It's exam results time, from SATS and Scottish results now to the eventual GCSE and A-Level announcements that will be on their way soon. Currently everyone is very much caught up in the life of Gordon Brown or crime, but within the month you can guarantee that this generation of children will be opening their results (or receiving the exam results in a text message) while simultaneously either being called stupid or...well, stupid.

If they don't achieve the high standards set socially based on last years results then there will be an outcry, indeed already the whole SATS system is being questioned. However if, as usual, students manage to outdo the previous years crop it won't be through their hard work but through the curriculum getting easier. In either case, I feel that we will once again miss the point.

The point for me is that the education system is currently measuring the output of successful recall. Given the changes in the education system I have no doubt, nor would I be surprised, that this year's students will be the best ever for regurgitating the information they've been fed. Will they retain it? Is it relevant? Has their education allowed them to expand their learning? These are the real questions. In all honesty I couldn't care less if an exam is easy as long as the person doing it has the abilities to develop independently in the future, likewise I don't really care if they made exams impossible for the same reasons. Examinations, leading to these albeit highly exciting exam result days, have lost their way from the reason they ought to exist.

I've had a bit of a discussion/question session with samedifference on her blog about multiple choice, for example. On the whole we still, for some reason, use examination practices like these (though I agree there may be a need for individual cases to use multiple choice) despite them not actually testing someone's ability to learn and comprehend. The worst thing about this is that without comprehension there is little chance of retention of information unless that person is repeatedly recalling that information soon after the exam is done.

Then, worse still, there is the issue of relevancy. We've already been told several times about government eco-messages being foisted upon the curriculum, meaning questions distinctly lacking in relevancy to Physics are somehow making it on to the paper. What is a child learning about physics if their learning time is taken up towing the current popular rhetoric of the government? It undermines the whole reason for education and the choices that young people make as to the avenue of their learning.

This ultimately all leads to this abhorrent situation of a narrow curriculum. Looking at the subjects on the Chemistry A-Level list this year I'm disappointed in just how little the scope for Chemistry has become. Perhaps I should be saying it's great that more time is being given to a smaller amount of subject matter, but in reality I fear that there is no encouragement here to actually reach higher in the field, that ultimately kids could end up being bored by an aspect of a much bigger subject and losing interest forever.

So, for those collecting their results this month...congratulations on getting the results you get, and hopefully you've had or will have teachers along the way in your education that have inspired you to think about the subjects you enjoy in greater detail than the curriculum regime as it stands has allowed. Don't listen to those that may belittle your achievements, but do keep striving to understand more. As for the teachers out there, please keep striving to push the boundaries where you can, my educational experience was greatly coloured by those few teachers that were willing to go the extra, and ultimately unnecessary (in curriculum terms), mile in exciting us with interesting and inspirational areas of learning.