Make exams tougher, says UK schools chief inspector

Teaching unions are angered that many pupils now face the prospect of resitting exams rather than having their papers automatically regraded.Sir Michael Wilshaw, who is head of the regulator Ofsted, said it was important that standards were raised so that our students could compete in a global market place.He made the comments in the wake of the row over a toughening of grade standards this summer which teachers say is unfair on the pupils who took the exams this year.Sir Michael said he agreed with the exam regulator Ofquals hanging tough on the issue of regrades and only offering resits.But he said the row was a really good opportunity to examine whether examinations were rigorous enough.Speaking on the Andrew Marr show on BBC One, he said it was time to look at our examination system and ask whether it is rigorous enough, whether its credible enough, whether in fact whats happened over the last few years in terms of resits, early entries and the modular approach to to examination is actually raising standards.He said that the issue was not really summer against January and what happened last year as opposed to this.It is whether our examination system stands up with the best in the world and one of the worries I have and I know other people have, is that our standards are falling in relation to other countries in the rest of the world, he said.Asked whether he would like to see GCSEs thoroughly overhauled, he replied absolutely.We should be looking around the world. Let us just take reading, English is the world language, it is the business language, he said.We know that we have fallen from 7th in reading to 25th in the world. In maths from 7th to 28th. Now that is not good enough. Weve got to look at what is happening in the rest of the world.Our youngsters, when they leave school, will be going into a global marketplace, they have to compete not just against competitors here but the rest of the world.He said that Ofqual were right in hanging tough over the grade row although he said it was a matter for the government and not him to decide on whether it was fair on the current students.Teaching unions are angered that many pupils now face the prospect of resitting exams rather than having their papers automatically regraded.They claim those who sat the exam in June were at a disadvantage, compared with those who had sat English GCSE earlier in the year, because the summers exams were marked over-harshly after Ofqual told exam boards to keep an eye on grade inflation.Sir Michael also told the show that his department planned to change the grading schools and it was not window dressing.From now on, the satisfactory rating used by inspectors will be scrapped, and replaced with requires improvement, he said.Schools judged to require improvement at two consecutive inspections and who are still not providing a good education at the third, are likely be placed in special measures.The move has caused upset among headteachers unions as it is likely to leave more schools in special measures.Those schools considered satisfactory at the end of August this year will be given a clean slate, and re-inspected by the end of the 2013/14 academic year.But those already rated inadequate and given a notice to improve will be considered to have serious weaknesses.The changes will also mean that in future, in order to be rated as outstanding a school must have outstanding teaching.Sir Michael said: Two-thirds of our schools are good or better. We have got a third of schools, 6,000 schools that are not good, that are satisfactory and below.We have to make sure that schools know they have got to get to good soon as possible. We have given them a prescribed period of time, up to four years, in which to get to good.Meanwhile the Prime Minister David Cameron has dismissed criticism of the fall in GCSE claiming it was part of a plan to reverse dumbing down and pretending standards are rising each year.He was able to return to the UK, where he has held a professorship of communications at Brunel and was head of the School of Journalism at Cardiff University, under a work permit and has spent the majority of his time in recent years in this country.But as he moves into semi-retirement, he has now been told that he can no longer permanently remain here and can only visit for brief periods as a tourist. The Home Office has also told him that he cannot apply for naturalisation.“It is getting to crisis point now,” he said. “When I came back from a trip to Vienna, two or three months ago, I got a really hard time at Heathrow. I am worried that if I leave again, I might not be let back in.”There is no question of Prof Tulloch being a burden on the country. He owns a flat in Penarth, near Cardiff, and has tens of thousands of pounds in savings here. He has always been treated as British for taxation purposes, if not for immigration purposes.His brother, who does have full British citizenship, is unwell and needs looking after. As even the immigration officer at Heathrow told him, he is exactly the kind of person the country should be welcoming.But, to him, it is the insult to the generations of his forebears who served Britain that is most troubling. At his home, he shows us the pictures of his father, a major in the Gurkha Rifles who was fighting the Japanese in Burma at the time of his birth.His grandfather was one of the Empire’s first foresters, his great-grandfather served in the Indian Civil Service, too. “I look back now, on the verge of being thrown out of residence in the UK, at something like 120 years of my family’s distinguished service to Britain in India,” Prof Tulloch said.“This isn’t simply an insult to me, but to generations of my family, and beyond them to the thousands and thousands of people in India and other colonies who believed that they could call Britain home.”In July, this newspaper exposed the extraordinary story of Lance Corporal Bale Baleiwai, the soldier British enough to risk his life for this country in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, but now facing deportation for a technicality that no civilian would be caught by.Indeed, as British immigration law stands, Prof Tulloch would almost certainly have more chance of staying here if he had been a perpetrator, rather than a victim, of terrorism.