I see that most excellent of all ministers, Michael Gove, is preaching the old Conservative gospel of stratification by means of our educational processes. Having engaged in one of the most splendid knee-jerk responses to the GCSE re-sit as a panacea to poor teaching standards by proclaiming that things must change he has now turned his attention to the whole subject of examinations.
What this woefully inept and inadequate little chap has done now is to proclaim that we should return to the GCE for the able students and re-introduce CSEs for the 'less able'. This would fit in well with the current practice which sees those who can achieve GCSE grades A to C being pushed in that direction whilst the 'thickies' are led towards 'less academically strenuous' vocational qualifications.
This is a wonderful return to the days when the eleven-plus segregated children into grammar or secondary schools and by doing so assigned the blue or white collar at an early age. In one scholl we were being told we were the future of the nation whilst down the road our friends were being taught the basic skills to respond to the factory hooter as low aspirational drones.
Education is not about the potential for earning, although once again I have heard so called educators describe it as the means by which earnings can be maximised. Surely education is about realising the potential in a child so that they can be the best person possible in terms of skills, understanding and self-expression.
Not all children fared well with the GCE system whereby all the eggs went into one or two exam papers in the4 Summer term. GCSE is a very valid and valuable system and whilst we do need to raise standards (and stop putting out children into education too early as we do now) we need to have a system that continuously monitors and tests our children without the potential for raising grades unfairly (and this is what resits do - see postscript).
Pax
ps. One of our children was put in for a resit of a GCSE exam as part of a class-wide exercise. The teacher had 'forgotten' to teach certain parts of the syllabus and so, to counter this error the whole class was booked in to take the paper again (at the school's cost). Now ours did well and decided not to take the paper but it is this, not a return to GCE/CSE that Gove should be addressing. But then again that would be corrective not political!