Reading and general Knowledge

Spending on books in the UK fell steadily until 1999 when there was a very slight increase. There has also been a sharp and steady collapse in book borrowings from public libraries. In 1999 we borrowed nearly 104 million fewer library books than we did a decade previously. In 1989 the public borrowed 492 million library books, a figure that has fallen year by year to 388 million last year. The total of books issued from public libraries has dropped by 21.2% since 1989.

Even in the decade of the 1980s there was a drop of about 12% in borrowing, and the fall in borrowings more recently can be seen as part of a long term trend that increased in the 1990s. Adult fiction borrowing is down by 31% and nonfiction borrowing is down by 14%. It does seem that the public will soon be borrowing less than half the 660m library books that it took out in 1981.

Commentators believe that alternatives such as television, shopping, increased part-time working, increased drinking, weekend football-watching, videos, gym, and perhaps the internet, are substituting for reading.

Dumbing Down: The Evidence

Have we become less informed?

Are our cultural horizons narrower than they have ever been?

One in five high school pupils thinks the Sun orbits the Earth (November, 2008)

One in five pupils who took the basic science GCSE this year believes the Sun orbits the Earth, it can be revealed today. And one in ten of those taking the same exam did not know that a rechargeable battery could be used more than once. The level of ignorance, despite the 'laughably easy' questions, was exposed in the 2008 Examiners' Report by exam board Edexcel. It sheds new light on what MPs say are falling standards and led to a condemnation of the 'national scandal' of dumbing down in schools.

Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education said: 'It's a national scandal. When you get laughably easy questions like this which may help politicians to reach targets but mean businesses and employers can't rely on the standards then obviously the system is not fit for purpose.'

Commentators claim standards have been lowered to inflate the pass rate as part of the Government's drive to meet its targets. The system of single, double or triple science GCSEs, for which separate physics, chemistry and biology papers were set, was scrapped this year. Instead pupils chose science or, for the more competent, additional science. They could also choose the degree of difficulty. The lowest level available, the 'foundation tier', is so basic that even if candidates answer all questions correctly the highest grade they can hope for is a C.

Last summer 537,606 pupils sat the new science GCSE, with 59.3 per cent scoring grade C or higher. And 433,468 took additional science, with 63.2 achieving C or higher. The new GCSE was dismissed as 'fit for the pub', not the classroom, by scientist Baroness Warnock.

Earlier this year pupils who sat chemistry O-level questions from the 1960s achieved an average mark of 16 per cent. Last year in GCSE chemistry 90.9 per cent of candidates achieved at least a C.

Make science easier, examiners are told (August 2007)

Examiners will have to set easier questions in GCSE science papers, under new rules. A document prepared by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), which represents awarding bodies across Britain, says that, from next year, exam papers should consist of 70 per cent “low-demand questions”, requiring simpler or multiple-choice answers. These currently make up just 55 per cent of the paper. The move follows growing concern about the “dumbing down” of science teaching at GCSE and grade inflation of exam results, which critics claim is the result of a government drive to reverse the long-term decline in the number of pupils studying science.

Dr Sinclair [director of the JCQ] added that the changes would help to stop children being “turned off” by science.

“Part of the desire is that the student can come out of the exam with a feeling of success that they have actually tackled a significant proportion of the questions, and achieved the best grade expected,” he said. “The vast majority of candidates taking this exam are going to achieve grades D to G, and they deserve a positive experience of science. They can only have that by being allowed to attempt questions which are at their level . . . It is making exams accessible to candidates.”

The latest move has been condemned by an education expert. Last night Professor Alan Smithers, head of the Education and Employment Research Centre at the University of Buckingham, said: “Deliberately increasing the proportion of easier questions is a clear example of lowering the bar.”

He added: “Already, exam questions have become too predictable and this is another example of making exams more user-friendly. Better exam scores are only good news if they stand for corresponding increases in underlying understanding. Putting in more low-demand questions is the sort of change that gives rise to suspicion.”

Boys underachieving at school, says study (August 2007)

Boys at every stage of education are showing "shocking" levels of underachievement, according to a report published by the Bow Group. The report says more than a quarter of boys - nearly 90,000 - did not gain a single good GCSE last year and that boys are four times more likely than girls to be permanently excluded from school.

White, working-class boys are most at risk of underachieving. Of the 33,404 white boys eligible for free school meals, just 37 per cent can read and write properly at 14. This compares with 57 per cent of working-class white girls and 46 per cent of black boys.

Narcissism is Significantly Higher in Recent Generations (May, 2007)

Narcissism and entitlement among college students are at an all-time high, according to a recent study conducted by a San Diego State University researcher. The analysis examined the responses of 16,000 college students across the United States who filled out the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

Twenge noted that people high in narcissism lack empathy for others, are aggressive when insulted, seek public glory and favour self-enhancement over helping others look good. Narcissists are also more likely to be materialistic and to seek attention and fame.

The study finds that narcissism is significantly higher in recent generations than in older generations. Thirty percent more college students showed elevated narcissism in 2006 compared to 1982, making current college students more narcissistic than Baby Boomers and Gen Xers. In addition, the average 2006 college student scored nearly as high on narcissism as the average celebrity from a sample of actors, musicians and reality TV stars collected by "Loveline" host Dr. Drew Pinsky.

In their report on the study, the researchers warn that legions of severely swollen heads could harm American society: "It is possible to imagine a narcissistic Lake Wobegon," they wrote. "Everyone is attractive or getting surgery to become so; competition and individual pursuits trump group or collective action; relationships are superficial and transient; kids are treated permissively at home and fed with self-inflating messages at school."

