incredibly rude and have very little empathy. On the other hand, we will also know lovely students, who help others, are very respectful but unfortunately struggle with exams. Unfortunately for the latter students, their exam grades are what defines them in our current model of society and they are seen as failures; whilst the former students end up running the country, over-seeing thousands of avoidable deaths and somehow, that doesn’t seem right.
Recently the Economic Observatory produced an article called ‘How should we measure the development of human capital in children?’ which is a brilliant read. It really gets you thinking about the measurements we use and the variables that influence that, as well as some of the characteristics that are seen as good but we find hard to measure in a school context.
As an economics teacher, this made me think about the recent podcasts I have recorded with my friend about the economists Simon Kuznets and Amartya Sen. In both these episodes, we discuss how GDP (Gross Domestic Product) became the most important measure for an economy and how in recent times, the tide has started to turn against it. The criticisms of GDP are many but as Bobby Kennedy once said about GDP of America ‘…it measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.’ and in many respects, this is how I feel about the way we measure students in school at the moment through the exam system.
In the Sen episode we discuss how his work shifted the thinking about GDP and his work inspired Mahbub ul Haq who created the Human Development Index or HDI. This still recognised that GDP was an important component of a country’s standard of living but it wasn’t the full story. He suggested that life expectancy (a health indicator) and average years of schooling (an education indicator) should also be recognised and thus, HDI was born with each factor given an equal weighting.
It is therefore easy to make a leap from that into the school system. Obviously examinations are an important component of a student’s value but it is not the only one. Therefore we might want to consider how we could create a similar type of index for students, as we have done for economies across the world. Let’s start by giving it a cheesy name – The STARS index. This would stand for something like Standardised Tests And Relevant Skills index.
What would be included? Alongside examination grades, it would make sense that we should add in a physical health component. Many studies have shown that physical exercise is good for both body and soul and a student’s value to society would be enhanced if they were physically fit. A teamwork component would make sense alongside an empathy element, that reflected their value as a decent human being. There would be disagreements as to what should be included, as there is with HDI but a more holistic viewpoint of a student would certainly be more advantageous than our current exam obsession. The DfE could decide what the components would be, create a weighting for each component and voila! The STARS index is born. Instead of students needing a certain grade criteria to get into a particular institution, they would need a STARS number instead. Those students who wanted to go to Oxbridge would not only need good grades but be a more well rounded student.
Now many of you at this point will be shouting (apart from exams) HOW DO WE MEASURE EACH COMPONENT? But thanks to Covid, we have now reached a situation, amongst a large part of society, that believes teachers can be trusted when it comes to assessing students. I personally would be in favour of each teacher giving students a rating for the empathy components – using the wisdom of crowds – in order to create an average score so that no individual teacher could be pressured into increasing a score. It could be scored 3 times a year based on their general behaviour around school and in lessons rather than ‘empathy exams’ or ‘teamworking tests’. Not only would this give a fairer score, if they knew about this index at the beginning of the school year, you would expect to see better behaviour across the school.
So what do you think? Would the Department for Education go for it? Should I start getting S Club 7 ready to do the launch campaign? It would be interesting to know what you think.
On Teaching... 