Thomas Gradgrind, performance management & A Levels
Thomas Gradgrind was a fictional school owner assisted by a teacher McChokumchild featured in Charles Dickens 1854 novel Hard Times. He saw no room for emotion in teaching. What was needed were facts that could be measured and lead to profitable endeavour.
Capital has worked out different ways to exploit workers and make profits since 1854 just as workers have found new ways to fight back. However as RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch has noted the Tories are engaged in class war and workers need to organise and engage.
To discover what the more naked enthusiasts for class war are saying a perusal of the Daily Telegraph is useful.
One might think that an A Level exam is or should be out whether a student has reached a certain agreed standard of understanding, knowledge etc. If they have they pass. It’s not that simple. In fact there is a strong similarity with performance management systems used in the workplace. The worst of these use a bell curve where a certain number do less well or fail irrespective of whether they are good performers or not. Comparisons are made across a cohort and marks are levelled- meaning some are reduced to fit an expectation of what the range of performance should be.
This of course is just a massive distraction from actually doing the job people are meant to be doing. Its purpose is usually to manage pay and bonus budgets.
With A Levels the purpose of grade management is to manage who goes to University and which one.
A Daily Telegraph Editorial on 19th August 2022 noted the ‘race’ to get to University. Why is it a race? Shouldn’t those who reach an agreed A Level standard be able to go if they want? The Telegraph however thinks that A Level are about determining ‘comparative academic ability’.
Turning to 2023 we find the Times on 18th August Editorialising on A Level results. They are apparently designed to sift out ‘those pupils best qualified to attend the most competitive universities’
Who knew that knowledge and learning is a competitive experience rather than something that benefits the individual and collective society equally
Thomas Gradgrind is still with us.
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