Sinking, sinking...

Two articles in the Telegraph this week are worrying.

On Sunday it was reported that at university lecturers are under increasing pressure to ignore poor course work and to pass students who "cannot string a sentence together". A survey of 300 academics showed fears that weaker students are being admitted from funding pressures. Comments made by some of them are revealing.

One said, "Students cannot cope with intellectual debate and cannot succeed without spoon-feeding." A law tutor said that high failure rates had produced new rules, - "We are no longer required to pass course work and exams."

Many blamed government funding formulae and targets. ... and.... (penalties) for high drop-out rates."

On Tuesday the newspaper reported on plans to make GCSE easier to pass, in fact in their headline "impossible to fail".

GCSEs will become modular, with re-sits for any parts, and students will be able to complete 60% of their exams before the end of the course.

The suspicion is that some schools will be very happy to improve their results by this means. It is an established finding that modular courses lead to higher results. It also fits the Government ideology that no-one should be seen to perform less well than others, and it will make discriminating between students much more difficult. Is grade "A" to have different numbers of stars, 1,2,3, etc, in order to show the more able students?

Do the words "dumb down come to mind? In the survey of academics, one replied "There are students with good A-levels and Scottish Highers who cannot string a sentence together."

The two Telegraph reports are obviously connected. If primary and secondary education are failing so much that exams need to be made easier, then there will be a high drop-out rate at university, especially as the Government tries to reach 50% entry, and then pressure to reduce standards in universities.

We are already in the situation when neutral international observers rate our educational system as one of the worst in the developed world. Evidence for this exists also in the ease with which immigrant workers gain jobs that native applicants are not up to despite their paper qualifications.

Whatever the cause of failure in primary education, failure persists despite dumbing down. When we have students with "good" A-levels, and results higher every year, yet producing graduates lacking command of even basic English, we have to ask where it will all end. Government interference in the name of social engineering is also making the whole problem worse.

When the immigrants go home, what will happen to this country?