The secondary education system in England and Wales is deficient. Individual teachers aren’t the problem. The fault lies with schools, exam boards and, ultimately, the government, for imposing a defective apparatus, and it is disappointing that, over the course of this election, none of the main parties have given careful consideration to secondary school curricula in their manifestos.

The present system limits some academically gifted students, while failing those whose skills and interests lie in vocational subjects. It places excessive emphasis on exams, and it encourages artificial and damaging competition between schools and exam boards.

Simple changes to national curricula and teaching practice, and a reduction in government-enforced prescriptivism, could change the tide of the present, substandard system. Michael Gove’s ill-conceived Anglicisation of the English and History programmes not only presents children with a narrow-minded world view, but, more damagingly, it has the potential to stop teachers teaching what they are passionate about, and thereby kindling the same passion in their students.

My English teacher loved twenty-first century American literature. He taught it with great insight, and his passion was contagious. To enforce a list of prescribed English authors – esteemed though they may be – is to fundamentally misunderstand the ideal relationship between teacher and student, which relies on the exchange of enthusiasm, not just knowledge. If anything, the curricula of these subjects should be broadened, not narrowed.

But perhaps the most negative outcome of the current educational system is the competition it inspires, both between schools and between exam boards. In order to gather more takers, exam boards seem to be lowering the difficulty level of their exams on the sly. I know of schools – or departments of schools – that choose exam boards specifically on the grounds that, in a particular subject, one board is perceived to be easier than another.

In a similarly competitive vein, many schools force students to sit A Levels in General Studies and Critical Thinking – subjects ignored in most university admissions processes – in order to increase their position in national rankings.

Critical Thinking is, in the words of exam board OCR, “a skills-based rather than content-based A Level” which “develops the ability to interpret, analyse and evaluate ideas and arguments”. In other words, it teaches the same skills as every single humanity, minus the content. It is easy to see why universities eliminate these subjects from their selection processes.

Lastly, while some might uphold BTECs (Business and Technology Education Council qualifications) as a viable, vocation-based alternative to GCSEs and A Levels, these separate qualifications are rarely deemed equivalent. In most schools, BTECs are considered to be markedly less valuable than GCSEs or A Levels, and they tend to be offered to students who are struggling academically, rather than to students who show a particular aptitude for more vocational subjects.

Such a disparity between the academic and the vocational is largely absent from Germany, for example, whose three-tier secondary school system provides for students of a range of interests and skills. The Hauptschule is intended to prepare students for entry into the world of work; the Gymnasium is intended to prepare students for university; and the Realschule sits somewhere in between. A fourth category, the Gesamtschule, combines elements of all three. The German system is not perfect, but it provides for a large group of students who go overlooked in England and Wales, and there is much we could learn from it.

In answer to the faults of our current education system, we must look again at what we intend secondary education to achieve. Is it to impose on students an ubiquitous, standardised curriculum and to earn them a large number of certificates, which may reflect hard work but too rarely reflect genuine enthusiasm? Or should education inspire students, find their strengths and make them passionate about the subjects they pursue, academic or otherwise?

If the second option sounds preferable to the first, then the current system needs to change. The answer lies in reduced prescriptivism from exam boards and the government, in greater freedom for teachers, and in understanding that the value of education provided by a school is not directly proportional to its place in the league tables.

@bret_cameron