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MPs will this week call for radical changes to the public examinations system to halt a decline in standards.
A report by the all-party Education Select Committee will say that the quality of GCSEs and A-levels has been compromised by a structure which allows competition between exam boards.
The inquiry will highlight a series of concerns in the way the exam regime operates which lead to a “race to the bottom”, including:
* Text books written by chief examiners, published or endorsed by exam boards, which tell pupils how to pass exams. Some books even use the front of the examination paper as the front cover. Schools then closely follow the books, narrowing what is taught in lessons.
* Seminars where senior examiners give teachers tips on passing exams. In some, staff have been given information about what questions will appear in the paper.
* Schools choosing what they regard as the “easiest” exams from the multitude of syllabuses produced by exam boards in the hope of boosting league tables rankings, providing an incentive for boards to make papers more “accessible”.
Consecutive years of rising exam results, leading to a GCSE A* to C pass rate of nearly 70 per cent and a quarter of sixth formers gaining an A* or A at A-level, has fuelled high-level concern over the “dumbing down” of education.
The exam regulator, Ofqual, admitted for the first time earlier this year that there had been persistent grade inflation over more than a decade which was “impossible to justify and undermined confidence in the value of qualifications”.
The Government is now planning wholescale changes to the curriculum and exams which could include a return to the traditional O-level at age 16 and the scrapping of modular A-levels.
During the six-month select committee inquiry, which heard evidence from Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, Glenys Stacey, the head of the exam regulator, teachers, exam chiefs, examiners and book publishers, MPs were told that the exam system was in crisis and “not fit for purpose”.
In response, the select committee report will recommend a radical overhaul of the examination structure.
It is expected to call for the current system of multiple exam syllabuses jostling for business to be scrapped and replaced with one national syllabus for key GCSE subjects.
They would be written either by an exam board or another expert body and would provide a common foundation to the exams produced, distributed and marked by the boards.
At the moment, myriad syllabuses in each subject are produced by the big five exam boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, based on criteria set by Ofqual.
Competition would be removed in key subjects such as maths, English and science and possibly history, geography and modern foreign languages, the other subjects that make up the EBacc.
The recommendation is a compromise between those who argue for the creation of one exam board, as exists in Scotland and other countries, or the franchising out of each subject to a single board.
The national syllabus proposal would still allow competition between exam boards on the delivery of the exams but would guard against dumbing down, one source said.
It would also prevent one exam board having a monopoly in one subject which could lead to higher prices, complacency and a concentration of risk if things went wrong.
Moving to one syllabus for each subject could be seen a stepping stone to one exam per subject in the longer run, the solution favoured by Michael Gove.
The report is also expected to recommend that exam boards ban the use of their logos and the reproduction of examination material in text books produced by commercial publishers marketed to specific qualifications.
Guides written by examiners, issued by exam boards, were valuable to schools but should cover the curriculum and syllabus more generally rather than home in on specific exams, it will say.
In addition, exam boards which hold teacher seminars would be required to post their content on the internet allowing schools across the country to view them, not just staff who have paid nearly £100 to attend specific events.
In the course of the inquiry MPs heard from former examiners of declining professional standards and grade inflation fuelled by competition between boards.
Martin Collier, an A-level history examiner for Edexcel between 1996 and 2011, argued for a single, merged exam board because it was “wrong to put children’s qualifications into the marketplace” and because competition between boards had unhealthy side effects.
In their evidence, the exam boards denied that they had compromised standards and said the regulator, established in 2010, was empowered to ensure that did not happen.
“Our long-term survival is based on maintaining standards,” said Mark Dawe, the chief executive of OCR. He also said that continuous changes to exam syllabus and specifications, driven by Government, made the job of maintaining standards year-on- year harder.
The inquiry will highlight a series of concerns in the way the exam regime operates which lead to a “race to the bottom”, including:
* Text books written by chief examiners, published or endorsed by exam boards, which tell pupils how to pass exams. Some books even use the front of the examination paper as the front cover. Schools then closely follow the books, narrowing what is taught in lessons.
* Seminars where senior examiners give teachers tips on passing exams. In some, staff have been given information about what questions will appear in the paper.
* Schools choosing what they regard as the “easiest” exams from the multitude of syllabuses produced by exam boards in the hope of boosting league tables rankings, providing an incentive for boards to make papers more “accessible”.
Consecutive years of rising exam results, leading to a GCSE A* to C pass rate of nearly 70 per cent and a quarter of sixth formers gaining an A* or A at A-level, has fuelled high-level concern over the “dumbing down” of education.
The exam regulator, Ofqual, admitted for the first time earlier this year that there had been persistent grade inflation over more than a decade which was “impossible to justify and undermined confidence in the value of qualifications”.
The Government is now planning wholescale changes to the curriculum and exams which could include a return to the traditional O-level at age 16 and the scrapping of modular A-levels.
During the six-month select committee inquiry, which heard evidence from Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, Glenys Stacey, the head of the exam regulator, teachers, exam chiefs, examiners and book publishers, MPs were told that the exam system was in crisis and “not fit for purpose”.
In response, the select committee report will recommend a radical overhaul of the examination structure.
It is expected to call for the current system of multiple exam syllabuses jostling for business to be scrapped and replaced with one national syllabus for key GCSE subjects.
They would be written either by an exam board or another expert body and would provide a common foundation to the exams produced, distributed and marked by the boards.
At the moment, myriad syllabuses in each subject are produced by the big five exam boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, based on criteria set by Ofqual.
Competition would be removed in key subjects such as maths, English and science and possibly history, geography and modern foreign languages, the other subjects that make up the EBacc.
The recommendation is a compromise between those who argue for the creation of one exam board, as exists in Scotland and other countries, or the franchising out of each subject to a single board.
The national syllabus proposal would still allow competition between exam boards on the delivery of the exams but would guard against dumbing down, one source said.
It would also prevent one exam board having a monopoly in one subject which could lead to higher prices, complacency and a concentration of risk if things went wrong.
Moving to one syllabus for each subject could be seen a stepping stone to one exam per subject in the longer run, the solution favoured by Michael Gove.
The report is also expected to recommend that exam boards ban the use of their logos and the reproduction of examination material in text books produced by commercial publishers marketed to specific qualifications.
Guides written by examiners, issued by exam boards, were valuable to schools but should cover the curriculum and syllabus more generally rather than home in on specific exams, it will say.
In addition, exam boards which hold teacher seminars would be required to post their content on the internet allowing schools across the country to view them, not just staff who have paid nearly £100 to attend specific events.
In the course of the inquiry MPs heard from former examiners of declining professional standards and grade inflation fuelled by competition between boards.
Martin Collier, an A-level history examiner for Edexcel between 1996 and 2011, argued for a single, merged exam board because it was “wrong to put children’s qualifications into the marketplace” and because competition between boards had unhealthy side effects.
In their evidence, the exam boards denied that they had compromised standards and said the regulator, established in 2010, was empowered to ensure that did not happen.
“Our long-term survival is based on maintaining standards,” said Mark Dawe, the chief executive of OCR. He also said that continuous changes to exam syllabus and specifications, driven by Government, made the job of maintaining standards year-on- year harder.
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