Languages

A survey has found that the British people's command of foreign languages is the worst in Europe by a considerable margin. In contrast, more than half of continental Europeans can speak at least one other language and sometimes even two.

The survey, with the title Europeans and Languages, reveals that 66% of the British population have no knowledge of any language other than English. However, 41% of continental Europeans speak English. In the case of Luxembourg, only 2% of the population said that they were totally ignorant of any foreign language while the overwhelming majority claimed to speak three languages, and sometimes four. The British came bottom in the survey, and the Dutch and Scandinavians were top. Almost 80% of Swedish, Danish, and Dutch people can speak English, and this is without including knowledge of any other languages.
 

Illiteracy

The reading and writing skills of Britain's young people are worse than they were before the first world war, according to recent research, commissioned by Bloomsbury the publishing house. The study found that 15% of people aged 15 to 21 are "functionally illiterate". In 1912 school inspectors reported that only 2% of young people were unable to read or write.

These findings echo statistics produced by the National Skills Task Force in 2000, which estimated that 7m adults were functionally illiterate.

The study also found a high level of overestimation of ability among the 15- to 21- year-olds surveyed. Seven out of ten believed that they were "pretty good" at spelling words correctly. But when they were asked to spot 14 mistakes in a piece of text none was able to identify them all. Girls did better than boys but they were still unable to pinpoint more than two-thirds of the mistakes correctly. Boys managed to spot only 54% of the mistakes. despite this, men were more likely than women to rate themselves as "excellent" spellers.

Spelling skills seem to be getting worse, according to the study. When presented with the same word spelt slightly differently three times, 90% of 41- to 50-year-olds got the right answer, compared with just 65% of 15- to 30-year-olds.
 

Historical Knowledge
 

A survey carried out in the year 2000 interviewed 200 secondary school children across Britain from both state and independent schools on their knowledge of history, and concluded that their knowledge of history is slipping. A quarter of those questioned did not know that the First World War took place in the 20th Century, and nearly half were unaware of Cromwell's role in the Civil Wars - 17% thought that he fought at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and 6% linked him with the 1940 Battle of Britain. Just 39% knew the Romans were in Britain in 100 AD. Many confused historical and fictional characters, with less than 70% knowing that Richard the Lionheart really lived, and 14% believing that the TV character Blackadder was a real person. 9% said that Queen Victoria ruled at the time of the Spanish Armada - 6% thought that Elizabeth 2nd ruled at this time.

Commentators said that the survey showed alarming gaps in a whole generation's appreciation of their ancestors, and it is the latest evidence that traditional historical knowledge is declining in schools. It is said to reveal student's lack of detailed knowledge of both national and international history.

This survey was conducted for the history publishing firm Osprey to mark a new series of titles, "Essential Histories".
 

The Media
 

A survey, published in 2000 by the Third World and Environment Project (backed by Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, and the World Wide Fund for Nature), concludes that there are now almost half as many dedicated factual and documentary programmes concerning human rights, development and the environment as there were a decade ago. Television broadcasters have orchestrated a dramatic decline in coverage of global affairs which has "dumbed down" Third World issues to the level of wildlife and holiday programmes, say Britain's biggest aid charities.

The report also concludes that there has been a similar fall in the number of programmes on politics, religions, cultures and arts in the developing world, and it identifies a worrying decrease in the quality as well as the quantity of what is shown. The report was said to reinforce accusations that broadcasters are lowering programme standards in an obsessive hunt for high ratings.

While non-news programming devoted to development, environment, and human rights issues fell from 88 hours a year in 1990 to 47 hours in 1998-99, and those about international politics from 36 hours to under 10 in 1999, more populist subjects have blossomed. Wildlife programming has risen from 54 hours to 91, while global travel has increased from 21 to 45 hours.

The study revealed a widening gap between the BBC and commercial television. ITV is now broadcasting 74% less factual programming on developing countries than it was in 1990.
 

Literacy
 

Britain has one of the lowest levels of adult literacy in the industrialised world, a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development concludes. This report put Britain in the third of four tiers in rankings of performance in lifelong learning. Those with better literacy rates include Finland (the best), Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic and Australia. Most of the data relates to the years of the last Conservative government.

 

Spelling and Grammar at “Crisis” Levels

Standards of spelling and grammar among an entire generation of English-speaking university students are now so poor that there is "a degree of crisis" in their written use of the language, the publisher of a new dictionary warned yesterday.

Its research revealed that students have only a limited grasp of the most basic rules of spelling, punctuation and meaning, blamed in part on increasing dependence on "automatic tools" such as computer spellchecks and unprecedented access to rapid communication using email and the internet. The problem is not confined to Britain, but applies also to students in Australia, Canada and the US.

Examples of students' misuse were submitted to Bloomsbury - the publisher of the student edition of the Encarta Concise Dictionary - by an advisory board of English professors and sixth-form teachers. Twelve of them are affiliated to universities and colleges in Britain and Australia.

Students were regularly found to be producing incomplete or rambling, poorly connected sentences, mixing metaphors "with gusto" and overusing dull, devalued words such as "interesting" and "good". Overall they were unclear about appropriate punctuation, especially the use of commas, and failed to understand the basic rules of subject/verb agreement and the difference between "there", "their" and "they're".

Kathy Rooney, Bloomsbury's editor in chief, said: "We need to be very concerned at the extent of the problems with basic spelling and usage that our research has revealed. This has significant implications for the future, especially for young people." Bloomsbury said usage notes in other dictionaries - which provide guidance for dictionary users - assumed "a level of grammatical and syntactic literacy on the undergraduate level that simply does not exist today".

