Should the secretary of state be allowed two attempts at exam revision? Discuss.
Michael Gove decided to create a new, more rigorous approach to examinations. He called it an English Baccalaureate and he said it would be good. A year after he began work on it, he screwed up his EBacc and decided to start again. It was to be his sort of “planning resit”, a self-awarded second chance. The principle of the second chance is not one that Mr Gove is applying to the proposed I levels, the key component of the new examination strategy.
He has got it wrong again and presumably is hoping that nobody will notice. Will two mistakes determine his failure? The new exams are to be almost absent of coursework and built on a one-shot model. For a party that believes in competition this is coherent and logical. The Tory politicians argue that we cannot have an “all must win prizes” outlook. But we are talking about young people; adolescents who are coming to terms with many aspects of life as they meet their exams coming towards them.
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