Educators are all servants to the future – an imagined place where our efforts help our students lead a better, more fulfilled, more complete life. And yet school can sometimes leave us feeling satisfied with fixing the small stuff, but too tired and busy to engage with more fundamental questions about why we’re here.
Is it our job to ensure our students are well-rounded citizens, with the skills to navigate and improve society and build productive, successful relationships? Or are we here just to pass exams? Surely, it is the former.
Does your school have a mission statement? This is not a motto, or some nebulous, aspirational quotation, but a clearly defined raison d’etre that informs everything else you do. If it does, it will inform learning outcomes, provide a definition of learning that frames instruction and decisions about your choice of curriculum.
If you are an A Level school, I would suggest your post-16 examination system is unlikely to align with your mission statement, because your dedicated staff will have much wider aspirations for their students than simply good examination results. I would say that any moral purpose you might have will have been necessarily compromised to accommodate a vision of learning which has been narrowed to a syllabus defined by a commercial examination provider.
One A Level provider has no mission statement at all. It does say its “qualifications give all students the opportunity to show what they can do and progress to the next stage of their lives”, but this is another way of saying it’s just a means to an end. It’s hardly an inspiring, purposeful call to the future.
In England and Wales, at key stage 5, a combination of factors – a lack of clear purpose (beyond the tyranny of results), the reverence that surrounds traditional A Levels, and poor incentives for change – mean students are pushed through a narrow choice of examinations. The norm elsewhere in the world is very much a broad, balanced education, which maintains specialism and depth, but does not allow students to stop acquiring key skills at 16. The purpose of a baccalaureate-style education begins to go beyond university entrance, and to start addressing essential life skills.
But there are alternatives to A Levels in England and Wales. I lead an International Baccalaureate school and the IB Diploma has a clear purpose – “to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect”. That’s something I can get behind – it gives some shape and meaning to that imagined future I’m preparing students for. It aligns with our school mission: we have a shared moral purpose.
Expanding horizons vs limiting options
The IB shows us how we could shape a new approach to learning and teaching – one that is comprehensive, and offers young people the opportunity to gain skills needed for life and academia. The IB Diploma programme’s focus on breadth is far more impressive than the limited nature of British A-Levels. It is a six subject diploma, ensuring that students take at least one option in certain subject groups (such as languages, sciences, and mathematics), while still offering them the opportunity for specialisation. If a student is enrolled in an A-Level programme, they are required to choose three to four subjects at the age of sixteen: a potentially life-changing choice that means many students find themselves without any higher qualifications in mathematics or languages. This restricts the higher education courses they can apply for. But it goes beyond this, because examinations alone cannot provide everything young people need for university and for life.
Research and project-management skills
The requirements of IB Diploma also highlight how the research requirements of an A-Level programme are, by comparison, chronically underdeveloped. The IB Diploma Programme has a standalone independent research component: a 4,000 word paper on an inquiry topic of a student’s choice.
Although students enrolled in an A-Level programme may opt to take an Extended Project Qualification in their second year, this is not a mandatory component, and is often undertaken by students simply to support their university application for a certain subject.
In addition to this, the IB – and many other similar systems – maintains internal assessments and coursework across all subjects, offering students the opportunity to develop in more in-skills that all employers (and universities) demand. Properly constructed coursework teaches students how to be self-starters; to be able to plan and manage long-form projects; to collaborate with others productively to co-create, own and share knowledge; and to be able to transfer key skills across different disciplines. A Levels have abandoned these essential skills.
Understanding the complexity of the world
The key issue of critical thinking skills further reduces the value of A-Levels. In order to successfully complete the IB Diploma Programme, every student must follow a critical thinking programme (Theory of Knowledge) that explores different knowledge systems; diverse methods of inquiry, from different times, places and cultures. It takes the personal and shared aspects of knowledge – how we understand the world – and investigates the relationships between them, while aiming to develop self-awareness and a sense of identity.
In a recent interview, Sabrina, a recent Halcyon graduate, reported how her Theory of Knowledge skills have allowed her to master a module on fake news and statistics on her Politics and International Relations course at University College London. There is no mandatory critical thinking element in any A-Level programme. The OCR examination board has a Critical Thinking AS/A-Level, but this is not offered by many sixth forms or colleges. Even if an A-Level student does opt for Critical Thinking A-Level, the impact of this subject on students’ wider academic progress is debatable. Research by Cambridge Assessment found that “[Critical Thinking] teachers tended to report that their overall agenda or aim was for students to achieve a good grade in the exam, rather than to foster transferable skills and dispositions.”
Although British and international universities accept both the IB and A-Level students, schools and universities increasingly understand that the requirements of the Diploma Programme better equip individuals to succeed in higher education: 94% of admissions officers have reported that Diploma students are better prepared for independent inquiry, a fundamental skill for universities. What’s more, we know anecdotally that our community includes university lecturers who have specifically chosen Halcyon for their children because of the qualities nurtured by the Diploma.
Finding the best of both worlds
No matter how successful a student is in their IB examinations, the Diploma is not awarded if they fail to complete a service component, be that local charity work or more complex international aid projects. This pushes young people out into the world to confront inequalities and injustice, to be a part of a solution, to learn practical compassion, and find out about themselves and their place in the world.
And if you are still wedded to examinations – and there is no arguing that performing under pressure, applying skills and knowledge to a deadline is a key skill – then the IB, like its confrères around the world, concludes with an examination session that is every bit as academic as A Levels.
Despite years of discussion about the limitations of A Levels, it seems that no government is brave enough to reform or retire them. The Blair government – possibly the most outward-looking government of the last 50 years – flirted with adopting a baccalaureate approach, but baulked. The state education sector deserves a better option. The English Baccalaureate, at 16, recognises the principle of a broader education, but it’s little more than giving a name to qualifications that universities have long asked for.
Staff can benefit from a change, too: the International Baccalaureate Organisation, for example, offers professional development to IB educators to ensure they can deliver a comprehensive and demanding curriculum. It allows them to become specialists in certain areas and stands them in better stead in their career.
A-Levels hang on, possibly because no-one has the will to cut them down. That’s a very poor excuse to give the young people who must suffer their inadequacies.
Barry Mansfield is Director of Halcyon London International School, Marylebone (halcyonschool.com)
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