What Is Diploma Disease

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The Diploma Disease twenty years on: an introduction Article  in  Assessment in Education Principles Policy and Practice · January 1997 DOI: 10.1080/0969594970040101

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Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice

ISSN: 0969-594X (Print) 1465-329X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/caie20

The Diploma Disease twenty years on: an introduction Angela W. Little To cite this article: Angela W. Little (1997) The Diploma Disease twenty years on: an introduction, Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 4:1, 5-22, DOI: 10.1080/0969594970040101 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969594970040101

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Assessment in Education, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1997

The Diploma Disease twenty years on: an introduction Angela W. L i t t l e

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Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL, UK Assessment in Education: principles, policy and practice is concerned with the several roles of assessment. These include: assessment for formative feedback on learning; assessment for summative evaluation; assessment for the monitoring of standards; assessment for certification; and assessment for selection. Such roles often act in competition with each other and assessment systems in different countries emphasise each to varying degrees (Broadfoot, 1996; Little & Wolf, 1996). This special issue of the journal—'The Diploma Disease: twenty years on'— focuses on the role of assessment in the selection of young persons for further education and employment. As such, it addresses the two worlds of assessment for selection—the world of education and the impact which assessment has on guiding the process of teaching and learning; and the world of work and the use made of assessment information for the allocation of occupations and life chances generally. It examines whether there is a contradiction between the role of assessment in allocating life chances and its role in promoting learning. The Diploma Disease is the title of a controversial book written 20 years ago by Ronald Dore. The original cover expressed the nub of the book's thesis: Schools used to be for educating people, for developing minds and characters. Today, as jobs depend more and more on certificates, degrees and diplomas, aims and motives are changing. Schooling has become more and more a ritualised process of qualification-earning. (Dore, 1976) The Thesis and Related Research Dore traced the underlying causes of the shift in the aims of and motives for learning through the educational histories of England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya. Central to his analysis is the concept of 'late development', a concept whose implications he explored originally in relation to processes of industrialisation (Dore, 1972). The essential idea is that there is a relationship between the point in world history at which a nation begins its drive towards modernisation, the extent to which educational certificates are employed for job allocation, the quality of the process of learning and teaching, and the potential of education to develop skills relevant to the needs of developing societies: the later development starts (i.e. the later the point in world history that a country starts on a modernisation drive) the more widely education 0969-594X/97/010005-17 ©1997 Journals Oxford Ltd

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certificates are used for occupational selection; the faster the rate of qualification inflation and the more examination-oriented schooling becomes at the expense of genuine education. (Dore, 1976, p. 72) The book became very well known in the field of development studies and international and comparative education. The Japanese translation had sold out before reaching the book shops in Tokyo. In many countries the term 'Diploma Disease' and 'Qualification Escalation' slipped into educational vocabularies. The book received less attention in the educational mainstreams of Europe and North America in the 1970s, in part perhaps because assessment was low on the policy agenda of countries in the North at that time, and in part because many in the North considered the educational problems of countries in the South to be separate and different. Global interdependence was not at the forefront of most analyses of education in the 1970s. Yet, 20 years on, the global educational assessment scene has changed. Test tyranny, exam league tables, an explosion of qualifications and the assessment business generally—all point to the possibility that some of the fundamental tenets of the thesis hold good in the industrialised countries of the North as well as the so-called 'developing countries' of the South. The eye-catching title no doubt helped the publisher sell his product in an American marketplace. But it also distracted readers from much of the fundamental argument. Readers' imaginations were caught by the descriptions of qualification levels escalating relentlessly as more and more educated persons competed for jobs. For many, this constituted the diploma disease, a misinterpretation which Dore explores subsequently in this issue. The manuscript's original title 'The Scourge of the Certificate' was probably more apt, less distracting and less misleading. It focused attention on the whip-like effects of the certificate on the process of teaching and learning. It reflected Dore's central concern with the low quality of education experienced by millions of children worldwide and his belief that the quality of education was determined in large measure by the widespread use of certificates for job allocation:

