Setting the Gold Standard

This year the debate about the GCSE results has extended beyond the day of the results. Usually the morning of celebrations is followed by the afternoon debate as to whether real standards have dropped. The debate then ends and it is business as usual. However the events of last week open up a debate about functional literacy that reaches far beyond the impact on individual schools.


This is not to minimise the impact on individual schools and their students. I have personally witnessed this however the significance of the events this week goes well beyond schools.

In the world of adult learning the focus for many years has been on the number of adults who are not functionally literate and numerate and this has been extended into whether we have the skilled workforce required for the 21st century. There are numerous reports that have addressed these issues.

All these reports assume that there is a standard that could be used to measure functionally literacy and numeracy and a minimum skill level. In respect of skills in Adult Learning world the standard that has been adopted is NVQ Level 2 and it is assumed that you have achieved the standard required to become a skilled worker, albeit with further training, if you have an NVQ Level 2 or you have 5 GCSEs A*-C. If you have not reached this standard then there is lots of funding available you to do so, once you have reached this standard then that funding tends to disappear.

Now I have long argued that adopting this approach is like comparing apples and pears. It is just about a reasonable argument that to demonstrate skills at NVQ Level 2 you do need a significant amount of knowledge, but it is not the ‘type of knowledge’ that is measured by a GCSE.

What however this current debate about the English GCSE exposes is that it is no longer possible to use the ‘exam system’ to determine whether someone has reached the level, which determines whether they are functionally literate. If the decision was made to increase the marked required to achieve a level C by 10 points, as appears to be the case, then that decision appears to be based on maintaining the ‘rigour’ of the exam system rather than on providing a gold standard for literacy.

We wait to see what Ofqual decides to do over the coming week. It will be interesting to see whether they factor into that decision these wider implications.

If they do not then when the next person gets up to say that x millions of adults in this country are functionally illiterate and lack ‘basic skills’, then someone should ask what do they actually mean and how do they know.