Classical Education and Qualifications: GCSEs and A-Levels

There are good reasons that incline many classically educating parents and schools to be cautious about standardised exams. The phenomenon of utilitarian ‘teaching to the test’ can kill the spirit of learning for the sake of truth, goodness and beauty. Point-scoring tricks may occlude true engagement with the material. Healthy enthusiasm for demonstrating what one has learned, and a dose of salutary competition, may give way to savage jockeying for prestige. The prescribed content of the exams may take a subtle but significant ideological pitch. Preparation for some exams requires a degree of specialisation which many find excessive and premature.

Yet there are also good reasons to take testing seriously. Sound teaching instils knowledge progressively, such that exams within a course are first of all checkpoints to ensure that pupils are staying on track—that is, that they are carrying with them what they will need to know into the next year of school, off to university, or out into the wide world. Meantime, large-scale exam boards in the UK have, for all their faults, succeeded in maintaining relatively high standards of content mastery. A good exam also gives pupils the chance to perform in the best sense: to stretch themselves and go beyond what they think they might be able to do, to tackle some problem in a new way, and even to learn something in the process. When tests are seen in that way, the ‘unschooling’ polemic against testing as such is as misguided as it would be to tell musicians not to hold concerts or athletes not to play matches or run races. And yes, finally, with a concession to mundane realities, it should be acknowledged that employers who are increasingly inundated with AI-generated job applications will often apply the easy first filter of checking for secondary school qualifications.

Classical schools and home-educating families around Britain have options available to them. We have heard from multiple professors at, for instance, the University of Oxford that the admissions committees on which they sit are much less interested in the precise qualifications their applicants hold than they are in the demonstration of knowledge and the dispositional aptitude for learning more. But, of course, some kind of evaluation is inevitable. GCSEs and A-Levels are the currently typical means by which ability and aptitude are shown. GCSEs in particular are, in some form, going to be a ‘must’ for the foreseeable future. But as for A-Level alternatives, these professors have said that non-British qualifications, including the IB or the American AP and SAT, do not disadvantage an applicant—including a British applicant raised in Britain.

Let’s take some qualification paths in turn. To be clear, in light of the many options in the UK, Memoria Press does not endorse any one particular route. Much will depend on the pupil’s aptitudes, character, interests and ambitions, especially from age 16. We do, however, want to help by sharing some of what we have heard and observed in our work in Britain.

First of all, we strongly recommend that home-educating parents and new schools in the UK prepare their children and pupils to sit at least two GCSEs—namely, the Maths and the English language paper—by the end of Year 11, i.e. when they are about 16 years old. Note that there is no direct legal requirement here. But those two are a requirement for many apprenticeships as well as for many university degrees. Additionally, many universities—including those with less individualised evaluation procedures than Oxbridge—will be reluctant to consider applications from pupils with significantly fewer than the eight exams comprising the so-called ‘EBacc’. Top-tier applicants will often have ten or eleven such exams. A common set of the eight ‘EBacc’ subjects, as proposed by the Department for Education (see details on optional variations here), looks as follows:

• English language
• English literature
• Maths
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physics
• History (or Geography)
• A foreign language (ancient or modern)

This is, of course, a serious commitment. It’s worth emphasising again that no one is required to sit all of these. There may even be compelling reasons, in the context of a rich and broad curriculum, not to pursue all of them. But parents and alternative schools should at least consider including those exams which are relatively close to material covered in such a curriculum. Thus, for instance, beyond the three which we recommend that every pupil sit (Maths and the two English papers), Latin is a sensible GCSE for anyone on a classical curriculum.

What about life and learning after GCSEs? Here there are three major sets of possibilities.