Everywhere, in Britain as in India, in Russia as in Venezuela, schooling is more often qualification-earning schooling than it was in 1920, or even in 1950. And more qualification-earning is merequalification-earning—ritualistic,te and imagination; in short, anti-educational. (Dore, 1976, p. ix) The role of assessment in simultaneously providing information to employers for occupational allocation and in providing a goal for learning, and its implications for both education and employment more generally, is presented schematically in a number of places [1]. Figure 1 presents the thesis schematically in its original form. The use of certificates for job allocation is placed in the centre of the argument; its implications for learning fan out to the right of the figure and its implications for social demand, costs and employment to the left. The term 'disease' has misled many and outraged more. Is the disease something which all educated and certificated individuals, especially those in developing

The Diploma Disease

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Intolerable pressures on educational budgets

Neglect of primary in favour of secondary/ tertiary education

Impossibility of developing 'relevant' terminal primary education

7

Examoriented learning

Intense demand for schooling/ certificates

Use of certificates for job allocation

Ritualisation of learning process

Educated unemployment

Qualification escalation

Deformation of minds/ characters of the 'successful'

FIG. 1. Schematic representation of the Diploma Disease argument [source: Dore (1976, p. 141)].

countries, have caught? The title does not dispel that idea and frequently creates an understandable emotional reaction which has prevented some from examining the depth of argument contained between the book's covers. Dore deals with this point in some detail in the first article in this issue, where he presents a summary of the diploma disease argument. A careful reading of the text suggests that the disease metaphor is especially useful when understood as a pathology of societies, rather than of individuals. If the pursuit of certificates is the socially legitimate way to improve one's life-chances in a society where resources are scarce and income and status differences great, then it is highly rational for individuals and their families to engage in their pursuit. Dore acknowledged this basic individual rationality. What he questioned, in an uncomfortably radical way, was the underlying social (not individual) rationality of this system of social and economic allocation. Is it rational for societies to allocate life chances based on educational certificates? It was this more fundamental question that framed the second part of the Diploma Disease book. In the 1970s, developments in the education systems of Cuba, Tanzania and China appeared to be pointing the way to alternative forms of social allocation. An analysis of these, combined with Dore's own 'modest proposals for reform', led him to suggest that the scourge of the educational certificate could be and indeed must be tempered if millions of the world's children are to have some chance of a meaningful education. Between the publication of the original book (Dore, 1976) and its second edition (Dore, 1997), there have been several collections, reviews and films designed to explore the validity of the original thesis and to extend or revise it. A systematic programme of research in developing countries, coordinated from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Sussex, on qualifications, selection systems and the quality of education, generated a wealth of research output in the late 1970s and 1980s [2,3]. The focus of much of this research was on how employers in developing

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8 A. W. Little countries used educational qualifications for recruitment, selection and promotion, on the one hand; and on the extent of examination and qualification orientation of educational institutions on the other. A second programme of research, launched in the mid-1980s, explored the relationship between motivations for learning and motivations for working. The thesis had assumed that orientations to learning developed within educational institutions transferred to the workplace. Assessment-oriented schooling was, Dore suggested, antithetical to innovation and creativity in the workplace. The examination of this relationship involved a series of studies by the Students' Learning Orientations Group (SLOG) and the Work Orientations and Behaviour (WOB) programme. The research pointed to a range of orientations to learning and working including but extending those described in the original thesis and to patterns of relationships between them which varied by country [4]. This research underlined the difficulty of establishing universal relationships between learning orientations and orientations to work. Specific cultural and historical considerations frequently over-rode more general cross-country relationships. And orientations to learning and working, which, in the original analysis, had focused on the motivations of individuals, needed to take on board relations between the self and 'significant others', especially family members, which in some societies outweigh considerations of the self alone. This programme of work led to a further extension in which the effect of different types of assessment on learning orientations was explored [5].

The Novelty of the Thesis The novelty of the original thesis lay in its creative combination of ideas about assessment and education on the one hand, and about employment allocation and creation on the other. Discrete elements of the thesis (e.g. the backwash effects of examinations on curriculum and pedagogy and the tendency for qualifications for the same job to rise over time) were not new. The novelty lay in the synthesis of familiar but hitherto unrelated ideas. Dore drew together contemporary work on qualification inflation and labour markets, qualifications and earnings and labour market signals with an age-old educational concern about examination-backwash. He did so in the context of increasing social demand for and rising costs of education [6].