Bethan Marshall, a lecturer in English at King's College London and a member of the London Association of Teachers of English, said the government's drive to broaden the university population meant many entrants' English was not as good as it could be. Writing standards were inevitably lower. "The type of student we're getting now is very different from what we were seeing 10 years ago and it is often worrying to find out how little students know”. (Guardian, 1st March 2003).

Classical Music

A survey of British 6 to 14 year olds taken in 2002 was asked to name a classical composer: they thought carefully and suggested Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. 65% of children under 14 were unable to name one classical composer. Only 14% of 600 children nationwide knew Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven wrote music. When children were asked to name a classical performer answers ranged from Claude Monet to Britney Spears and Louis Armstrong. Faced with a set of musical instruments only 30% could recognise a cello and 23% a French Horn. More than 60% were unable to name a clarinet, 47% failed to recognise a cymbal and 7% called a violin a guitar.

The cellist Julian Lloyd Webber said “This survey should act as an urgent wake-up call. Children in the Far East and Germany now have a much greater awareness of classical music than we do”.

Educational Spending
 

Figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2001 show that public spending on education in Britain is 4.9% of grosss domestic product compared with an average of 5.3% for developed countries (and between 7% and 8% in some Scandinavian countries).
 
 
 
 “Relativism leads to populism which then leads to levelling; and so to reductionism, to quality-reductionism of all kinds - from food to moral judgments. There are no varying perspectives, no changes of level, no goals, no aims outside this sequence; except the aim of being so far as possible like everyone else; or apparently so, for the sake of rubbing along”. Richard Hoggart. The Way We Live Now.
 
 
 
  
 Children and Books

Firm evidence has emerged that once durable classics such as Little Women and The Wind in the Willows are vanishing from the knowledge of modern children. A nationwide survey found that only 3% had read Little Women, published in 1868, and 7% Kenneth Grahame's 1908 story, although both titles have survived previous changes in taste and society.

One factor may be that children's hunger for stories is being fed by ephemeral TV soaps. Some 78% of the 2,000 parents surveyed complained that their offspring were "not being introduced to traditional literary classics". Andrew Kelly, director of a project to popularise the classics, said: "Why parents themselves are not doing this is a big question."

The survey, titled Gathering Dust, was conducted by Bristol's Treasure Island project, part of the city's European cultural capital 2008 bid. It found only 5% of children had read Treasure Island, which is partly set in Bristol.

What knowledge children did have of the titles was based on film or television adaptations. But 66% had "never heard of" Little Women; 83% did not know of Swallows and Amazons, 65% The Wind in the Willows, 58% The Secret Garden, and 26% Alice in Wonderland. Only 12% had actually read Alice in Wonderland, only 2% Swallows and Amazons, and only 6% The Secret Garden.

"It is sad to see the great classics slipping out of our children's lives," Mr Kelly said. US research had found that TV and wider leisure options were important factors.

(Report in The Guardian, 1st February 2003).

 

Further Education
 

Senior scientists have criticised the "massive dumbing down" of UK degree courses which they say has made graduates ill-prepared for research. Many university supervisors are turning to students from the rest of the European Union who, they say, are better qualified and better motivated, according to a report published by the Wellcome Trust. It quotes researchers who want to prune the number of science degree courses and extend the length of a PhD course to four years to allow more scope for teaching basic research skills.

"Many UK students are thought to finish their first degree with little or no relevant individual, practical research experience and were felt, therefore, unlikely to be able to complete a substantial piece of high-quality individual research within three years," says the report. In light of the perceptions of decreased standards in UK undergraduate education, supervisors expressed concern the three-year duration of most PhDs was not sufficient.

The issue of quality also came up when supervisors described how "the pool of outstanding UK candidates is very small". In particular, they applauded the ability to award studentships to non-UK EU nationals, as this gave them a much wider choice of high quality candidates to choose from. They said non-UK graduates tended to be better qualified and more motivated.

Another problem was thought to be the increase in numbers of undergraduate students in recent years.

The report said: "Reduce the number of studentships funded. Reduce the number of undergraduate courses to the level of 10 years ago to reduce the massive dumbing down process that has occurred in undergraduate education throughout the UK."

British Read Fewer Books (June 2005)

People in Britain watch more television and read fewer books than in any other European country, a NOP World study reveals. A poll of 30,000 people found that the typical Briton spends 18 hours slumped in front of the television set every week. He or she spends only 5.3 hours reading books, magazines or newspapers. Only Brazil, Taiwan, Japan and Korea admit to reading less.

This is probably even worse than it appears at first sight since the British tabloid press is worse than is the case in most European countries and the quality press has shown an increasing decline in quality over the course of the last twenty years.

Occupational Tests (August 2005)

SHL, the world's largest developer of occupational tests, said that their results suggested that standards are falling at the same time as the official exam pass rate was rising. In 1996, for example, the company found that candidates gave correct answers to 50 per cent of numerical reasoning questions, which are set at a level roughly equivalent to that expected at GCSE. By last year, the success rate had fallen to 38 per cent.

'Catastrophe' of undergraduates who cannot write a basic sentence (March, 2006)

British undergraduates are incapable of composing even the most basic English sentences, according to a damning new report. The Royal Literary Fund study, due to be published later this month, describes the writing skills of young people starting university as a public catastrophe.

Based on evidence from more than 130 professional writers working in 71 universities under a scheme launched in 1999, it exposes "shocking" inadequacies in all types of institutions and all academic departments. Even students who have won places at elite universities to study English literature "lack the basic ability to express themselves in writing". Despite the annual rise in results, in which the A-level pass rate has increased to more than 96 per cent and A grades to 25 per cent, the Royal Literary Fund writers were "astonished at the scale of the problem".

