At the beginning of this chapter I explained that during the first nine years of the twenty-first century, children in English schools (less so in Scottish and Welsh schools) were constantly being given tests and assessments. Those tests are being reduced and will probably be reduced further although everyone agrees that careful assessment of children's progress is important. Older children continue to take national examinations, and one of the major and important differences between British education and Russian education is our approach to exams.
The teachers of young children coming into the schools need to know what they can already do. They assess them, often during the class, by observing them, asking questions, giving them play tasks, and so forth. Ordinary lessons are a mixture of talks by the teachers, class discussions, work in small groups around separate tables, practical work, and individual help with reading and writing. As the children grow older the lessons become more formal, although class discussion and group work are still common. A good class with a good teacher is a very lively experience. Sometimes teachers give their children quick informal tests - with pencil or pen and paper. These can be marked in class.
Teachers have to keep records of the progress of each child -his or her achievements and effort and attitude to school.
When children reach Year 10 (14 to 15 year olds) they have to decide on the subjects which they will take in the national General Certificate of Secondary Education. This is a two-year course, so they will sit the exams the following academic year, in June. Even the children who are least successful at school will probably take exams in four or five subjects. Clever children may take exams in nine or ten subjects. There are one - or sometimes two - exams for each subject. These exams are all written and are not marked by the teacher of the children who are taking the examination. The children sit in a room with a question paper and writing paper before them (or sometimes a booklet in which they have to complete answers). Usually the exam paper will have two or three sections; in one section there may be just one obligatory answer; in the other sections, pupils will have choice of questions. So, if the exam lasts two hours, the pupil may write three separate answers. Sometimes one section is like a test with boxes to tick or one word answers, but all exam papers have sections requiring extended written accounts. So our school pupils have to learn to think and argue and express themselves well in writing under pressure. All those written exam papers are sent to a central office and are marked by teams of teachers during the school holidays. The schools and pupils are anonymous. The results are sent out to the children two months later. For those children (or 'teenagers' or 'young people') who decide to stay at school for another two years, there are another set of exams when they are eighteen. These are called 'the Advanced Level of the General Certificate of Secondary Education' but are universally known as A-levels.
A-levels are 'deep' rather than 'broad'. Typically pupils choose three (or at most, four) A-level subjects; there may be three separate exams for each subject, exploring different aspects of it. Again, these exams are written exams, and they require important skills in essay writing. The idea is to encourage the pupils to show what they think and why they think it - rather than to show that they 'know about' a subject. So there is always a choice of questions. Examiners want to read knowledgeable and argumentative answers, not answers which show that this pupil has forgotten everything about this particular topic!
We do not have oral examinations except for short oral tests for those studying a foreign language. We do not have examinations in which the teacher examines his or her own pupils. We do not have 'tickets' with one question, where chance plays such a part in whether or not you can answer well.
Good Russian students are undoubtedly better than good English students at speaking clearly and coherently on a subject put to them under examination conditions because you have so much practice at oral exams. But I think our system is much fairer - and it trains bright students to write intelligently and argumentatively under exam conditions. This is also useful.
Many children who are not naturally academic are eager to leave school as soon as possible. They get bored and frustrated. However there are proposals that all children should stay at school until they are eighteen. The government is worried that too many children leave school with few achievements, few skills, and little to make them employable in a world where industrial jobs are few, but where there are many skilled jobs. So they are introducing Diplomas alongside A-Levels. Those who choose to take a Diploma rather than an A-Level can study subjects such as technical design, or public administration or 'tourism and hospitality' or environmental problems. The diplomas are seen as the first step in serious professional practical training. Another way of encouraging children to stay in education is to make special courses available to them at a local Colleges of Further Education (CFE). CFEs take students from age 16 and give them more independence than schools. The students study practical subjects, they train for particular jobs, or they get a chance to repeat their traditional school subjects in more 'grown-up' circumstances. Many eighteen-year-olds who do not wish to enter university, but who are keen to learn a trade, study courses at CFEs from 18, sometimes following that training with an apprenticeship as (for example) an electrician, carpenter or gas boiler installer. (Jonas, in the chapter on Families, is a typical example.)
A notable difference between our schools and yours is that ours have male teachers. It is true that there are not enough of them. At primary school level (up to age 11) in 2009 less than one in six teachers are men. At secondary school, about one in three or four are men. Interestingly, many men are keen to become teachers, provided that there are other men around and provided the importance of their role is appreciated. All research suggests (hat pupils, especially boys, develop more successfully and confidently at school if they have male teachers as role models.
In Russia we are told that the reason so few men take up teaching is because the profession is very badly paid. In Britain schoolteachers are not badly paid. Their average income is not huge, but it is significantly above the national average.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many children in our schools were taught in classes of more than 30 children. Following government policy, more teachers were recruited and class size was reduced to on average about 26.5 children in a primary school class and 21 children in a secondary school class. Also, many people were recruited as classroom assistants. These assistants may be young people who believe that they are not clever or educated enough to become teachers but who enjoy working with children, or they may be older mothers or unemployed fathers - anyone who is prepared to undergo training and then help the teacher in the classroom, often on a part-time basis. They are not paid a great deal. Teachers feared that they represented a lowering of standards, but in practice teaching assistants have been found to be extremely helpful, and are now a popular addition to our classrooms.
As in Russia, schools are very diverse in Britain; a country school is not like an inner-city school; a school in a prosperous area, perhaps with parents determined that their children will achieve very high results in exams has different problems from a school in a poorer area where the parents are impressed and even suspicious if their children do better than average at school. Nonetheless, research shows, again and again, that the most significant factor in making a school flourish is the quality of the head-teacher, and the related fact that a good head-teacher will recruit and keep good classroom teachers. The best schools are those where the staff give the children the confidence to go out and discover more, attempt more, accept more challenges – with enthusiasm.