Critique of the Thesis The dual concerns of the thesis with pedagogy and labour market practice attracted critical review in a range of social science journals and encyclopaedia, including those in political science, sociology, development studies, area studies, education and labour economics [7]. The plaudits focused on the 'elegance', 'precision', 'wit', 'vigour' and 'brilliance' of the argument. The criticisms focused on the expressed disadvantages of certificates. Dore suggested that qualifications often fail to signal competence; that they constrain the possibilities for 'genuine education' and steer curricula and

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pedagogy in undesirable directions; that they create a meritocracy in which only a few can succeed; that they undermine the potential of education to produce skills useful for self-employment; that they undermine motivations for learning based on task or interest; that the educational process and certificates add little value to the stock of underlying talents of individuals. Critics suggested that many of the above disadvantages were exaggerated. Certificates in many areas of professional skill signal competence and protect the public against incompetent and dangerous practices (e.g. in medicine). Examination orientation can introduce students to life-enriching curriculum and pedagogy. Certificates provide the means for social mobility in a meritocracy. Alternatives to certificates will require widespread social legitimisation if they are to survive. The substitution of one job selection criterion for another does not solve the underlying problems of job creation or growth in an economy. Learning to do a job and learning to get a job, are not necessarily antithetical. One can learn transferable skills in the pursuit of certificates. Educational assessment designed for selection purposes can provide a useful framework for classroom pedagogy, especially among inexperienced and relatively uneducated teachers. Education is not simply a screening mechanism for employers; most schools in most countries do add some value to the knowledge and skills which students have on entry. Young educated people who rise up against government sometimes have very real grievances. They do not protest simply because of an aggregated mismatch between expectations and opportunities. This Journal Issue This journal issue presents an overview of the original thesis and an assessment of its validity over the past 20 years in England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya, the four countries chosen by Dore originally to represent points on the continuum of 'development'; and which generated the evidence for the general propositions about late development and the intensity of qualification orientation. This is followed by a review of developments since the 1970s in Cuba, Tanzania and China—three of the countries which had embarked on radical reforms of the education-qualification jobs nexus. The final case-studies examine the thesis in two countries not included in the original analysis—Egypt and Australia. The Argument: a summary In the first article, Ronald Dore presents the essence of the original argument. In it he presents the basic propositions about late development and reflects on some of the interpretations of the original presentation of the argument. Of enormous value is the brief autobiographical sketch in which he describes episodes in his educational and professional experience which influenced the original argument. England The English case is reviewed by Alison Wolf. Presented originally by Dore as a case

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10 A. W. Little of early development and relative freedom from the negative effects of certificatepursuit, England remains an early developer but had, by the 1990s, spawned a huge business in qualification-earning. Since the 1970s qualifications have proliferated and, Wolf argues, have become much more important in the determination of the life chances in the British economy of all young people. The expansion of the post-compulsory education at age 16-18 has been marked and that of higher education even more so. The growth in qualifications is found in the academic rather than vocational/professional areas. A major state-led planned reform of national vocational qualifications was embarked on in the 1980s, underpinned by a rationale linking economic growth to the types of skills which could be produced through vocational training. But the expected growth in the numbers of vocational qualifications awarded did not occur. Wolf explains that the programme focused on the development of awards and certificates per se and failed to convince employers and industrial training organisations that the awards were superior to pre-existing alternatives. Simultaneously, students and teachers preferred the less academically demanding nature of these pre-existing alternatives. The reform of higher education in Britain, by contrast, was unplanned. The reasons have to do with changes in the economy, the demands of citizens and the role of government. Today's economy is characterised by employment restructuring and frequent labour movement. Students are attracted more by general than specific qualifications. The pursuit of highly specific vocational diplomas at the age of 16 or 17 becomes highly irrational. The expansion of higher education has meant that employers and students know that many more students are entering higher education and that the queue for jobs has simply shifted up the education system. With an almost open-ended commitment to free higher education it is rational for students to pursue an academic rather than a vocational degree. But has this increasing pursuit of certificates led to a deterioration in the quality of education? Drawing on available evidence Wolf suggests that there is no simple negative effect of the growth of qualifications on the quality of education in England. The effects of examination orientation on the quality of education were probably much more severe in the early part of this century in those schools funded through 'payment by results'. Moreover, 'public' schools, which were not so bound by examinations, did not always offer high-quality education.