Hilary Spurling, the winner of this year's Whitbread Prize for her biography of Henri Matisse and chairman of the fund's fellowship subcommittee, said: "This is a nationwide survey built up from individual accounts that reads like dispatches from a front line where students struggle to survive without basic training. "The recurrent theme is the confusion, embarrassment and fear endured by students who find themselves confronted with written assignments they don't understand and can't begin to tackle. The writers' scheme has exposed a public catastrophe."

A depressing catalogue of shortcomings is exposed in the 92-page report, which contends that writing skills have been devalued in the "tick box" approach of contemporary secondary education. "Many students have difficulty not just in structuring a sentence, but in structuring paragraphs or essays as a whole," the report says. "They seem to have had very little experience of writing. In consequence, their essays are often incoherent not only at the level of the sentence but also in their overall argument. Absent, in many cases, is any sense of confident fluency, of knowing how to mount an argument, how to articulate it with clarity and consistency and how to see it through to a decent conclusion."

Contributors to the report blame primary and secondary schools, that "spoon-feed" pupils and reward then for "displaying bits of knowledge". Social and cultural changes are at the heart of the problem, say the authors. Pupils have been encouraged to use the internet and to communicate electronically, leaving them unable to "find their way around a book". Yet universities still demand written assignments and the analysis of text.

The report calls for teachers to emphasise grammar, essay writing and English-language skills and recommends that all universities should have writing development centres.

Maths

A university lecturer has produced evidence to support the claim that maths A-levels are getting easier rather than pupils getting higher grades by improving their performance. Ken Todd of York University's electronics department analysed the performance of hundreds of first year students over 15 years, and found a "severe decline" over time in the proficiency in mathematics of undergraduates who had the same grades of A-level pass. Writing in the magazine Mathematics Today, he reports a collapse in scores on the 50-question multiple choice maths test students sit on their second day at university.

In 1985, the average score was 39, well above the "worry line" of 30. Today, the average is 19. "It is deeply worrying that an average student with grade B maths is only able to obtain a score marginally better than could be obtained by random guessing," said Dr Todd. "Algebraic skills are generally poor. The manipulation of powers and logarithms is a dark mystery to many."

Between 1993 and 1998, the proportion of York students in electronics with BCC to BBB A-levels who failed end of year exams went from zero to 25%; for those with better than BBB, the change was from zero to 13%. However, the multiple choice test showed the most dramatic change: between 1991 and 1998, the average for an A in A-level maths went from 70% to 60%; for a B it went from 62% to 40%. Over the same period, the proportion of passes at A, B and C in maths at A-level went from 48% to 66%.

"It appears irrefutable that students with ostensibly identical A-level grades are substantially less well prepared than they were five, 10 and certainly 15 years ago," said Dr Todd.

A level results standards furore (August 2006)

Pass rates have increased for 23 years in a row, with another rise this year in the number of students scoring good grades. But research by a group of schools which teach the International Baccalaureate diploma instead of A-levels reignited the annual debate. he survey of 50 UK university admissions officers, by ACS International Schools, found four out of 10 thought rising pass rates were because exams were "getting easier". And many said A-levels failed to prepare sixth-formers properly for their degree courses.

More grade A’s in maths - but results still add up to dumbing down (August 2006)

The sharp rise in students getting the top grade in maths A-level was welcomed last night in spite of concern among some teachers that the subject had been dumbed down. Yesterday's A-level results revealed that 43.5% of candidates got an A grade - up almost 3% on last year. The subject, traditionally seen as the preserve of the brightest students, also witnessed an increase in the number sitting the exam - up almost 6% for maths and 23% for further maths, although there were still fewer candidates than in 2000.

However, a report from the government's exam watchdog this year found that the changes had left some teachers "shocked and appalled" at the "unacceptable dumbing down" of the course. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said it was a mistake to try to attract more students to maths A-level "by making it more accessible, in other words, easier".

Maths standards are no better than the mid-70s (September, 2009)

The findings – in a study by King’s College London and Durham University – will reignite the row over “dumbing down” in the education system. It comes amid claims that rising exam results are down to easier tests and not better teaching or brighter students.

The disclosure follows after another round of record GCSE and A-level scores this summer. Figures show the number of teenagers gaining at least a C in GCSE maths increased by almost one percentage point this year to 57 per cent – more than double the number in the early 80s.

But a study published on Saturday at the British Educational Research Association’s annual conference suggests rising scores over the last three decades “do not appear to stem from real increases in mathematical understanding”. “The overwhelming conclusion is that there are far fewer changes in mathematical attainment over a 32-year period than might be expected, or which have been claimed," researchers said.

Academics from King’s and Durham gave 3,000 secondary school pupils a test in algebra, ratios and decimals last year. Pupils aged 11 to 14 were given the same independent exam as young people sat in 1976. It found secondary pupils were much more familiar with decimals than they were 30 years ago. Researchers put this down to “cultural changes” including metrication and the increased use of calculators and computers. "These changes were increasingly reflected in the National Curriculum in its many versions since 1988," the study said.

However, improvements were countered by weaknesses elsewhere. Modern pupils found fractions harder and the study said there were higher proportions of “very low performances” in all three topics compared with 1976.

Even though standards have failed to improve, more pupils are now passing end-of-school exams. In the early 80s, only 22 per cent gained at least a C grade in O-level maths, but the number of good passes has now more than doubled.

