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Headline: Pushy parents turn schools into 'exam factories'
Description: Pushy parents turn schools into 'exam factories'
Private schools are being turned into “exam factories” amid pressure from pushy parents to produce decent results, according to research.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Published: 4:22PM BST 28 Sep 2010
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Private schools are being put under pressure by parents and universities to place exam results above a 'rounded' education. Photo: PA
Teachers are being put under “considerable pressure” by families to deliver top exam grades to boost children’s chances getting into the best universities.
Research commissioned by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents 250 leading independent schools, said the focus on GCSE and A-level preparation “compromised” their ability to deliver sport, expeditions and school trips for final year pupils.

The study – published at HMC’s annual meeting in central London – said pressure from parents and universities produced a “vicious circle” that constrained schools’ abilities to provide a broad education and teach children to think independently.
It said many schools were “risk averse and lacked the courage to actively create the curriculum” that most teachers wanted to deliver.
The disclosure follows claims from Gary Lineker, the BBC presenter and former England football captain, that Charterhouse treated his son as a “guinea pig'' by ditching A-levels in favour of new-style exams.
George Lineker, 18, failed to obtain the three B grades needed to get into Manchester University after the fee-paying school in Surrey switched to the tougher Cambridge Pre-U qualification.
In the latest report, academics from London University’s Institute of Education, interviewed staff and students from 68 schools about the curriculum for 13- to 19-year-olds.
It said: “Despite the desire to pursue broad educational aims and purposes, participants felt under considerable pressure from parents and students to deliver the best possible examination results in a highly competitive market.
“They perceived that this was exacerbated by the actions of the ‘top universities’, who not only demand high grades at A-levels but also use GCSE A* grades as selection tools for certain courses, such as medicine, dentistry and law.
“The effects of these combined pressures was to create not only tensions, for example, between preparing young people to get into the top universities and preparing them for life and employment, but also a climate of instrumentalism and cynicism in which they felt they were being turned into exam factories.”
Many private schools have been hugely critical of reforms to GCSEs and A-levels, which have been broken down into bite-sized modules that students can re-sit to boost their overall grade.
Some schools are moving towards alternative “linear” courses – such as the Pre-U – in which students take final exams after two years of study.
But the latest report warned that “anti-modular sentiment was more widespread than anti-modular action” because of the continued support for more regular assessment among students.
Prof Ken Spours, one of the report’s co-authors, said the top eight universities had a “distorting effect” on the curriculum and the exams system by demanding a string of A* and A grades at GCSE and A-level as a condition of entry.
It comes amid record competition for university places. Some 210,000 candidates are believed to have been rejected from degree courses in 2010 following a surge in applications during the economic downturn.
The report – The 13-19 Education in HMC Schools – said: “Despite all the rhetoric, many [schools] were risk averse and lacked the courage to actively create the curriculum space that the majority maintained they wanted develop.”
Researchers insisted that fee-paying schools did offer a wide range of extra-curricular activities, but added: "Even here the increasing focus on health and safety issues and the effects of the examination system in the final year of both GCSE and A-level means that sport, expeditions and trips have been compromised."

Date: 03.10.2010
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