It's the mad season again: exam results are out and the pupils and schools are celebrating or commisserating accordingly. So, is your son an A grade? Is your daughter a B? Is your niece an A* or your nephew a D?

Welcome to the NEW CASTE SYSTEM - that exists, albeit temporarily, for our children's lives in the guise of GRADED achievements. It's the way of the world, I know, but the ways of the world can be changed once we start thinking about them and considering what the world may be like for your child, a world without the pressures of exams, the explicit grading of human beings according to their scholarly achievements.

EXAMS KILL LEARNING. There's no two ways about it - if you have to prepare for an exam, you stop learning and you start memorising and regurgitating, you start rehearsing rather than rethinking and analysing, you start going over the old ground again and again and again instead of wandering out to pastures new. Some pupils are much better at going over the same old information time and again and improving their grades than others, whose minds are more interdisciplinary, entrepreneurial, or just plain inquistive and who are sidelined and bored by the exam HURDLE RACE. Why get in the race at all?!

Are our ancestors, the ones who developed the industrial revolution and constitutionally restrained government, and the philosophy of the freedoms and liberties of the people, are they less intelligent than us just because we now do exams? Passing exams is not the same as becoming educated - by far, it is a symptom of civilizations's decline.

Let's think about the grading of people first and what it means:

"My daughter got ten A*s" The implication is that she's better than your son, who could only muster three As and she's certainly a much higher human being than the neighbour's kid who only got a handful of Ds and Es). What if she can't deal with people or empathise with those who struggle, or what if she's an exam machine and incapable of thinking out of the box? Not only is there an implied condescending attitude herein (for those who do well in exams) but there is also the problem that employers have to suss out - so, she got good grades, can she work in a team, does she always need someone holding her hand, is she polite and curious and willing to pitch in during difficult business times?

"My son failed his maths." The implication is that he is now an abject failure either now or forever (for he will always remember his 'failure') and that he is incapable, handicapped in some manner, special needs - labelled. Did he fail maths because he lost all motivation following a flurry of supply teachers or because he had been encouraged to think of himself as a low performer in maths or other subjects? Did he fail because he chose not to revise or practice for the exams? Either way, it may not mean that he is incapable with numbers - a different environment, a different mental approach to the subject and the boy may flourish or at least get him over his lack of confidence.

"The school was terrible, my child was never motivated, so she didn't do too well." The implication is that I have never motivated my child to learn for learning's sake, that I kept in a school that I knew (implicitly at least) was not doing her any favours, and most importantly to be motivated to do anything in this world, she must be in the 'right environment', 'have the right teachers', etc., ie., be conditioned to do well rather than be self-motivated. Why was the child never motivated? Yes, environment and good teachers can make a lot of difference, but it also comes from the family - we need to teach our children to motivate themselves, often by getting out of the way of what they want to do (as long as it's not going to injure them of course!) and by not imposing preconceived structures on them of what we think they ought to be doing in life. A lack of motivation can be a strong symptom of someone who has never been given the chance to be self-motivated, either because of what they have been told by parents and family ("You'll never amount to anything, you won't!" or "Why are so interested in the violin - that's for ponses to play!" [Think Billy Elliot scenarios!!] or by the fact that they are in school. School is not designed to encourage self-motivation, otherwise half the kids would leave, which would leave the other half dutifully accepting their lot in school, which is also not a healthy symptom encouraging self-development, self-esteem, or self-motivation!

The pedagogical, culltural, and psychological issues here are of course incredibly complex (did you put a TV in your child's room? did you allow them unlimited X-box time or TV viewing or what is generally called 'screen time? did you permit a diet of junk food? did you avoid taking education seriously yourself?) and not easily characterised in a short article like this one. But to continue with the image that is generated and regenerated each year by the SCHOOL SYSTEM and its implications, your child comes out with a set of grades that implies the possession or not of certain skills or abilities. They are GRADED and thereby CLASSED into the those capable of doing exams and those incapable (or unwilling!) of doing them?

Should this matter? Of course not. As adults, we don't go around asking, "and what maths grade did you get, oh, a B, I got an A" (well, that does happen at some meetings I'm sure); but we're more interested in "can you do this job effectively?" whether that job is running a power station, cutting hair, managing a supermarket, or flying a plane.

