28 January 2008

Mc'A'Levels

Not that anyone is dumbing down, of course, but if new vocational qualifications were going to be credibly introduced, you would have thought the companies selected to launch the scheme would have considerably better reputations than a junk food chain, a rail service that has not exactly enjoyed the most positive media coverage over the years, and a virtually unknown airline that sounds like freebee.

Or is it April fools' day and I've simply missed the joke? What next - Buy one qualification, get one free? ( Will that be a first class or a double, sir? - Actually, I was rather hoping for a K or P...)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an A* double king size whopper with cheese and bacon on top. The plethora of new qualifications and the grade inflation of the old ones is egalitarianism gone mad and will only make attainment of any award or exam meaningless because people will neither understand what it is or believe that it has any value.

Batreader said...

Surely the only way that we can get away from standards creepage is to revert to the old percentage method. The top X% get an 'A', the next get a 'B' etc. That way it doesn't matter whether the tests dumb down or up - or teaching gets more savvy - the best performers get the best grades and employers / universities can have confidence in that.

Anonymous said...

I enjoy many of these posts and rarely comment, but this is an extraordinarily cynical view.

These companies have not broken the law, contribute handsomely through taxes to the running of our country, provide employment for tens of thousands and a service voluntarily taken up by millions.

They have now offered to improve the skills of their workforce - voluntarily.

Check your thought compass - its setting is somewhere between "moral outrage" and "politically correct", not "free world" and "democracy".

Anonymous said...

I have the statutory number of GCE's for many jobs and/or degree courses. However, when I was 16 and sat my GCE's my older brother told me that unless I passed at least 5 at once (to include English Maths and French) then it would not be equivalent to his School Cert acquired some 10 years previously.

Interesting when, at about 40 yrs old, he applied for a position on a course to improve his Teaching qualifications and told the clerk he had School Cert. She said she had never heard of it and what did it count for?