Narcissistic children and self-esteem

There can be no doubt that self-esteem is an important part of people’s lives. It is also true that we all like to be encouraged and affirmed in what we do and who we are – it makes us feel good about ourselves.

Historically, British schools have been pretty poor at developing pupil’s self-esteem; in fact I would argue that they have often done serious damage to pupils in this regard. Some years ago I came across a youngman in his 20s who when he was 16 and about to go into his GCSE maths exam had been told by his maths teacher, that it would be a waste of his time and that of the exam marker if he actually bothered to sit the exam. Five or six years later when I met this young man he still regarded himself as ‘stupid’ – not merely in maths but generally. I was reminded of this young man, this week when I read of a paper presented at the Association of School and College Leaders conference in Birmingham by Dr Carol Craig suggesting that our schools are in danger of producing narcissistic children who are likely to develop an “all about me mentality”. The ‘praise culture’ was something that also arose in a conversation I had with a former colleague a few weeks ago. We had worked together for a number of years in special educational needs within a mainstream school. She told me of a new member of staff who was inclined, in her opinion, to praise children for ‘almost anything’ – if a child sat quietly for five minute, he was praised before the rest of the class; if he wrote two or three lines in English, he was similarly praised. In the opinion of my former colleague this devalued praise – the child was simply being praised for what he should have been doing in the first place!

Teachers are, however, in a very powerful position within their classrooms. Ultimately, it is teachers who decide what is truth and what is not,what is correct and what is wrong. I have often chided teaching friends of mine by saying that as teachers we are the only individuals who ask people questions to which we already know the answer! That position of power is so easily abused when a child is scorned or even mocked for not knowing the answer that the teacher is looking for. In my experience, far from creating a generation of narcissistic egoists, my feeling is that teachers do not give children sufficient real praise. Those of us who are home educating need to guard against the same failing – our children need to be encouraged not only when they do well, but also when they have tried their best – and as parents we are best placed totell the difference.

By the way, if you are interested in what happened to the young man with the appalling maths teacher, heeventually went to university and secured a very respectable 2:1degree, but only after good people convinced him that his schoolexperience was inaccurate and that he was actually quite able!

Why we offer IGCSE qualifications

Manchaster Grammar School, one of the most prestigious independent schools in the North West of England, announced last week that it was replacing all of its GCSE exams with IGCSEs. Although this might appear as a minor decision akin to a school changing its exam board in history or maths, the reality is that there is an increasingly political dimension to the quarrel that is taking place in England over supporters of GCSEs and IGCSEs. Government funded schools are forbidden from offering students IGCSEs because the Department for Children, Schools and Families does not accept that IGCSEs assess the National Curriculum, which is what must be taught in English and Welsh schools. Independent schools can offer IGCSEs, because they do not receive government money.

In recent years there has been a growing lobby that has argued that GCSEs have been dumbed down, made less of a challenge; this lobby further suggest that IGCSEs have maintained their intellectual rigour and are therefore more worthy exams for 16 year olds – a good grade at IGCSE says more about a particular student than does the same grade at GCSE, so the argument goes.

These arguments have not been helped by the high master of St Paul’s School in London who recently described GCSEs as “simply pap, … baby food, … examination rusks…” In response, those who support GCSEs have suggested that the shift to IGCSEs is being done for marketing reasons or for elitist feelings of superiority. IGCSEs give certain independent schools boasting rights over their state school cousins!

This whole discussion is especially topical, it seems to me, coming as it does a week after I announced to NorthStarUK would effectively be scrapping GCSEs in September. Why do we, in NorthStarUK, offer IGCSEs and not GCSEs? Well the simple answer, as I pointed out last week, is that GCSEs have been closed off to us by new government regulations. However, I would argue that IGCSEs are better qualifications than GCSEs, in any case! In my opinion, there are a number of reasons for this, none of which are to do with elitism or because of a supposed dumbing down in GCSEs -

• IGCSE specifications, more often than not, have a wider range of topics to study than GCSE. The National Curriculum has had a stifling effect on school curricula.
• IGCSEs have an international dimension to their courses that is normally absent in GCSEs. In my opinion, this is especially important for young people who are going to be adults over the next 50 years.
• IGCSEs are based around terminal exams, which is education speak for saying that students are assessed by one or more exams at the end of the course. The new GCSEs will be assessed by a series of modular tests where students will be permitted to forget the material after the module has ended.
• IGCSEs are not affected or shaped by politicians – our current national curriculum has seen more changes over the last ten years than I care to remember, and all have been affected as a result of political pressure.