Japan

The review of Japan, the classic 'late developer', and the growth in its examination hell over the past 20 years is presented by Ikuo Amano. Amano suggests that Japan's post-war transition to a credentialling society was a result of a double democratisation— World War. Educational democratisation was encouraged by the post-war adoption under pressure of the American 'single track' system of education and the introduction of 9-year compulsory education. Prior to the Second World War, post-primary enrolments were inhibited and qualification inflation contained by a complex pattern

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of secondary and higher education, structured, Amano suggests, along European lines. Economic democratisation was achieved through a set of institutional changes, including the establishment of large-scale corporations, land reform, a simplification of the classification of labour market entrants into three categories, and a standardisation of salary levels across firms by qualification level. The near simultaneous democratisation of education and economy created a new demand for higher levels of education and established a clear bureaucratic linkage between qualifications, income and status. Because employers could pay the same salary to graduates of the same level of qualification, they also paid attention to which institution or school the graduate attended. The process of simplifying the levels of qualification of labour market entrants was accompanied by a widening of the value attached to similar qualifications from different educational institutions. Universities in Japan came to be ranked clearly in terms of the entry scores of students; so, too, secondary and primary level institutions. As Amano explains, the cornerstone of the system was the development of an objective achievement-scoring system—'the standard deviation score' system— which ranked individuals, high schools and universities. Japan became a 'which institution' rather than 'which level' credentialling society. Over time, however, as mass access to a university education increased and as income and status rewards in jobs became less visible, the function of schools in generating the heat of competition is changing in some places to one of 'cooling out'. Some segments of the student population are turning against the traditional achievement meritocratic values of school and are resorting increasingly in the 1990s to delinquency, bullying, a lowering of academic achievement, and long term absence, pathological symptoms, Amano suggests, of 'advanced country diseases'. Sri Lanka The third country on the development continuum addressed by Dore in the 1970s was the 'later developing' Sri Lanka. Angela Little examines the validity of the original analysis of the Sri Lankan case, the course of the so-called disease over the past 20 years and economic and political developments which have altered the nature and implications of the disease. Little confirms much of the original diagnosis in Sri Lanka. A growth of state involvement in a free education system and the establishment of links between qualifications and government jobs contributed to a social definition of the purpose of education in terms of social mobility through qualifications and the acquisition of a government job. The growth of education outstripped the growth in jobs in an economy where private sector growth was slow. The bureaucratic use by state employers of educational qualifications for recruitment and selection increased. During the/late 1970s and 1980s, a number of economic and political changes occurred which Dore could not have foreseen when he wrote his original book. By 1977, a new government, committed to economic liberalisation, was in place and the use of political criteria in job allocation was institutionalised. Divisions be-

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12 A.W. Little tween the two major social groups—Sinhalese and Tamil—increased as they competed for access to economic and political resources. Economic and educational growth was rapid, and the gap between overall jobs available and job seekers diminished in comparison with the period when Dore was writing. This, combined with the increased use of political criteria in resource allocation, might, following Dore's model, lead one to predict that the value attached to educational qualifications would decline. Evidence suggests the contrary. Parental support for examination-oriented learning is evidenced by the proportion of private income spent on private tuition. Students participate in two school systems simultaneously—the fee-free state schools by day and the fee-paying private tutories in the evening and night. Over the past 20 years Sri Lankan educationalists have regularly highlighted the negative curriculum and pedagogic consequences of assessments for selection. But their reform attempts have been tempered by a more general political crisis through the 1980s and 1990 which, paradoxically, has served to enhance, rather than diminish, the legitimacy of educational qualifications. In his initial article in this issue (p. 23) Dore explains how the coincidence of his participation in the International Labour Organisation's 1971 'employment mission' to Sri Lanka with the insurrection of Sinhala youth was a formative experience in the construction of the diploma disease argument. A similar insurrection recurred 17 years later, just one of several manifestations of a deep political crisis which has affected the country since the late 1970s. The TamilSinhala ethnic crisis, the politicisation of daily life and the resurgence of militancy among Sinhala youth—all have played their part in enhancing the value attached to educational credentials as the most 'objective', 'fair' and legitimate means of allocating life chances in a society riven by social and economic division.

