Education- what is it doing to us?

• Education is flawed, producing masses of people with "qualifications" who cannot apply what they have learned or even express themselves in writing. It is seen as a prerequisite for jobs rather than a learning experience, which is OK if you get a well-paid job that you enjoy at the end of it, but surely the time would be better spent actually learning something. Of course there are well educated people out there but I would argue that such people are either largely self-taught or the result of a fluke. The only way to learn is by experience. You cannot learn anything by reading a book, although they can be used as a way of presenting ideas which can then be demonstrated.

• It seems to me that every year results of GCSEs and A-Levels get better, and you have two groups of people, one lot saying that this is proof that GCSEs are no match for the old GCSEs, and the other lot saying that it is because students are working harder. This second reason is complete rubbish. The idea that each and every year students taking exams become more hard-working, diligent and intelligent is ludicrous. Another explanation for improved exam results is that teachers and examiners are only just getting to grips with the new marking systems and so have now started to award the higher grades more freely. This seems a bit feeble and also unfair on previous year's students. No, the reason is that GCSEs are different than O-Levels and are changing every year. To say that they are easier is a bit of a simplification, although it is arguably true. The point is that they are testing different things, and GCSEs and O-Levels are just not compatible, by which I mean that a GCSE student cannot do old O-Level papers and vice versa. O-Levels concentrated on teaching facts, whereas GCSEs are based more on analysis and interpretation of information. Now if you ask me, both schemes on their own are nearly useless, what is needed is some sort of amalgam of the two. Here's why: if you set an exam just asking for facts, what you are testing is the students' ability to remember data, not their understanding. Let's face it, all through your school years you have people harping on at you to "work hard" but all that's needed to pass the exam is to doss about for the entire year then to sit up the night before and read the set textbook so it's all in your short-term memory, then regurgitate it ad hoc the next day. A few days after that it's all forgotten again. And what's the point of that? One of the teachers at my old school used to believe in springing exams and tests without warning, because this didn't give students the chance to "revise", and so tested what they really knew about the subject. This is a very good idea, I think. You'll think it odd, maybe, but I've always thought of revision as cheating, because after all if you read everything you're bound to be able to do the paper. This "doing nothing through the course then learning the entire syllabus the night before the exam" goes on all the time in schools. You could say who cares, as everyone is happy: the students because they pass the exams and teachers because passed exams mean good places in league tables. But the point that I have made earlier is that students should be there to be educated, not to pass exams. Anyway, back to O-Levels and GCSEs. As I say, GCSEs require some recall of facts, but are largely based on analysis and interpretation, with questions like "look at this passage and say why such and such happened" or "explain in your own words etc. etc.". The problem with these sorts of questions is that they can often be answered by a person with no knowledge of the subject but with a deal of common sense. So again, this does not test understanding of the subject.