“There is no evidence for significant improvement, or significant deterioration, of standards between 1976/7 and 2008,” researchers said. “Although performance in some areas has improved it looks as if, when all the results are analysed, there will be little evidence for the sort of step-change in mathematical attainment which might be suggested by the claimed improvements in examination results."

The study, by Jeremy Hodgen, Dietmar Küchemann, Margaret Brown from King’s, and Robert Coe, from Durham, comes amid controversy over the rigour of exams. Increasing numbers of private schools are dumping GCSEs in favour of the International GCSE which is modelled on traditional O-levels.

Last month, another research study revealed that a third of students who gained As in A-level maths subsequently failed a tougher Cambridge University exam in the subject.

England slides down world literacy league (November 2007)

English schoolchildren have plummeted in an international league table for reading skills, amid claims that pupils are ditching books for computer games. Primary school pupils slipped from third in 2001 to 19th last year in the authoritative study of 45 countries and provinces. Only the results of Morocco and Romania fell more sharply.

Researchers gave 4,000 children in 40 countries a literacy test. According to a report, Russian children came top with an average score of 565, compared with England's 539. The results showed England's score had dropped 13 points since 2001. It placed England 19th, although an alternative league table - eliminating Canada, where provinces with different languages are listed separately - put the country 15th.

An analysis of the English scores produced by the independent National Foundation for Educational Research found a big drop in standards from the brighter children had "contributed most to the overall fall", although there had been a "small increase in the proportion of weaker readers". It suggests that an emphasis on slower pupils in recent years had been at the expense of the brightest.

"Children in England reported less frequent reading for pleasure outside school than children in many other countries: just a third of children reported reading for fun on a daily basis," it said. It emerged that an astonishing 37 per cent of English 10-year-olds play computer games for more than three hours a day - an increase since 2001 and one of the largest rates in the world. At the same time, the number of children who "very seldom" read outside school "increased significantly". A quarter of boys and one in 10 girls said they never read at home. Children are spending fewer hours reading, enjoying it less, and unsurprisingly have less confidence now in their reading and writing skills.

And as if the Pirls study was not bad enough, 24 hours later came a report from the OECD suggesting that the UK has slipped 10 places in an international league table for science teaching.

Education and “Life Skills” (July 2007)

England is introducing a new curriculum radically stripped of content in favour of "life skills." Secondary schools will strip back the traditional curriculum in favour of lessons on debt management, the environment and healthy eating, ministers revealed. Even Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-down of the syllabus to create more space for "modern" issues. Along with Hitler, Gandhi, Stalin and Martin Luther King, the former prime minister has been dropped from a list of key figures to be mentioned in history teaching.

The only individuals now named in guidance accompanying the curriculum are anti-slavery campaigners Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce.

Critics warned traditional subject disciplines were being stripped of key content and used to promote fashionable causes and poorly-defined "life skills".

New 'dumbed-down' GCSE will be as easy as A, B, or C (July 2007)

Pupils taking GCSE exams will be asked multiple choice questions for the first time and be allowed to take unlimited resits. It has also emerged that, under a planned overhaul of the system, up to half of GCSE English marks would be awarded for basic skills such as punctuation.

The planned reform of the exam system has fuelled accusations that testing standards are being lowered. Bethan Marshall, a senior lecturer in English education at King’s College London, told the Times Educational Supplement: “If you make 50 per cent of the GCSE about doing the basics, you are dumbing down. “The subject is about so much more than being able to communicate accurately. And if you’re still doing basic skills at GCSE level, Heaven help you. It’s pretty boring.”

Under the revamped exam system, maths and information and communication technology students would potentially be awarded up to 50 per cent of the total marks for under standing the basics, known as “functional skills”. One suggested question for an English test reportedly asks pupils which word is spelt incorrectly in the sentence: “Be careful, the kettel is hot.”

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children’s Minister, said: “The idea that 16-year-olds should be tested on how to spell “kettle” and the principle that this exam should be based on tick-box multiple choice tests undermine any claim to higher standards. “Ministers need to get a grip if these exams are to be genuinely testing.”

Are Higher Examination Passes Real?

August 2001

Government assurances that school exams were not being dumbed down were seriously undermined yesterday when a senior examiner disclosed how lowered pass marks were being used to inflate results. As pupils celebrated another year of record GCSE results, it became clear that achieving an A to C grade had never been easier. The comments by Jeffrey Robinson, a principal maths examiner for the Cambridge board for 16 years, provided statistical support for the view widely held among employers and university admissions tutors that standards are falling.

Mr Robinson, who decided to speak out after his retirement, said that pupils awarded As and Bs this year would have scored C and D grades 10 years ago. His claims were supported by Government figures showing that in 1987 fractionally less than 40 per cent of GCSE pupils scored A* to C, compared with a record 57.1 per cent this year. Similarly, the number of pupils scoring A or A* had more than doubled from 6.8 per cent in 1987 to a record 16.1 per cent this year. Mr Robinson, 67, said that the pass mark to achieve a grade C in the intermediate level GCSE papers for the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA board (OCR) had fallen from 65 per cent in 1989 to 48 per cent this year. In the higher level paper, taken by the brightest pupils who had a chance of reaching A grade, the mark for a C had slid from 45 per cent in 1988 to 20 per cent this year.

Mr Robinson blamed the grade inflation on a combination of political pressure - exerted by governments of both hues - and competition for business among exam boards. "In the early 1990s we were losing customers by the hundred as schools were flocking to the other boards, so we had to give in effectively to cope. But sooner or later the slide has to stop. I am not rubbishing the achievements of today's children; they can only do the papers that are put in front of them. All I am trying to point out is that 10 years ago students who were getting Cs and Ds would now be getting As and Bs. Ordinary people, universities and employers need to know this fact, particularly when they receive CVs from people who did their exams 10 years ago."

The Department for Education and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the body set up to monitor standards in education, tried to discredit Mr Robinson's remarks. The QCA said there was "no evidence" that standards had declined, arguing that pass marks had fallen because higher level papers now contained more difficult questions which had to be completed without the aid of calculators and mathematical formula crib sheets. Mr Robinson said: "The higher papers may be fractionally more difficult, but that is certainly not the case with the intermediate questions." The Department of Education accused him of casting "a slur on the achievements of young people" and said that the ever-increasing numbers of A to C grades could be attributed to harder work by pupils.

Dr Ron McLone, the chief executive of the OCR board, said: "Nearly 50 years ago only one person ran the mile in under four minutes. Today nearly all serious milers can do so - but the mile is still a mile. In the same way, it would be strange if more students were not doing better at A-level and GCSE." But Mr Robinson said that such explanations flew in the face of the statistical evidence and common sense. He said: "I just do not believe we have become a nation of intellectuals overnight. "I am not claiming that papers have become easier, simply that pass thresholds have been lowered year after year. This is demonstrably the case."

The Tories called for an inquiry into Mr Robinson's assertions for the peace of mind of pupils and parents. The National Association of Head Teachers also demanded an inquiry. David Hart, its general secretary, said: "Year after year we are told by government and the QCA that standards are rigorously monitored and the entire process is beyond suspicion. Now it seems that someone is in danger of being caught out. When a senior source alleges that deliberate steps are being taken to lower grade boundaries to give pupils better grades, that is nothing short of a national scandal. It requires urgent investigation."

Grade Inflation: It's Time to Face the Facts

Shakespeare

February 2001

Leading figures from the worlds of theatre, literature and academia yesterday voiced their concern at any watering down of the teaching of Shakespeare to children under 16. The Daily Telegraph yesterday exclusively revealed that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the Government's adviser, is understood to have tabled proposals to abandon the compulsory teaching of two Shakespeare plays. Sir William Stubbs, chairman of the QCA, yesterday denied any such plan, while David Blunkett, the Education and Employment secretary, has said he will veto it. But the fact that such reforms have even been considered is widely seen as cause for concern. As Theresa May, the shadow education secretary, pointed out, Labour may revive the scheme after the election, possibly under the auspices of a new secretary of state.

Park Honan, emeritus professor of English, Leeds University, and author of the critically acclaimed biography, Shakespeare: A Life: said: "If you give up on Shakespeare, you may as well give up on understanding human nature. He continually plunges to the depths of our nature and does so with a succinctness and exactness never since matched. He integrates the wisdom of the Renaissance better than any other writer, so when you study Shakespeare, you get the insights and benefits of 5,000 other writers. He is our antidote to the dumbing-down going on almost everywhere in society today. Of course, children benefit from studying him, because he helps intelligence to grow: you remain on a flat plane without this boost and stimulus."

Al Alvarez, author and critic, whose latest book is his autobiography, Where Did It All Go Right?: "It's unspeakable, on a par with the dumping of the King James Bible by the Church of England. Shakespeare is what our literature is about, the finest flowering of the language. This is a case of the lowbrows taking over the asylum. There is a moral terror of elitism. Children should have some working knowledge of what a play is like. Never having read a play by Shakespeare is like never having learnt to drive. It is a major disadvantage in any society. It's just wonderful stuff."

Craig Raine, poet and fellow of English literature at New College Oxford: "Shakespeare is one of the few historical authors that you do not have to make a conscious literary effort to enjoy. He is for everyone and for all time. These people want to make English literature 'user-friendly', replacing it with the study of beer mats, bus tickets and neighbours at the expense literature. "No one is denying you can be intelligent about soap operas but, it seems to me, Shakespeare in manifestly richer."

Glenda Jackson, Labour MP, and former actress: "If Shakespeare is taught well, it's a revelation; if it's taught badly it can be a turn-off. What is vital however is that children are taken to see Shakespeare performed - on stage or on film. Shakespeare asks just three questions: Who are we? Why are we? What are we? There are no answers to them but they are the only three questions that matter."

Anthony Holden, journalist and author of the most recent biography of Shakespeare, William Shakespeare: His Life and Work: "Shakespeare invented the English language as we know and love and still speak it. His humanity has much to teach us about ourselves. Even to think of banishing him from our classrooms is to confirm this government's cultural poverty, and remind us why literacy standards in Britain have sunk so low. Far from making Shakespeare studies voluntary, Blunkett should be looking at ways of ensuring the Bard is better taught - not, as so often, rammed down children's throats to the point where they're put off him for life. When young moviegoers marvel at Baz Luhrman's film of Romeo and Juliet, or Ethan Hawke's Hamlet, or even Shakespeare in Love, they all too often wonder why no really good, enthusiastic teacher showed them just how great this guy really was."

William Boyd, author: "I think it is absolutely crazy. It is like saying someone studying music cannot listen to Mozart. I studied Julius Caesar and Macbeth at Gordonstoun and I still remember being in Julius Caesar when I was 10. It is part of our heritage. Without any doubt he is the greatest writer in the English language probably in any language. We should be proud that he wrote in English."

J. G. Ballard, author: "It seems absolutely deplorable to me. It is the sort of Charles Saatchi approach to education, a sort of popularising of everything. It will create a vacant, trend-hunting society. Maybe that is what the Government wants? A nation of brain-dead, dumbed-down people who are easy to control. Studying Shakespeare teaches you to examine language word by word to find those wonderful images. If you study it when you are young it stays with you and enriches your life forever. Without any doubt he is the greatest writer in the English language."