Kenya The case of the 'much later developer'—Kenya—is explored in two rather different ways by Toshio Toyoda and Tony Somerset. Toyoda's introductory note describes the massive expansion of the education system over the past 20 years. Primary school enrolments grew from 2.8 million in 1975 to 5.5 million in 1992; and secondary enrolments from 227,000 in 1975 to 629,000 in 1992. The respective growth in enrolment ratios was 88% in 1975 to 92% in 1992 for primary; and 13% in 1975 to 27% in 1992 for secondary. The relatively modest rise in enrolment ratios and the huge increase in enrolments at each level is explained by the fact that Kenya continues to have an extremely high population growth rate. During this period the main structural change in the education system was the extension of the 'open access span' of education from 7 to 8 years of primary education. When Dore was writing about Kenya the first major selection examination sat by primary school students occurred at the end of Year 7. From 1985 it occurred at the end of Year 8. The article by Tony Somerset describes the qualitative changes in the Year 7 Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) examination in the 1970s. These changes were subsequently transferred to the Year 8 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education

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(KCPE) examination in 1985 and remain current. Although the article draws extensively on the Kenyan experience, much of Somerset's 'modest counterproposal' has more general relevance to assessment principles, policy and practice. Dore's original analysis suggested that achievement tests, of the kind sat by students in educational selection examinations, are irredeemable; and their negative backwash on the curriculum and pedagogy of schools, inevitable. In his 'modest proposals for reform' Dore (1976, ch. 13) proposed that achievement tests for occupational selection be replaced by 'aptitude tests' and suggested that educational selection tests focus on those subjects which are harder to cram for—maths and language. Somerset suggests the distinction between achievement and aptitude tests is not especially helpful. Much more important, he argues, to distinguish low-quality tests and examinations (which diminish and distort the work of the teacher so that she becomes little more than a dispenser of factual information and supervisor of cram sessions) and high quality tests and examinations (which avoid these negative backwash effects and may even help to promote better pedagogy). He describes how the reform of the CPE initially employed the criteria of relevance, equity and efficiency in the determination of items to be included in the examination. As the CPE reform progressed, ambiguities arose in the interpretation of the criteria, especially in relation to 'relevance'. Should examinations foster the same set of competencies in all children, or should there be a differentiation based on would leave the school system? The unsatisfactory resolution of this duality convinced Somerset that the relevance criterion needed to be replaced by what he terms 'active ideas'. Examination questions which assess active rather than passive ideas should in turn meet five criteria. The first two, relating mainly to knowledge-based questions, are understanding and insight, and experience-based knowledge. The remaining three, which relate mainly to skills-based questions, are: the assimilation of new knowledge; application of knowledge; and generative competencies. Somerset's article goes on to describe some of the changes in pedagogy which flowed from the examination reform in Kenya. His conclusion, that high-quality examinations can support improved pedagogy, challenges the assumed inevitability of the linkage between achievement-based examinations, passive pedagogy and ritualised learning.

The Experience of Reform After setting out the accounts of the historical development of educational growth in England, Japan, Sri Lanka and Kenya Dore advanced three general propositions about the effects of late development on the rate of educational expansion, the rate of qualification escalation and the quality of education. This was followed by a review of attempts at reform which delinked educational and occupational selection from educational certificates. Three examples were drawn from Cuba, Tanzania and China.

