Thousands of students taking English are being asked to study tram timetables as part of dumbed down A-level exams, an adviser to Prince Charles warns today.
Bernice McCabe, who is also a leading headmistress, said the drive to make lessons 'relevant' and 'fun' is leaving a generation of children intellectually impoverished.
She warned that standards have degenerated so far that the current A-level English syllabus offered by the country's biggest exam board requires the study of a Manchester Metrolink tram timetable. Examiners propose in future to include a bus pass.
In a keynote speech today to the Prince's Teaching Institute, Mrs McCabe will warn that traditional subjects and bodies of knowledge are being sidelined in favour of 'woolly' teaching theories promoted by Government curriculum advisers.
Pupils are being robbed of their cultural heritage, and denied opportunities to study great literature and history, because schools are increasingly expected to teach vague 'skills' and make lessons 'accessible'.
In fact, pupils enjoy being challenged and often relish problem-solving, she will say.
Mrs McCabe, who is head of North London Collegiate School, a girls' private school which regularly tops exam league tables, will single out an English language and literature AS-level syllabus drawn up by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance exam board.
It is accompanied by an anthology of study materials which includes a Manchester Metrolink tram guide, a British passport and a holiday postcard.
Pupils are asked to draw on the anthology to answer questions on 'travel, transport and locomotion' in an A-level unit worth up to a quarter of the marks.
(Mail Online)
jollyweez
I think this exam is a lot better than the ones that started with 'two trains are going to meet in the middle. One left at 1:30 and the other at 1:45. What time will they meet if they are going 30 miles an hour?"
Another was the farmer that was going to market with 5 pigs, 2 cabbages and a goat. He sold so many pigs, traded the cabbages for carrots and traded the goat for a calf. How many pigs did he come back with and how many carrots? etc. Help! I would be reduced to tears and just stare at the ridiculous questions.