A better alternative to A amounts? We now have it with IB

A new report endorses an choice model of put up-16 qualifications. Jo Sale agrees, but miracles why the proposed solution is to reinvent the wheel

Exams are wanted for numerous factors, not least mainly because they are an significant ritual of closure. Their cancellation once again this year has deprived college students of that and supplied new lifestyle to the previous arguments for and versus them.

Amid the turmoil, a new report by imagine tank, EDSK will make a potent scenario for reform of submit-16 qualifications while preserving a breadth of assessment. That is a breath of new air, and its conclusions closely mirror my very own from a long time of training solutions to A-stages. Unfortunately, the report skipped a remedy to the dilemma it identifies – one particular that is ripe for picking.

I taught A-stages for a lot of yrs. I know that for a lot of, the close aim is securing a area at college. Learners are usually explicitly taught to the exam, discovering how to retain data but not acquiring a deep knowing of a issue or the crucial expertise needed to prosper in larger education and learning and outside of.

This is why EDSK is appropriate that a baccalaureate-fashion education and learning is the perfect match for our article-16 provision. But a revised suite of qualifications is hardly needed when the IB stands so far over the relaxation. Among its numerous rewards is that its evaluation techniques emphasis on the development of techniques and software of know-how throughout a broad curriculum somewhat than rote finding out just a couple topics.

Stop-of-calendar year tests aspect, but so does ongoing inside evaluation. The programme’s ‘core’ factors contain the concept of knowledge course and an extended essay. By means of these, IB students build conversation, group function, analysis and analytical and essential considering techniques that are particularly sought following by universities and the globe of get the job done, and wherever A-amount students are lacking.

A baccalaureate-type training is the excellent in good shape for our publish-16 provision

Assessment does not quit when students depart sixth kind, but they are tested in unique methods. College students who have followed a linear assessment system like A-amounts have been artificially exposed only to one. In contrast, the IB gives learners assorted techniques to demonstrating their discovering, with no sacrificing depth or breadth of expertise.

The EDSK report implies that all of England’s skills could be “combined into the single baccalaureate, enabling learners to combine and match programs which would be marked using the same grading and accountability system for all”.

Yet again, this instructional supplying presently exists with the IB’s Career-related Programme (CP). As component of the CP, pupils analyze a person Extended BTEC and undertake a least of two other topics from the IB Diploma Programme (DP) together with the CP core, producing the excellent blend of academic rigour alongside practical, serious-entire world strategies to finding out. Why reinvent the wheel?

Contrary to A-stages, the DP offers students the option to find out their academic passions in advance of they reduce the breadth of their study and prohibit their future prospects. Students have the prospect to tailor the programme to their strengths, picking out three of their strongest subjects to review at greater level, along with the remaining three at normal degree.

This equivalent division between the bigger and conventional concentrations across a student’s six selected topics signifies they are in a position to gain the depth of information essential to prepare them for greater education and learning and lifetime over and above the classroom. DP students are also asked to take into account the one-way links amongst the six subjects they consider, a substantially much more overt and greater way to start out thinking about vocation possibilities than A-amounts present.

With both of those the DP and CP, pupils get so substantially additional than just subjects in isolation. A baseline of topic expertise is useful for any pupil transferring to college. But devoid of cross-curricular crucial contemplating, unbiased operating and study skills – the growth of which are central to the IB – they are currently being limited-improved.

Via their two-calendar year IB journey, learners verify them selves totally. By their extremely framework, the IB programmes leave pupils considerably better outfitted for whatever will come future than their A-level peers.

So when the EDSK is correct about the problem with England’s qualifications process, its remedy is just more challenging than it requirements to be. But if it can transfer us on from reactionary pro- and anti-examination arguments, then we are all better off for that.