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David Mitchell






The Observer, Sunday 24 May 2009

 

The higher education watchdog revealed last week that, in 2008, it received 900 student complaints about their universities. That's up 23% on 2007 and Diana Warwick, chief executive of Universities UK, described it as " 900 complaints too many". That's taking student satisfaction pretty seriously. Quite what utopias of academic excellence and alcohol our universities would have to become to elicit zero complaints is frightening to imagine.

Now that students are paying customers, maybe they expect Club 18-30 levels of drink and sex, plus extra-soft, double-quilted PhDs to wipe their learned arses on. But, even if you provide that, you're still going to get some whinging. I remember from my college days that not all 18- to 22-year-olds are gutsy, roll-up-their-sleeves-and-get-on-with-it troupers with overdeveloped senses of gratitude and a horror of appearing self-involved. Among Britain's 1.9 million students, I suppose there must be one or two like that, but my guess would be one rather than two. And that he's a virgin.

The other way to hit Warwick's target of zero quibbles is through tyranny. Keeping our student population in a state of terrified subjection may ebe a more cost-effective way of silencing their complaints than pandering to their needs. People in fear for their lives seldom write plaintive letters to their oppressors. Had there been a Pravda website in the days of Stalin, I don't suppose many snippy comments would have been posted at the bottom of the editorial pieces. God bless democracy.

But, hovering halfway between unimaginable luxury and petrified squalor, our universities are bound to get a bit of carping from their charges and for their charges. What's worrying is that most of last year's complaints were about exam and coursework marks, and many of these were from students seeking to improve their results by citing mitigating circumstances. There's a lot of this about. It emerged in March that the number of GCSE and A-level students who get " marked up" rose by 10% last year to 330, 000. There's guidance on how these mark-ups are to be worked out: up to 5% for the death of a family member and 1% for a pet, 2% for suffering hay fever but just 1% for a headache.

With the right combination of misfortunes, you could have a bright academic future. If you're an asthmatic, diabetic, hay fever sufferer who's lost a couple of grandparents and whose beloved family milk herd has been culled because of a foot and mouth outbreak, you're probably on 200% before you walk into the exam hall. The days of " the dog ate my homework" are behind us; now it's: " The dog ate my brother and consequently died. It's given me a headache."

This system is a kindly attempt to make things fair. But even if it isn't being abused, it risks rendering exams pointless.Passing an exam is supposed to represent something absolute: a certain standard being attained. " Regardless of a person's advantages or disadvantages in life, " the exam certificate is saying, " they have achieved this level of knowledge or skill."

This then means something to potential employers who may not care about the bearer's allergies or short-lived relatives. It's academic legal tender. Sterling would soon devalue if half the fivers in circulation turned out to be £ 4.63s that got bumped up because of cat death.

Any attempt to tinker with marks to make allowances for misfortune undermines exams. It means you'll never know what standard a candidate really attained. What if a lazy student lucks out with the death of a hated parent? Suddenly their ignorance is misinterpreted as grief.

And why is the misfortune of losing a pet seen as worthy of more consolation than the much greater one of being stupid? If it's ultimate loving fairness we're using the exams for, let's not give marks at all but join together in a heartwarming affirmation of the sanctity of human life. The country may be a happier place if we did that, although it'd be sod all use to prospective employers.

This marking up is seldom quite as arbitrary as I'm implying. It's done according to the grades teachers expected their pupils to get. But aside from the fact that league tables give schools a huge incentive to affect the highest possible expectations, if teachers can work out so accurately the grades examinees deserve, what's the point of the exams in the first place? It's probably that we think it benefits students to have to get their shit together, in a pressurised situation, in order to prove their aptitudes. That's what happens in life; people have to deal with stress, cope in weird circumstances, step up to the plate.

Universities and employers should make allowances for bright pupils with underprivileged backgrounds by being flexible about the grades they require - spotting unrealized potential is vital. But you don't do that by pretending it's been realized when it hasn't. That's just insulting to those who attained high grades properly and to the skills which that required.

It doesn't happen with driving tests, where the safety of other road users is at issue and I hope to God it doesn't with medical degrees. It's no good saying: " Physician, heal thyself" to an ailing doctor who only qualified after being marked up because he was ill. So if we think exams matter at all, the fair thing to the system, to the country, to civilization and, ultimately, to the candidate is to give people a chance to retake, not send them out into the world bearing an accolade they haven't earned.

A qualification that means something concrete is the only help available to young people emerging into the chaotic unfairness of the job market. We do them no favours by undermining it in trying to counteract the incomparably lesser injustices of the examination hall.

After all, in the real world, luck counts. Gordon Brown became prime minister at an unlucky time. However inept the pressure has made him, there's no doubt that the credit crunch and the MPs' expenses scandal are crises that could have hit earlier or later. But come the election, he won't get marked up by a single vote.

 


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