Two simple reforms which I have been writing about ever since I started being an education correspondent 37 years ago - that’s all I ask for in 2017.
The first has got almost unanimous support from virtually everybody in the world of education - that young people should apply for their university places AFTER they have received their exam results. It’s called Post Qualification Application (or PQA - which makes it sound like an airline! - for short.)
Just imagine you were talking to somebody who had just landed from Mars about the process by which people applied for university. All right, I know it probably wouldn’t be the first topic of conversation.
The conversation might go something like this: Well, we have these things called universities which are there to educate our brightest you people (as defined by the qualifications they got) beyond school level.
Ah, says the Martian, so they get their school qualifications and then are admitted upon application if they have done well.
Not exactly, comes the reply. They apply before they get their results and are offered places based on what their teachers judge they will get and - because teachers are anxious to get as many of their students into top universities they sometimes overegg the pudding. Actually, not sometimes, quite often. Nevertheless, they are offered the place on that basis.
So what happens if they don’t get the qualification? asks the Martian.
Well, they don’t get the place and then it becomes available for somebody else. Sometimes, though, benevolent admissions staff let them in even if they haven’t done as well as expected.
So the university places are not for the brightest best qualified students?
Not necessarily. no.
Add to this farcical procedure the fact that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more reluctant to apply to the more selective universities until they have banked their qualification and I think you have an unarguable case for making the change - despite all ths squeals of protest from exam boards and universities who might have to shift the timing of their academic year.
So that one’s unarguable: the second is a little bit more controversial. We must move to a Continental-style four- or six-term year. It benefits the pupils who won’t suffer so much memory loss about what they have learnt - as they do as a result of the long summer holidays.
Teachers’ organisations have fought against it arguing that they need the long summer break to wind down from the pressures of the year. Nigel de Gruchy, the former general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, claimed its loss would mean the end of “the last perk of the teaching profession”. Actually, I would argue the reverse is true; that shorter but more often breaks would mean our teachers are less knackered in the first place.
Despite the advocacy of these reforms by many of the most sensible people in the world education (and me), I doubt whether we will see them implemented in 2017. Or indeed, ever.
Instead, we are likely to see the Government striving to make more progress towards the reintroduction of grammar schools - another reform which would be difficult to explain to our Martian friend, Yes, it does mean that the privileged get a better chance of a good education than the disadvantaged - because they are capable of paying for their children to be coached to pass entrance tests. And yes, the overall standard of education in areas which have retained selection is lower than in the rest.
Come to think of it, perhaps our education system would stand a chance of being better run if it were our Martian friend at the helm. Or the House of Lords who - in my third plea for 2017 - should throw out any suggestion that selective education be expanded.
Richard Garner was education editor of The Independent for 12 years, and before that news editor of the TES. He has been writing about education for more than three decades.
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