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GCSE pressure crushes creativity, says head
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent22 Aug 2008
GCSE courses fail to teach children to think creatively because many schools are under too much pressure to boost exam results, a leading headteacher warned today.
Pupils quickly become "bored" by lessons that focus on coaching them to pass tests, said Oliver Blond from Henrietta Barnett School in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Pupils work harder than ever for exam success but education should be about more than just good grades, he said.
Henrietta Barnett topped the Evening Standard's league table for state school GCSE results today, with 91 per cent of exams awarded A* or A grades.
Every pupil at the selective girls' school also achieved at least five A*-C grades including maths and English.
Mr Blond said: "Students probably work harder than ever. GCSE is a difficult qualification. It probably has less subject content than it once did and it probably teaches less of the higher order thinking skills than before.
"We have to find other ways to do it. Universities expect [these skills]. That is why we try to make education richer than exams." The Government's assessment-regime of Sats for 11 and 14-yearoldscan be made to work well "but what we hear is that it is restricting".
"You hear it about GCSEs as well. The argument is there about A-levels too," he said. GCSEs and A-levels "might have lost some of the capacity to encourage higher level thinking skills and essay writing", he added.
Mr Blond said his school had focused on making sure pupils experienced a broad curriculum. Art, music and school trips to museums contributed to developing pupils' "creative thinking" skills and helped make sure lessons were interesting.
"It's about keeping them from getting bored and from seeing education as just being about a measuring stick," he said.
Mr Blond's remarks follow renewed concern over the rigour of GCSEs. Yesterday's national results showed that many leading schools were abandoning the exams in favour of tougher international qualifications.
And growing numbers of pupils are being entered for GCSEs early so they can take AS-levels at a younger age.
Mr Blond said: "What can be measured in a written exam is important, but it's not the whole story. We need assessment. We need it as teachers. Pupils need it to know where they are.
"But if you focus solely on what's pragmatically necessary you do miss out the adventure of education.
"London-wide there are pressures on schools to show their success in quite a limited way. The question is whether the assessment we have is as fit for purpose as it could be."