14 A.W. Little

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Cuba Susan Eckstein reviews educational development in Cuba between the mid-1970s and 1990s in this issue. Up until the 1970s Castro's accomplishments in education were impressive. Educational opportunity expanded rapidly, especially in rural areas. Schools stressed the norms of egalitarianism and collectivism. Work was combined with study to install the work ethic of the new socialist man. Technical studies were stressed and graduates were guaranteed jobs. Throughout the last 20 years education continued to be upgraded but, as Eckstein points out, the educational revolution generated its own contradictions. The costs of education to the government became too great and the government could no longer provide jobs commensurate with expectations. Government reined in opportunity, especially at the university level. Not surprisingly, this was resisted. To a large degree the legitimacy of the socialist Cuban state was based on the provision of social benefits, including free schooling for all. Over time, Fidel Castro's initial education strategy— targeting lower level mass education—created an enormous social demand for secondary and higher level education. Since the state was the job gatekeeper and education credentials provided access to jobs, as the volume of jobs failed to keep pace with the numbers seeking them, the credentials required for jobs gradually escalated. The demise of the Soviet Union and the aid and trade arrangements with Cuba restricted economic opportunities and growth. A deschooling strategy involved cut-backs in university admissions and a retracking of secondary school students onto vocational rather than academic courses. As Eckstein's article explains, this attempt to deschool was not popular. Far from offering a cure to the Diploma Disease, socialism came to be part of the problem.

Tanzania Like Cuba, Tanzania followed socialist strategies for development in the 1970s and 1980s. Brian Cooksey & Sybille Riedmiller explore the implementation of the policy of education for self reliance (ESR) promoted by Julius Nyerere during the 1970s. Cooksey & Riedmiller position Tanzania at the far extreme of the development spectrum—a 'very late developer'—and explore the outcomes in the 1990s of the radical educational reforms of the 1970s. The ESR policy restricted access to secondary schooling and higher education, guaranteed government employment for the lucky few who continued their schooling beyond primary, and promoted a reorientation of the primary curriculum and assessment system. Dore had predicted that ESR would meet with popular resistance in the long term for reasons which had to do with the links between ambitions, jobs, certificates and motives and modes of learning. Cooksey & Riedmiller confirm the demise of ESR but advance different reasons. These include the failure of Tanzanian socialism to make rural employment attractive, the exploitation of child labour by poorly paid teachers and school managers in the name of 'relevant rural education', the collapse of the formal employment economy, and the 'deschooling' strategy which parents have adopted voluntarily.

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The Diploma Disease 15 In contrast to Cuba, where educational opportunity at the post-primary level mushroomed and where state efforts to curb higher education opportunities were resisted by students and their parents, Tanzanian parents have increasingly seen little point in sending their children to primary schools which offer too few opportunities for further advancement, and are voting with their children's feet. Cooksey & Riedmiller's review of developments in the quality of assessment items in the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) over the period 1979-1994 suggests an increase in the proportion of items assessing the recall of factual information, from approximately one-half to two-thirds, and a performance level on multiple choice assessments little better than chance for a majority of students. Secondary schooling seems to have become the preserve of the urban middle classes. But access to this level of education is still so restricted that there has been no significant devaluation of educational credentials. China Where Cuba and Tanzania were used by Dore to illustrate piecemeal reforms which might stem the diploma disease, China was presented as a case of wholesale economic and social reform which might cure it completely. Nowhere in the world have swings in assessment policy been as extreme as those in China. Changes in the assessment criteria for educational selection have reflected equally extreme shifts between the 'red' and 'expert' poles of the political continuum. In the original book, and on the basis of the best available evidence in the early 1970s, Dore provided an account of what seemed to be happening in China during her cultural revolution in the period 1966-1976. China had been the first country to select its civil servants according to the results of scholastic achievement tests. During the cultural revolution it became the first to delink job selection from education certificates. Educational reforms were radical. Open-book examinations were introduced; part-time work and study in the middle schools was established; 2 years full-time work in the countryside became a necessary criterion for university entry; and university entry was based on political suitability and peer recommendation. The principal motive for Mao Zedong's virtual destruction of the earlier school structure seemed to be the expansion of opportunities for the children of 'good' (i.e. proletarian) class background. This necessitated the abolition of an examination system which had favoured the children of the pre-revolution intelligentsia and merchants. Jonathan Unger (1980, 1982, 1984), a member of the original Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Sussex research team, undertook some early assessments of the consequences of this policy in urban schools in Canton (Guangdong). His general conclusion was that the delinking of academic qualifications from educational and occupational futures led to such demoralisation that most students were unwilling to study and simply 'stopped paying attention in class' (Unger, 1980, p. 9) The removal of one of the prime motivators of education and learning—an individual's aspiration to climb educational and occupational ladders—had been undermined. Keith Lewin's article in this issue describes changes since the end of the Cultural Revolution which have taken place in assessment, the school system, university