Alain de Botton, writer and philosopher: "I am pro Shakespeare but there is something about academic teaching of literature that is problematic. So often the teaching of literature is so bad that it puts people off for life. Somehow it goes against the spirit of literature."

Clare Venables, the Director of Education at the Royal Shakespeare Company: "Questioning whether Shakespeare should be taught is like questioning whether the principles of electricity should be taught. He is so central to the English language. I do not want to see Shakespeare devalued or undervalued in our education system. I think that would be a mistake. I would like to see him valued more than he is at present. He is a great genius. He is a central pillar of English culture."

Tom Stoppard, playwright and co-author of Shakespeare in Love: "While I do not see any virtue in shoving Shakespeare down people's throats, I do think he is in a class of his own. I read with regret that they might stop teaching him and I hope they change their minds. It is almost like we are deprecating the idea that one should take special pride in the best that we have and Shakespeare is the best that we have. He is sort of a miracle. There are people who would not have looked at Shakespeare if it was not compulsory and their life would not have changed because of it."

Simon Gray, playwright and former English teacher: "It is a perfect solution if you want to cut yourself off from the past. I don't think it is a very good thing but it is part of the way that we are going. We seem determined to have an Alzheimer's civilisation - one with no past. I think it is so appalling."

Ben Okri, author: "I cannot understand this sort of thinking. It is dangerous. Shakespeare is not like any other author or any other writer. I would say he is now a micro culture. So much now springs from Shakespeare. We have started in a way the downward spiral towards a kind of cultural laziness."
 

More History

The Guardian, 10th November 2001

British youth was dismissed yesterday by Encyclopaedia Britannica as "a generation of historical philistines", ignorant of some of the key events in its island story. The world's most authoritative reference book found in a survey that most 15- to 24-year-olds did not know what happened on D-Day, how long Queen Victoria reigned or even who invented television - the medium most commonly blamed for dumbing them down. Well over a third of them failed the most famous trick question in popular English history: how many wives did Henry VIII have?

Britannica said these most recent school leavers "miserably failed to recognise landmark events in British history", with a quarter of them having no interest in bygone days. In its indictment the encyclopaedia added: "Hours spent in the classroom are wasted on Britain's youth." But knowledge was also sorely lacking among adults.

Britannica based its strictures on a telephone survey of 1,000 adults in October. Only a quarter of young people (compared with 36% of adults) knew that Richard III was a 15th century king. Only 19% (and 38% of adults) knew Victoria reigned for 64 years. Only 26% (63% of adults) recognised D-Day as the date of the Normandy landings in 1944. Some 57% (65%) knew that Henry VIII had six wives. Only 33% (65%) named John Logie Baird as the inventor of TV. And 31% (43%) knew that St George's Day is celebrated on April 23.

Christine Hodgson, a Britannica marketing executive, said: "As a nation whose history has shaped the face of the world, it seems incredible that the younger generation have decided to dismiss it. "Britain in particular is envied for its rich history - it's a real shame that the young take so much for granted. I think it's time for all of us - not just young people - to hit the books again."

Decline in Library Use Figures (October 2004)

The number of readers and borrowers at public libraries has fallen by a third in the last eight years and is still falling at the same rate. These figures were collected by the library charity Libri, which predicts that the entire service will disappear in 20 years unless there are sweeping reforms. The charity wants to see extended opening hours and more spending on books to restore the supremacy of the printed word in libraries increasingly dominated by computers offering internet access and help with student homework.

May, 2005 Update

Book borrowing fell by a further 5% in 2004, maintaining a disturbing 20-year trend, official figures showed yesterday. In the same period book stocks fell by 3.3%. This means that libraries had 3.7m fewer books than three years before, leaving them with a total of 110m.

Tabloid Reading (May 2005)

Much of the British public goes to the source it trusts least - tabloid newspapers - for its most crucial everyday information on politics and society, according to a study. Based partly on an ICM poll of 1,000 people, it found "a worrying trend among the public of a greater use of least trusted information sources when seeking information on social and political concerns".

People viewed newspapers, especially tabloids, as sources of entertainment and speculative gossip, not real information. Yet they preferred these tainted "infotainment" sources because in an increasingly pressurised life the sources were the most readily available, the study concludes.

Survey of 1,000 Britons aged between 18 and 45 (August 2005)

A survey of 1,000 Britons aged between 18 and 45 by the Dutch brewer Bavaria found that only one in six respondents could correctly identify Kofi Annan as the secretary general of the United Nations, whereas 77 per cent knew that Justin Timberlake was not going out with Drew Barrymore. A similar number knew that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Jordan and Peter Andre, and Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan were celebrity couples, whereas a quarter of people were oblivious to the fact that Russia is not a member of the European Union.

Children are less able than they used to be (January 2006)

New research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and conducted by Michael Shayer, professor of applied psychology at King's College, University of London, concludes that 11- and 12-year-old children in year 7 are "now on average between two and three years behind where they were 15 years ago", in terms of cognitive and conceptual development.

"It's a staggering result," admits Shayer, whose findings will be published next year in the British Journal of Educational Psychology. "Before the project started, I rather expected to find that children had improved developmentally. This would have been in line with the Flynn effect on intelligence tests, which shows that children's IQ levels improve at such a steady rate that the norm of 100 has to be recalibrated every 15 years or so. But the figures just don't lie. We had a sample of over 10,000 children and the results have been checked, rechecked and peer reviewed."

