It’s almost A-Level results day. For years and years this was a significant day in my year as I hurried back from holiday to be in college for my students when they went to collect their results, and to help the disappointed who hadn’t quite got the grades they wanted. They needed to find out whether the universities they had applied to would accept them with slightly lesser qualifications (quite often yes) or whether they had places on a different but related course on offer. It was better if the students phoned the universities themselves but often they needed someone standing by to reassure them.
This year I hear that universities have been offering inducements to students before the results come in, trying to encourage them to agree to attend their course. Student applications are down, from overseas students and from our own home-grown 18 year olds. Faced with the prospect of leaving university, yes, with a degree but also with a huge debt, many are opting to look for some kind of work, maybe turning their part time job into full time - and if they’re lucky, with the possibility of training for a better position. Universities are facing crisis.
Some courses are suffering because students are not choosing to study particular subjects for A-Level. This has a knock-on effect on applications. According to this article arts subjects are suffering the most. Some of this is down to changes made by Michael Gove, significantly, as I see it, getting rid of the half-way stage AS-Level. When I was an A-Level tutor I was really pleased when AS-Level changed from being a separate course to a become a step on the way to A-Level. I had seen enthusiastic, hard-working students coping well with the first year of A-Level studies but falling apart in the second year as the level of difficulty increased. They left with nothing to show for two years of study.
Making AS-Level an automatic stage on the way meant that some students would decide not to continue into the second year, while others, who had chosen that subject as an “extra” with AS as their goal might well decide to continue to A-Level, encouraged by a good grade at AS. In addition, if the gear change into the second year proved overwhelming the students did not leave without a qualification in that subject as their AS grade still counted.
Choosing 4 subjects in the first year of sixth form with a view to reducing to three in the second year also encouraged students to take a broader range of subjects, keeping their options open. Early specialisation has long been a problem here. When I was a sixth form student, my girls’ grammar school has two sixth form groups: Arts (English Literature - no English Language A-level in those days - a Modern Foreign Language, Latin, History, Art, Music, possible Geography, Domestic Science) and Sciences (Maths, Applied Maths, Physics, Biology, Chemistry). It was almost unheard of for anyone to study an Arts subject AND a Sciences subject. And yet, years later as a teacher of A-Level Modern Languages I often had Mathematicians and Linguists combined, or even better, Maths, Music and a Language, a mixture which seemed totally logical as they all demand good pattern recognition skills.
For a good number of years it seemed that possibilities were expanding. Now it looks as though the walls are closing in again.
Today is a quieter summer’s day here, rather a typical English summer’s day: a bit dull, occasional bursts of sunshine, but (fingers crossed) not raining. Raining is usually a common feature of an English summer’s day but in the last couple if weeks we’ve mainly had rain overnight. Yesterday broke, indeed reversed, the pattern of dull days which turn into lovely evenings; the day was fine and quite sunny and then the rain set in late in the afternoon and stayed with us.
Meanwhile in Greece they are having the worst wildfires in living memory, with flames threatening the suburbs of Athens. People are having to flee their homes. How do you decide what to rescue from your home when you have to leave in a desperate hurry? How do you reconcile yourself to the fact that so many memories are going up in smoke?
Greece is not alone. According to this article we are headed for crisis point, as many places are having twice as many hot days as in the 1960s. Children are more affected than adults as their bodies are still growing and have not learnt to regulate themselves as efficiently (?) as adult bodies. More and more places around the world are becoming uninhabitable and installing air conditioning to keep those who can afford it comfortable is only exacerbating the problem.
We need to stop arguing and fighting and bombing. We need to put our international efforts into dealing with the environmental crisis.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment