Breadth. That’s what it’s all about. More breadth in the 16-19 school curriculum. That’s why we’ve had the chaos of AS-levels, the scandal over A2, the Tomlinson inquiry row, hundreds of traumatised university freshmen sitting in undesired lecture halls wondering whether or not they were robbed, government witterings about now moving towards “a sort of baccalaureate”, and the concerted baying for Estelle Morris’s head.
Breadth in the 16-19 curriculum! That was the golden egg, the Holy Grail, the McGuffin, the object of ravenous desire.
Maybe there’s another way. Maybe the big mistake was assuming that the only way to get breadth is to put in more exams.
Perhaps in real life, breadth is something you acquire differently. Perhaps it doesn’t depend entirely on passing exams. Perhaps we could have approached the whole problem in a simpler way, leaving A-levels more or less intact.
Columnists exist in order to have scorn and contumely poured on them by those who know better. So here, as part of the ongoing national process of fretting ourselves into a stew over this matter, I offer a scheme. It involves no extra staffing, no new examinations, and only a modicum of extra time for pressured sixth-form students. It delivers breadth where it matters, which is between the ears of the pupil, and uses up very little stationery. It goes as follows.
Everyone chooses their A-levels, being as selective as they like between arts and sciences (I have to say this because my daughter fulminates in rage at the idea that people who are old enough to join the army or marry might not be allowed to give up maths).
Once they have chosen their three (oh all right, maybe four) subjects, they must pick one (or two) completely contrasting ones. In these, they take on the role of fellow-traveller. They have to attend as many classes as they can, watch what the real pupils learn, and make notes (however confused) for their own benefit.
Thus I would have sat, half-baffled but faintly interested, in the back row of physics classes - and botany nuts would observe historians and musicians at work, and smile in recognition of occasional words on the French whiteboard which remind them of Latin plant names.
At the end of two years, just before their real A-levels, they would be required to write an essay - about 2,000 words, and as colloquial as they like - about what they think of this alien subject, what they most enjoyed learning about, what the real pupils seemed to get out of it, and what they found baffling or pointless. These essays would be marked - not very subtly, but on a passfail basis - by mainstream examiners who would find it strangely refreshing to have an intelligent, innocent outsider’s view of geography, or psychology, or physics, or history, or whatever.
Essays might begin “The only bit of the history classes I enjoyed was the bit about the Tudors. Those guys were mental...” or “This molecule business is really odd...” or “The amount of time people spend looking at just one short poem is incredible”.
All the examiners would be looking for is proof that the fellow-traveller has really tried to see the point of the alien subject, and made an imaginative leap into what it might be like to understand it and specialise in it. That, after all, is how most of us learn most of our breadth all through life. We listen to Melvyn Bragg talking to scientists, we read Sunday paper articles about a new Peter Ackroyd biography, we get into dinner-party discussions with people who understand quarks or cancer cells, we work down the corridor from an IT wizard from Cupertino.
We don’t have to pass exams in these things, but if we have enquiring minds we make connections. Why ask any more of the sixth-former? He or she has specialist subjects, properly studied. But, working in a school environment full of other subjects, why not pick up breadth just where it lies?
There would be rules, obviously. Disrupting a class would be a sacking offence, and if you got a bad name for it then no other teacher would touch you, and you would be stuffed, since your real A-levels would be worthless to universities unless you had a pass in the “breadth” certificate.
If you didn’t understand at all, you would have to keep your questions till later and sidle up to the brightest geek in the group at break and ask for guidance on the baffling bits. This would be very nice for the geeks. It would all be very informal, very natural, driven by interest, and minimally - but seriously - evaluated in the reading of the final essay.
I’d have loved it. I’d have gone to zoology. I always wanted to see what really went on in that lab.