This finding was based on the results scored in so-called Piagetian volume-and-heaviness tests. A sample question involved pouring all the water from a tall, thin beaker into a short, fat one, refilling the tall, thin beaker to the same level and asking which contained the greater volume of water. Similar tests conducted in the 70s showed a big difference between boys and girls," says Shayer, "with boys scoring noticeably better than girls. The new research reveals that the gender gap has disappeared, with both sexes deteriorating significantly. Boys have fallen by more than one Piagetian sub group - from the middle of 2B [mature concrete] to below the middle of 2A/2B [middle concrete]. By any standards, this is a huge and significant statistical change.

Website

A Level Results

Robert Coe, an academic at Durham University's education research centre, produced research suggesting that the A-level results being given to today's students were on average 1.3 grades higher than those achieved by students of similar ability in 1995.

This finding was based on a comparison between the A-level results obtained over the years by students achieving similar scores on general ability tests - IQ tests in all but name - at the beginning of their courses. Coe's conclusion was that, if grades were interpreted as indicating general academic ability, the currency had become devalued.

Pupils taking part in the Alis project take a general ability test - which has remained the same over the years - at the beginning of their A-level course. The A-level results they achieve are then compared to their general ability and the results show that pupils passing A-levels today are "not as able" according to Dr Robert Coe. "In some cases general ability is quite a lot lower," Dr Coe reported. Pupils who scored 50 per cent in the ITDA (International Test of Developed Ability, used in the Alis project) in 1988, for example, would have left school with a fail in A-level mathematics. A pupil with the same ability in 2005 passed with a C grade. A pupil scoring 50 per cent in 1988 would have achieved a D grade in English literature. In 2005 a pupil with the same ability would have achieved a C grade.

There has also been a shift towards 'easier' subjects such as media studies, sport and drama. A weighted average across 40 subjects since 1995 shows that students with similar ability in 1995 would have achieved an average A-Level grade of E compared to a C in 2005. The performance of students of comparable ability has increased by an average of 1.3 grades since 1995.

In the Fifties, only 10 per cent of youngsters continued in education beyond 17 and only 4 per cent went to university. Until fairly recent times only certain proportions of students could achieve a grade A, B, C or whatever, which meant that, say, only the top 5 per cent in any year could get an A grade and therefore go on to university. Today, more than 43 per cent go to university. The Conservatives scrapped the system of pre-set limits on achievement, called 'norm referencing', in 1988 as part of a drive to encourage more pupils to stay on longer at school. In 1975 just 12 per cent of all pupils gained two or more A-level passes, by 2005 this percentage had risen to 34 per cent. Last year 96.2 per cent of the 783,878 A-level entries produced a pass, while 22.8 per cent resulted in an A grading.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said that, while A-levels were in one sense harder for pupils because more young people are taking them, the exams themselves have been made easier. Smithers highlighted the decision in 2000 to split two-year A-level courses into six parts, called 'modules', each of which is taken separately, as a key reason. 'Clearly if a course is broken into six bits, then it's a different task from having to show what you can do via highly pressured three-hour exams. That has made it easier to perform well, because it's easier to take one-sixth of the course than take the whole course at once, because there's less material to show you have a mastery of,' he said.

Students' right to retake individual modules in which they had done worse than expected, and freedom to drop subjects in which they perform poorly in the AS exams taken at the end of the lower sixth year, had both inevitably driven up the A-level pass rate. The increased stress on coursework, with pupils getting parental help or resorting to plagiarism using the internet, had also made it more straightforward to get good grades, said Smithers. 'To use an athletic analogy, when Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile in 1954 it was on a cinder track, but now running tracks are made of springy plastic and help runners turn in good performances. Similarly the conditions in which pupils do A-level have made it easier to get good results.' But an increased focus on exam results and school league tables has built-in incentives for schools and teachers to give pupils every help they can to achieve good grades, alleged the professor.

'Just as some athletes take performance-enhancing substances, so too a few schools and teachers succumb to the temptation of using performance-enhancing practices to help their pupils, for example by having a look at the exam paper in advance and then taking the students through the particular areas or even specific questions that are going to come up', said Smithers. 'While most do not use such tactics, most play to the limit of the rules, for instance by getting pupils to do coursework early, commenting on it, then getting the students to resubmit work which has been improved. That's legitimate, but doesn't distinguish between the performance of the children the way it should.'

Many university academics now believe that A-levels - through a greater reliance on coursework, the modular system of examination and a reduction in the syllabus - are now less demanding than they were.

"Every physics department has been aware that A-level students do not have the same knowledge base they did even 10 years ago," says Frank Close, professor of physics and fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. "This is no reflection on intelligence, but an indication that the syllabus has been dumbed down. But what it does mean is that universities are having to do remedial work to play catch-up."

It's not just in the sciences that things have changed. "We're all aware that the character of English A-level has changed a great deal," says David Roberts, head of department and admissions tutor at the University of Central England. "Some aspects have become more demanding. Students are now expected to have more contextual knowledge and they are certainly better at working in groups. But there are downsides, as they spend less time reading primary texts and can be reliant on cutting and pasting from the internet. "The upshot is that we can no longer make any assumptions about prior knowledge. Instead we rely on knowledge of contemporary popular culture, without specific reference to a body of knowledge.

"But even that can be tricky; last year I approached Bleak House through the medium of the BBC series, as I thought some students would not have heard of the book, and found that most hadn't even heard of the TV programme. Our best undergraduates are keeping up standards, but the ones at the other end of the spectrum are significantly worse."