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16 A. W. Little entrance and job recruitment. Some aspects of Dore's valued model of education— Confucian traditions, an all round education, and vocational secondary schooling— flourish. But the delinked relationship between certificates and jobs has been swept away. Examinations have been relinked with educational progression at several levels of the system, and the examination baton directs the rhythm and tune of curriculum and pedagogy once more. The 'expert' is in political ascendance, and the assessment system values competence over ideology and individual over group performance. Key schools have re-emerged at the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary level and competition for entry to the university, especially key universities, is intense. Private sector employment is growing; so too is private education. In this climate of unregulated economic growth Lewin suggests that the backwash effects of examinations on the quality of learning and teaching in China could become still more severe, underlining the relevance of much of Dore's basic model.

Egypt The final two cases in this volume—the 'monster' school leaving certificate in Egypt; and the aspirations for qualifications among migrants in Australia—extend Dore's model to new contexts. Eleanore Hargreaves reports recent research on the relationship between certificate orientation and learning and teaching styles, in the context of the link in Egypt between examination success and life chances. When Nasr's nationalist government came to power in 1952, all university graduates were guaranteed a government job. Entry to university depended on passing the secondary school certificate. The subject a student studied at the university was based, not on subject interest, but on the overall marks gained in the certificate examination. A hierarchy of marks and subjects corresponded with a status and income hierarchy of jobs. Many other selection hurdles were crossed en route to the secondary leaving certificate—entrance to a good quality primary school; the grade 5 primary school leaving certificate; and the grade 8 middle school certificate. But war and slow economic growth have meant that university graduates were employed, or severely underemployed, in low paid and low grade work. The automatic link between university graduation and a government job was broken in the 1970s when the queue for government jobs lengthened and the private sector, spurred by foreign investment, began to expand. Employment in foreign affiliated firms in Egypt now yields private returns double those in local private firms; and regional migration to richer countries generates salaries ten times those within Egypt. International Certificates—especially the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) have become increasingly popular. Hargreaves' case studies of classrooms generated substantial evidence of the domination of curriculum and pedagogy by examinations—a focus on examination subjects, examination pressure at home, extensive use of private tuition, ritualisation of learning and teaching. The examination system is so deeply entrenched that the Ministry of Education has difficulty in reforming it to promote the goals of learning rather than selection. However, Hargreaves suggests that while examinations domi-

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nate teaching methods they do not dictate them. Reform of one is not dependent on the other. Other factors, such as the bulging population, a large bureaucracy, chronic economic instability and inequality, poor quality teacher education and a general lack of resources—all contribute to a low quality pedagogy and curriculum on the one hand and low quality assessment systems on the other. A much more fundamental reform of society in general is necessary if the assessment system or the quality of education are to be improved.

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Vietnamese Migrants in Australia In the final case study in this issue Peter Ninnes explores the nature of aspirations for qualifications from the viewpoint of a minority group within an industrialised society. Drawing from an earlier critique of the diploma disease thesis (Lee & Ninnes, 1995) Ninnes points to the importance of understanding cultural values and minority-majority power relationships in the formation of approaches to schooling, in both developed and developing countries. Ninnes explores these values and power relationships among migrants of Vietnamese background experiencing schooling in Australia. Central to his analysis of the importance of assessment and certification in the lives of Vietnamese students is a four-level model of perspectives on schooling. The first—the metacurricular level—examines the purposes of education and notions of what constitutes, in Dore's terms, a good education. The second—the macrocurricular level—examines the systemic functions of certification and schooling, and suggests that aspirations are influenced by both local and global socioeconomic systems, and, in the case of migrants, by educational experiences in the country of origin and settlement. The third—the mesocurricular level—is concerned with the mainfestation of ideas about the purposes of schooling in approaches to learning. The fourth—the microcurricular level—focuses on relations between self and society. Here, the dynamics of relations between individual students and other societal members, but especially parents, are explored for their influence on approaches to schooling in particular contexts. This level reflects the research reported earlier (SLOG, 1987), in which the motives for learning of individuals needed, in some contexts, to be related to the orientations towards family. Ninnes suggests that Dore's thesis was pitched at the metacurricular and macrocurricular levels. The inclusion of meso-and micro-level analyses enhances an understanding of how particular groups interpret and respond to schooling in specific contexts.

