No Graduation in the UK?

[Steve]

---  "Geoff Bannister" <gbannister10 at ...> wrote:
>
> Geoff:
> I thought the best way to answer the questions which have 
> arisen in this thread would be to give a general overview of 
> school exam development since the 1950s.
> 
> I feel qualified to do this having gone through the system at
> that time and also having been the Examinations Secretary for
> fifteen years at the school where I taught. ...


Thanks, I've got the general understanding of the system, but
still unclear what a students options are. 

In the USA, the way it is /suppose/ to be, is that the state
sets educational standards that are reflected in local community
grade schools, junior high schools, and high school. To pass to 
the next grade level, your performance has to be up to certain
standards, but these standards are verified by the school, not
by standardized tests. 

We do have standardized testing now, but it is purely for the 
government, to help the bureaucrats pretend they are making a
difference, and of course to put an excess uncompensated burden
on the local schools. 

Local schools individually certify that you have achieved at
standards and are qualified to pass to the next grade level. Of
course, the local schools base their standards on state standards.

At least that is how it is suppose to work. If you don't meet 
standards, you are held back a grade to repeat a year, and
hopefully the second time on the same material, you get it right.
Theoretically, this can happen to the point of infinity. That is
you can keep getting held back forever. Though, once you reach
the legal age beyond which you can not be compelled to go to 
school, the school tends to want to get rid of you.

But in practice, especially in the last decade or so, they have
fallen into a touchy-feely phase of education where no one 
should ever feel bad and no one should ever fail. So, students
with poor performance keep getting promoted. Meanwhile the
teacher are getting more and more pressure to meet standards,
and are spending more and more time on bureaucratic tasks, and
are give less time and fewer resources to do their actual job.

So, students are passed to the next grade no matter how poorly 
they perform. Though it is improving now, we have had students
who 'graduated' from high school who are functionally illiterate. 
The can only read and write at the most basic level, and can't find any country including their own on a map. 

But, they are suppose to repeat any grade they fail. Yet, we
wouldn't want them to feel bad, because, after all, in real life
no one ever has to feel bad do they (sarcasm)?

So, this is the USA method of dealing with poor performing 
students. If they fail, they repeat. 

I repeated second grade (girl problems). 

But I'm wondering about the UK mechanism, both theoretical 
(meaning what is suppose to happen) and real-world (meaning
what actually does happen). 

If there are no on-going year-to-year standards, a student 
could make it all the way to his/her GCSEs and discover they
were ill-equipped to deal with any of the tests. What safe-
guards are there to assure that when a student gets to GCSE
level test, that they are prepared to take them and pass? 

That's what puzzles me about standardized qualification tests.
In the USA, you supposedly have to make the grade every single
year in order to continue on, or advance. But in the UK and
at Hogwarts, while on-going and yearly marks are given, they
don't seem to carry any weight. Harry and Ron must have been
failing History of Magic since day one. What was done about 
it? What should have been done about it? What could have been 
done about it? 

So, on this one narrow issue, what is done year to year to
assure that when a student sits their qualifying tests, they
are ready for them? And if they are not functionally ready
to sit those tests, if they themselves and the educational
system have failed, what becomes of the student?

Keep in mind that in his local school, Albert Einstien was
failing at math and considered ineducable by his teachers.
Obviously something or some one in the German education
system was failing. 

Just curious.

Steve/bluewizard