Fee-paying pupils 'are spoon fed'

Independent schools are being driven to "spoon feed" their pupils to meet the ever-growing demands of public examinations, their inspectorate warns in its first report.

The Independent Schools Inspectorate, which inspects most top fee-paying schools once every six years, found that the "vast majority" delivered good standards and a "good all-round education" to parents who pay £8,000 or more a year in fees.

But Tony Hubbard, the ISI's director, said the pressure of exams was coming to dominate independent schools just as much as those in the state sector.

He warned that it jeopardises the "inventive, creative, independent-minded, even awkward" spirit which British independent schools have always inculcated in their pupils.

Children who take A-levels can now have sat up to 105 exams during their school career, according to research for the Professional Association of Teachers. The figure was 75 two years ago.

Today's report is based on inspections of nearly 200 schools over the past two years.

The inspectorate said exam pressures were growing both in prep schools and in senior schools - which led complaints last year about the impact of new AS-level exams intended to broaden studies in the lower sixth form.

The result, found as a common theme running through inspections, was that lessons tended to be "over-directed" and pupils had too little chance or incentive to think for themselves.

"The problem highlighted in these reports is that the intensive preparation of pupils for these tests and exams often amounts to spoon feeding," the report said. "The combination of public exams with league tables presents teachers and schools with a real dilemma.

"Spoon feeding works because examination and its marking, carefully moderated and published to be fair and predictable, can be reduced to a formula.

"However, the economic, political and social world for which pupils are being prepared is characterised not by its predictability but by uncertainty, unpredictability and the need to make rational decisions based on incomplete information or in the face of conflicting attitudes and opinions."

The warning comes as independent schools prepare to take action before government proposals on the future of secondary school exams are set in motion.

A report to be considered by the Headmasters' Council in April suggests radically cutting the number of GCSEs taken by pupils in independent schools.