Minimum aims of Education

Getting agreement on measurable aims of education may be difficult. But deciding on a minimum level to be achieved by all should be easier. We know when the 'education system' or the individual child has failed.

As a democracy we need every individual to be able to take part in active discussion, understand the main issues and make a choice. As a social economy, we need them to be self-supporting economically and work and live in a community without causing disruption.

Therefore, by the age of 16 every child should:

1) Be able to communicate in English in speech and writing, personally and via IT
2) Be numerate so as to understand finance and basic concepts of engineering and society
3) Understand the structure of UK society with background knowledge of how we arrived at the present position
4) Understand where the UK fits into global society and its issues.
5) Behave lawfully and be able to prove an ability to work with others successfully

Measuring the results on these 5 scales should be the essential requirement for GCSEs. The exams should be more than pass or fail because clearly there is great scope for achieving more than the minimum level agreed. The main measure for the pupil should be the decile ranking he achieves. That way there can be no grade inflation and the top 10% are rated above the next 10%. The main measure for the schools though should be the number of their pupils failing to attain a pre-agreed minimum level.

The structure of the exams would have to change to be able to discriminate successfully between the different levels. Pupils would be motivated by a competitive result that they could use for selection for further training and employment. Schools would be motivated first to minimise the failures so likely to lead to future problems for society. At the same time they would have to raise their standards for the more able pupils to achieve results in a national competition.