There was a time when going to school was about having the education necessary to enable one to work and to be a useful member of society. Examinations were optional for those leaving school. People who wished to go on to further education were required to produce a certificate that they had passed the necessary public examinations, but otherwise it was not thought vital to have paper proof of your education. People often left at Easter during their fifth year at secondary school, sometimes to begin work the following Monday. To have continued at school to have taken examinations that were not thought necessary would have been thought, by some families, to be an odd thing to do.
Examinations for the old Certificate of Secondary Education would have been taken by those for whom it was thought important to have proof of their educational attainment. Was it a Grade 4 in English and Mathematics that was considered evidence that someone was literate and numerate?
At no time do I remember anyone who did not sit examinations being considered an “underachiever”. People had different ideas about what they might do and where their life might lead them, it was a question of difference not whether someone had done better than someone else.
The shift in emphasis, now, is such that education has become entirely focused upon what GCSE grades that are achieved by sixteen year olds. The option of leaving school at Easter is a distant memory.
But who is to determine what constitutes “achievement”? People’s values differ, their aspirations differ, their understandings of what is meant by achievement may be very different from what is deemed to be achievement by educationalists.
For many, perhaps even most, students the GCSE subjects and grades they attain are not going to be the main determinant of their futures, so why suggest that those who do not get high grades have underachieved? Education grades do not measure things which are much more important to most people – the personal skills they have developed, the friendships they have formed, the respect of their peers, the place they enjoy in their community. Achievement in areas of life that are not susceptible to any paper examinations is a much bigger contributor to happiness than the qualifications gained by writing answers on a paper.
Doesn’t suggesting people who do not gain good GCSE grades are underachievers ignore the millions of people who live happy lives indifferent to examination results?