Singapore's educational edge.

Singapore has an educational edge, over its erstwhile imperial master. About twenty years ago, the UK dropped the rigorous O level examination, in favour of the more democratic GCSE. By "democratic" I mean that it is an exam meant for everyone, and not for the better students, as O level was. Singapore, however, wasn't fond of the democratic idea of the GCSE and continued to favour the elitist O level. The results are clear.

Twenty years later, Singapore continues to use the O level examination. (This is the one that Ainan took. He is the youngest person to have done so.) I think this is a promising situation for Singapore - and the other former colonies and members of the Commonwealth that use the O level - and a terrible situation for the UK.

The O level challenges the student on two levels: in terms of the level and detail of knowledge required - and in terms of the level of reasoning needed to use that knowledge to solve the problems set. GCSE is much weaker. Less knowledge and less reasoning are required - so much less, in fact, that those who pass the GCSE with good grades probably wouldn't pass the O level at all.

Now, this is a serious problem for the UK. Their students have been set a bar that is too low. This means that the more able students are not being stretched up to the age of 16. The bar was deliberately lowered because only the top 20 % of students were able to handle the O level at 16. This was was thought unfair, so the bar was lowered, with a new exam which more people would be able to cope with. In Singapore (and many other countries around the world), the decision was made to keep the bar high and challenge the students to reach it. Their thinking was not that things should be made easy for the students, but that the students should just get on with meeting the challenge. (However, Singapore did recognize the situation in its own way, not by scrapping O level, but by bringing in a second-tier exam, the N level, for the kind of students who would need GCSE in England. This meant the standard was preserved, at O level, and all were happy.)

I rather think that, in substituting an easier exam, for a harder one, the UK is undermining its own national competitiveness. By lowering the bar, they have lowered the potential of an entire nation.

The rest of the world did not follow the UK's lead. The old style UK exams of the O level (and A level) are still popular around the world. This means that the rest of the world is leading the UK, in educational standards, simply by keeping the standards that the UK once had. It seems somewhat ironic that the rest of the world could overtake the UK simply by aping what the UK once was - but the UK no longer remains.

My sons will take the O level. I don't want them to be underchallenged and I see no point in taking an exam that lowers the bar. There is no achievement in achieving less than they could achieve.

In the UK, however, when Ainan is mentioned, they say that he passed his "GCSE". This is wrong. He took O level - a much harder exam. However, I understand why the newspapers do that. It saves them from having to explain to their readers that the rest of the world did not dumb down by adopting the GCSE when the UK did - and that much of the rest of the world still takes O levels. It would, of course, be rather embarrassing, to have to explain that.

I do not want to see the nation of my childhood go into long-term decline. Yet, I cannot help but feel that by lowering its own internal standard, by dropping the "elitist" O level, in favour of the "democratic" GCSE, it is ushering in age of just such a decline. I rather hope that something is done to reverse it before it is too late.

Isn't it funny that the rest of the world remembers the standards of UK's bygone age...while the UK itself has forgotten them? In that memory, will the rest of the world find success, while the UK finds a long slow decline.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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