Learning for many people begins once they have left school and are in work; or when they have got over the scars of schooling and in their thirties start thinking about returning to some kind of formal education to improve their mind or job prospects by learning some new skills.

Now think about the statistical game that governments play with your children.

Each year the results are paraded like Soviet Union production statistics: the number of As is up again, record number of passes, boys outperform girls, etc. Who cares!? Administrators, politicians, statisticians. A teacher should not give a hoot - our job is to ensure that each pupil grows to fulfil his or her potential, whatever that may be while under our care and guidance. It may be learning to write in a structured manner, or finding different ways to solve problems, or how to go about examining historical conditions in eighteenth century France; it may be forming letters or learning to spell the key words that we use in everyday communication, or gaining an understanding of science and how things work. Attaching a grade to anyone's performance here is a completely pointless exercise, except that is how most of the western world thinks that is what makes an individual. "You're a B. A B, gottit? Not an A, but a B." (Oh dear).

Interview someone and watch them work, we soon get an idea whether someone is up for the job or not - a grade doesn't tell us anything. Except our government likes to create hurdles for kids and adults to jump and hoops to leap through - completely pointless exercises really, but they're there so examination boards can make a bunch of money, schools can compete in the league tables, inspectors can tut-tut if a school does not perform satisfactorily (according to some centralized plan created by unelected and unaccountable officials somewhere far from your home or culture).

The hurdles and loops can then be altered by political fiat and interfering busy bodies who believe that "girls should be doing better" (whatever that sentence means) or that "children should be learning more history/religion/literature/media studies/environmental issues/or loving our precious government more [citizenship classes]". Hmm, we may fantasize about utopias in which everybody does as I want them to, but they should remain fantasies not actually effected. State plans necessarily cause great harm: they serve the egos of psychotic people who believe that they are the ones chosen to lead (and thus to impose their will), and in their wake they wreack havoc and destruction to children and culture alike. The rather unfashionable political culture that once held sway in the United Kingdom (in a very fragile and assymetrical manner, no doubt) was that of freedom and liberty: a person should be free to make their own decisions about life so long as they do not inflict any harm upon others. A simple plea, but one lost, in fact drowned out, in the cacophony of the millions demanding that the state should lead and therefore live their lives for them. We see this in all walks of life, but here it is most obvious in exam results and the intellectually impoverished examination system.

The statistics are the product and symptom of state involvement. They are there to encourage more state intervention and involvement. A statistic can be read in many different ways, which means that many people will see something wrong in a certain statistic ("exams are getting easier!") and will offer their own "solutions" to the problem. And therein lies the core of the problem: other people offering their solutions to your child's education and to the life that they wish to lead.

What do I mean? Consider a typical situation: fewer students take French GCSE let's say. So, let's pour more resources into French teaching, let's increase the pressure on the children to take French earlier, have more French teacher exposure, more trips to France, let's DO SOMETHING! Why? What if the children don't like French precisely because they do not have any say in the matter as to whether they take French or not? That is the key issue for many pupils - they are forced to take the course. If adults were forced to sit in classes to learn something that the politicians thought we should all learn, imagine the attitude we'd bring! Hopefully, (for I've not given up on the British trying to rock the boat and rip systems apart even though they may not know that they do it in the name of getting people off their backs!), we would wreck the system, drive the teacher nuts, undermine the entire enterprise ... gain back our freedom NOT TO DO SOMETHING WE DID NOT CHOOSE ourselves. Yet many think that kids ought not to be able to choose - they must be forced to take subjects they do not like; well, how would we adults react? So the pupils have more French thrust on them, and the statistics show a decline in pass rates: oh, no! DO SOMETHING! More money, more classroom time alloted (drop that religion nonsense or PE time), make the exams easier, but DO SOMETHING!

Why not ask the child if he or she wants to take French?

Why not reject the whole notion of statistical analysis?

Why not reject the politicization of education and just look at your child and consider what interests them?

Statistics are there for others to control you, to alter your paths of behaviour and your choices according to some other statistics. But, I don't know about you, I'm not a statistic, I'm a unique individual with peculiar tastes in what I enjoy learning and what work and hobbies I pursue - just like my pupils who enter my study for tuition. Each is unique, each presents a range of goals and ambitions that is unique to him or to her, each has a range of strengths and a range of weaknesses to work with; we work together to solve and to learn and often to get over the troubles that schooling has created from SATS to GCSEs, from the hyped expectations of schools having to "do well" to satisfy OFSTED.