Reflections The final article in this issue is contributed, appropriately, by Ronald Dore. He reflects on the thesis in the light of contributions to this journal issue and other research conducted since the publication of the original book in 1976. Rather than my extracting the essence of his views—incisive and controversial as ever—the reader is urged to address them directly alongside the views and evidence presented by all the contributors to this journal issue. A contemporary issue which the original thesis necessarily overlooked, but to

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18 A. W. Little which several of the authors in this issue allude, is the increasing globalisation of economies and jobs. Dore employed the nation-state as his unit of comparative analysis. Relations and dependencies between nation-states were addressed, but more for an understanding of how contemporary systems emerged than for an understanding of why they continue. In the 1990s there is a growing awareness of the effects of economic globalisation on the nature and availability of work; of the increasing integration of national economies into a global economic system; of the ways in which employers are moving jobs around the world in response to global markets and the relative price of labour; and of the new types of skills required for jobs in the twenty-first century. Many of the old certainties about a good education leading to a good and secure job for life are breaking down. Several of the papers in this issue allude to an increased liberalisation of economies and employment markets; and several also refer to the growing importance of private education, especially private education linked with international rather than national qualification systems. Others refer to the role of assessment as the arbiter of resource allocation in plural societies struggling to maintain a national identity. In this rapidly changing context, what will become of the role of assessment in occupational allocation in global, national and local employment markets—and in guiding learning in the classroom? As economies and job markets become more internationalised and as more social groups compete for power and position within them will the diploma disease, identified by Ronald Dore, become a thing of the past, or will it re-emerge in the next century on a global scale?

Notes [1] [2]

[3]

[4] [5] [6]

For example see Dore (1976), Dore & Little (1982), Oxenham (1984), SLOG (1987). For example see Boakye (1985), Boakye & Oxenham (1982), Brooke (1980a, b), Brooke et al. (1978), Brooke & Oxenham (1980, 1984), Deraniyagala et al. (1978), Dore (1980), Dore & Little (1982), Dore & Oxenham (1984), Lewin (1980, 1981, 1984), Lewin & Little (1984), Little (1977, 1978 a, b, c, 1980 a, b, 1982, 1984a, b), Oxenham (1980, 1982, 1984) and Unger (1978, 1980, 1982, 1984). See also the video film The Diploma Disease (1982), available from the Institute of Development Studies (attn: Peter Esland), at the University of Sussex, Falmer, East Sussex BN1 9RE, UK; and the video film The Qualification Chase (1997) to be transmitted on BBC2 10 February 1997 at 06.00, BBC Prime (satellite channel) on 17 February 1997 at 00.30 and BBC2 on 30 June 1997 at 06.00. Educational institutions and commercial companies may purchase the video film The Qualification Chase in 1998 from Open University Education Enterprises (OUEE), 12 Cofferidge Close, Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes MK11 1BY, UK. The licensing of off-air copying of programmes can also be arranged through OUEE. The Qualification Chase is linked to the Open University course EU208 Exploring Educational Issues (1997). Course materials, including audio-cassettes, are available from OUEE (address above) for non-enrolling students and from the Admissions Office, Open University, PO Box 48, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AB for enrolling students. For example, see SLOG (1984, 1987), Howard (1988), Little & Howard (1988 a,b,c), McNae, et al. (1988), Little & Singh (1992), Little (1992). For example see McNae, et al. (1988), Little & Howard (1988b) and Little (1994). For example see Lewis (1954), Bowman (1977), Blaug (1972), Wiles (1974) and Arrow (1974).

The Diploma Disease [7]

19

For examples of reviews from a range of social science publications see Anderson (1976), Barber (1977), Crossley & Guthrie (1987), Fry (1981), Jary & Jary (1991), Williams (1977), Bowman (1977), Lee & Ninnes (1995), Little (1992), Passin (1979), Weeks (1980) and Wegmann (1977).

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