One often overlooked path is the route of apprenticeships and skilled trades. Academic achievement and professions such as medicine that require university studies are wonderful, but today we suffer from an unhealthy bias that inflates their importance and scoffs at the dignity of other skills and trades. This is a tragedy and an injustice. A solid primary and early secondary education of the sort that classical education imparts ideally leaves 16-year-olds with the literary and mathematical tools, and the sound characters, that they need to participate in their cultures, to read, write, and speak with enjoyment and conviction, and serve as pillars of their future families and communities—no matter how they earn their bread. Remember, in this connection, that Shakespeare may have left school as early as at the age of 14 years old, and that he never went to university. I’m glad he didn’t. But even if he hadn’t gone off to London to become our language’s greatest playwright, and had instead followed his father into the profession of glovemaking, I suspect he would have been not only the life of any party in Stratford, and a wise neighbour to count on when counsel was needed, but also a very fine glovemaker. That sense of the nobility of labour is important to recover. There is also no shame in admitting that the overlooked trades are, in many Western democracies, much better compensated and more stable sources of work than many of those that ostensibly require university degrees.

For those who do wish to pursue the professions that take them through university, there are probably two broad routes open. One is the well-trodden path of A-Levels. These often have the merit of a degree of depth, specialisation and academic achievement that is less common in continental or American high schools. In the view of many school administrators and teachers, the depth of the A-Level exam makes it difficult to prepare for more than three of these (though, anecdotally, ambitious students are sometimes found who prepare for as many as six). In general this means that from 16 to 18 years old, a pupil will focus on three subjects. Sometimes these are eclectic and represent a wide range of interests—say, Latin, Physics, and English. But there is an observed tendency to concentrate. It is not uncommon to find, say, Jack spending those years on a narrow set of papers such as Maths, Further Maths, and Physics; or Jill on Latin, Greek, and Ancient History. The advantages here are clear: adjacent subjects reinforce each other, and the bundle can make for a strong application to subject-specific undergraduate programmes. But the disadvantages are clear, too. By the time Jack finishes his Physics bachelor’s degree, it will have been six years since he last studied great literature at any depth, back at age 15 or 16. Jill will never have learned calculus. Both might find that they are missing something.

A second academically oriented option is the route that proceeds through non-British credentials, including American high school diplomas earned remotely, or at least through a selection of exams such as the AP (Advanced Placement) tests. For instance, there are remote US-accredited high school diplomas such as that offered by Memoria Academy. It is possible to enroll in both remote classes and in one-on-one courses there, including some AP papers. There are also strong UK-based tutors with plenty of experience in these US qualifications, including our friends at Dumb Ox Learning. The APs share with the A-Levels a measure of specialisation and a tendency to occupy a large portion of the last two years of secondary school. Nonetheless, they are not as all-encompassing as the A-Levels, and it is not uncommon for pupils to sit five or six such exams while also taking other courses. This may allow for a more well-rounded end to high school without serious subject-specific setbacks in the first year at university—though some extra work is to be expected.

Pupils in each of the post-16 academic options (A-Levels or APs or similar), and even those sitting earlier qualifications (GCSEs), will often benefit from instruction that only a specialist teacher can provide. Many parents are able to cover some of the subjects their child will want to study. But very few will be able to cover absolutely all fields adequately. (I would love to teach Latin, for instance, but I would be a disaster teaching Physics, whereas my brother is the exact opposite!) At one extreme, parents may send their children to a sixth-form college for A-Levels. But this is not the only possibility. The major exam boards regular publish their prescriptions (i.e. the material covered on their tests) and often publish exam-specific preparation textbooks. When a pupil is coming from a non-mainstream curriculum and simultaneously preparing for the qualifications, the assistance of an experienced tutor can be a tremendous help. Collaborating with families in your area to form a cooperative that brings in such a teacher once a week, enrolling your child in a remote class, or even hiring individual tutors—these can make all the difference when straddling the divide between a well-rounded, time-tested curriculum and the exams a pupil may have to sit in order to pursue work or further formation.

There are good examples of young Britons who have gone on to jobs and university studies in both the UK and the US by following each of these routes and combinations thereof. There are also, very naturally, serious benefits and serious costs to each. Parents and schools looking for alternatives to the contemporary mainstream fare must of course be courageous from the start. Each new year of instruction presents challenges along with its opportunities. But take heart. Secondary school and preparation for university need not be a time to flinch. For pupils raised on rigorous and rounded classical curricula, it would be a pity and a loss to switch suddenly from formation in truth, beauty and goodness to a mode of learning concerned strictly with exam results or qualifications. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way. You have options for carrying that noble classical secondary formation to its proper culmination before your son, daughter or pupil goes out into the world.