Truly, we are in a world that demands our children jump the hurdles and dive through the hoops. Should you as parents opt to keep them in the system, then they will have to do the necessary acrobatics; accordingly, their learning is put aside, while they practice for the exams. There are techniques to learn of course, but these are the techniques of passing exams, not doing well in life. LEARNING IS PUT ON HOLD.

Think about it. While the governments (of all colours) play with the statistics, our children are put aside and their learning postponed until later in life (or never again, depending on how burned by school they were). It is a joy for me to teach a child without any worry of exams at the end of it - which is usually up to the age of 14.

(I ignore and encourage parents to ignore the yr 6 SATS, which are a complete waste of pupil time and interfere with one of the most important times in a pupil's learning which takes place around the age of 9 and 10 - the last phase when their brains are wonderful sponges for learning and experience: after that, learning becomes that much harder - and our governments demand that the children are side-tracked into learning how to do a completely useless examination: perhaps, that is why they insist on the pupils doing them - to prepare them for a life of useless form filling, to accept a political culture that they cannot change, to acquiesce and obey and to follow the dictakts and policies of the unelected and unaccountable, to become in effect slaves for the pushing).

Learning is put aside, so the children become proto-exam machines. As adults, we encounter the effects of this in formal educational settings when people as "Will this be on the exam?" What the heck! That is one burned out person. Who cares? What we should be worried about is what does this mean, how does it relate to my life, to the life of those I will be working with, how does it connect to other things I know, and does it make sense?

But exams and the statistical culture that go in hand-in-hand do not encourage self-motivated learning. Really, any learning is incidental.

And life should not be lived as if it were a series of incidentals. We learn because we are curious. Our curiosity can take us places we know not! We should be encouraging our children to follow their curiosities rather than hammering them with statistics and grades and exams.

The most innovative atmospheres are created when the barriers are lifted and when no prejudicial restraints imposed or implied. This happens in the more entrepreneurial and dynamic companies and in the more curious and non-conformist familes. Think about it and then compare with the traditional political education of moulding children's minds to fit the exam requirements and the statistical goals of some fleeting power-hungry politician.

I am not wholly against tests - against a quick assessment of learning and ability at various stages in a child's education; they can certainly play a role and pupils can get an enjoyment from them when they are handled rightly. But the role of such tests is to assess what has been learned against what the child has been taught as a completely individualistic exercise, not an exercise in one-upmanship or for appeasing political structures; it is an exercise that is useful for the teacher and pupil to co-operate together in assessing the weaker areas of understanding or knowledge - but their role is severly limited. I can easily mark a maths test, but how do I mark an English paper - that is, I can show that the child got three questions wrong in the maths test and then we can learn what when wrong ("Oh, I added! I should have subtracted! - much more is learned thereby than - you got 70%); but in an English paper - what is the meaning of a grade? I can indicate grammatical and spelling mistakes and then encourage the pupil to proof read and to edit, but do such mistakes constitute a failing when the story or analysis was fantastic? Or the pupil may write well, but completely miss the topic or question - which requires an adjustment of thinking and application (answering the question that is there rather than the one she thought was there - a useful life skill!). Does it add anything if I say, "Oh, you got a C for the paper?" What does that mean to the child? Nothing. If on the other hand we spend time examining what was written and how it was written and co-operate on what improvements could be made, the pupil (and teacher) learns a lot more.

Realistically, exams are here to stay. But they are not necessary. Ask a musician - Grade 8 piano means nothing until I hear you play. No grade on the piano means nothing until I hear you play.

Exams are not necessary at all. They feed the great political Leviathan that is forming all around us to control us through statistics and hence the panolpy of regulations and directives. By rejecting them - by saying to schools, "No, I do not want my child to sit the SATS/GCSEs", we may start a message that says, "LEARNING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN BEING EXAMINED". The two are not the same thing, but it takes a courageous teacher to admit that.

So, ignore the results, don't compare your A with your friend's B (surely friendship doesn't depend on grades....); avoid exams if you can; remind yourself that examinations do not relate to selfhood or to learning.

Alexander Moseley

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