Summary
A recent survey by the Children’s Society reveals that 15-year-olds in the UK are the most unhappy in Europe, with 22% dissatisfied with their life prospects. I suggest that factors contributing to this discontent include Brexit limiting opportunities, high child poverty rates, inadequate housing, unhealthy diets, and an education system that pressures performance over exploration. The current political climate, marked by austerity, has also diminished prospects. This lack of hope and opportunity leaves young people feeling trapped and miserable.
In this morning's video I note that a survey has suggested that young people in the UK are much more dissatisfied with their lives than equivalent teenagers are in other countries. Could it be that our economic model is depriving them of hope, opportunity and the chance of well-being?
The audio file is here:
This is the transcript:
Why are children in the UK so miserable?
In the last week, the Children's Society, a well-known charity operating in this country, has published a survey that suggests 15-year-olds living in the UK are the most unhappy children in Europe.
Now, I admit that they did not survey every country in Europe, but they did survey a wide selection of countries, from relatively low-earning Romania, through to high earning the Netherlands and Germany, and whoever we are compared with our 15-year-olds are the most miserable.
22 per cent of young people in the UK are not satisfied with their life prospects. When we get to the Netherlands, it's only 6 per cent, and that is a stark contrast.
So why are young people in the UK Likely to be so unhappy? It's a subject to which I've given quite a lot of thought because, quite clearly, they have a right to well-being.
If you don't have well-being at the age of 15, when are you ever going to get it?
And yet it appears that a great many of our young people feel that way. There are a great many reasons for this, which I think are peculiar to the UK, and which we could address, and which Labour should be addressing, although I doubt that it will. Let me run through some of them.
One very obvious reason why young people in this country feel that they are being victimised if you like, is Brexit. They're being denied the opportunity to move freely in Europe. Keir Starmer is standing up and proudly saying he is going to deny this opportunity to people under the age of 30, even though other countries in Europe want our young people to have that chance. It's quite extraordinary that he is picking on our young people in this way. No wonder they feel as though they have a government that is not on their side.
They also have good reason to feel that the government is not on their side when it comes to poverty. Remember that nearly a million children in the UK as a whole live in poverty, and sometimes in extreme poverty, because of the government's choice to impose a two-child benefit cap. But there are plenty of other benefits that also impact seriously on the well-being of young children. And that is something that Labour could do something about.
Housing is also a big issue. We know that far too many people live in poor-quality private rented accommodation, subject to the vagaries of the market, and having to change schools and homes and friendship groups and everything else as a consequence, far too often. People are too vulnerable when they're living in poverty. Families are at risk as a consequence. And children bear the price for that. Labour needs to improve the security of tenants in private rented accommodation so that children have the certainty that they need to develop as young people. But it isn't planning to do it.
There are many other things. For example, in the UK we eat more ultra-processed food than any other country in Europe. And poor diet, which is heavily associated with the consumption of ultra-processed foods, is a major factor in the creation of depression.
Excess fructose in a young person's diet is very likely to lead to depression. We consume too much fructose. Our young people consume too much fast food. The consequence is plain to see. They are unhappy. They're also obese, and the two might well go together.
What else is there? There's a lack of opportunity. Young people are treated as a commodity in the UK. We see that in our education system. Decades of largely Tory, but also Labour, education reforms have tried to standardise the educational process in this country to the point where a child feels as though they are pushed through an education process where they have to perform to pre-agreed standards or they are deemed to be a failure.
Michael Gove's insistence that every child must retake English and Maths GCSEs, even though the content of much of the syllabus in both those subjects is completely irrelevant to their ability to actually function in the world at large, is a clear indication of this. Quality control of childhood is a feature of our education system when the ability to explore, explain and understand is ignored.
No wonder children feel as though they're being denied opportunity by the education system that doesn't let them explore who they might wish to be. One of the refrains I often hear amongst my friendship group, when we look back at our careers, and that is something we now do, is that most of us did things that we were never told that we were able to undertake when at school.
Schools narrowly focus young people on an academic career. That is just so wrong for so many young people. I might have benefited from an academic career because I ended up as an academic. But a tiny proportion of people in this country do, and most do not benefit from the way we teach. Of course, young people are unhappy as a result.
And what else is there? There is the political environment. When we have had 14 years of austerity that has deliberately undermined the well-being of people in this country, and with Labour now talking about the fact that there will be more pain, is it really any great surprise that young people are unhappy?
Where is the politics of hope that young people should have an entitlement to enjoy?
I know it is commonly said that the 1970s were, apparently, a terrible time to be alive. Well, I'll tell you. I don't believe that was true, and I happened to be growing up and did my teenage years pretty much throughout the 1970s. And they were a great time to be alive, for a very simple and straightforward reason. There was hope.
I don't think anyone I knew - and I knew a wide range of people in the 1970s, young people that is - felt that we were without prospects. Whether we wanted to be a gardener, or a professor, or an accountant, or a tax official, a civil servant, a builder, whatever it might have been.
It was easy to achieve that goal. We all knew that, in effect, we could do what we wanted.
There was an apprenticeship available to us. A genuine apprenticeship, if that's what we wanted. Not some faux one of the sort now made available by large companies because they wish to use up government funding. No, there was real training in very many skills within the economy so that people had a chance of acquiring the opportunity to maintain themselves, maintain a family, have children in a home that they might well own or live in with security of tenure. And none of that exists now for young people. Are you surprised that they're miserable?
I'm not. If we are to have genuine reform in this country, we have to recreate that hope. And we could. Hope is not dependent on owning the highest grade of iPad, or phone, or the greatest number of clothes, or whatever it is. Hope is dependent on having opportunity. And we have a political system that is intent on denying it.
And that is why so many young people are living in a world where they don't feel, in this country at least, that they have the chance to flourish. And that really worries me.
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‘………………people had a chance of acquiring the opportunity to maintain themselves, maintain a family, have children in a home that they might well own or live in with security of tenure. And none of that exists now for young people.’
Bravo, I think just the same way and if we had this as a policy aim it would IMHO solve many social problems.
One other point about GCSE’s in Maths & English. Many years ago I came across something called NAMET – Naval Maths and English test. Its a functional test as far as I am aware ie can you add, divide, subtract, multiply, do percentages, decimals and fractions, write a letter etc. Why dont we have a ‘functional’ exam that will tell an employer that a person can do the Maths and English that they are likley to need in the workplace?
It seems to have gone…
But the idea makes complete sense
re numeracy – they do this in wales (though usually as well as maths) – topics covered here https://www.mathsdiy.com/wjec-gcse-numeracy-topic-booklets/
In Scotland, we already have that option, at least, for numeracy.
The Numeracy (Nat 5) Unit is mandatory in the National 5 Lifeskills Mathematics Course.
The Numeracy Unit is also available as a free-standing Unit, so flexible.
Curriculum development work on the various baccalaureate options at SCQF level 7 is also aimed at interdisciplinary studies, covering Expressive Arts, Languages, Science and Social Sciences.
Sadly, academic dominance has been within the strait jacket of subject disciplines, and cross-curricular developments are long overdue – probably more than 50 years overdue.
(Atlantic College was the first to introduce it in 1971)
Baccalaureates, clustering ranges of skills with knowledge, are great for their flexibility, and can mix and match lifeskills, personal development, as well as academic options.
I think we need to appreciate that schooling and education might coincide but are very much distinct, and that life chances need a permanently open door to education.
Education for life was a passion of the Wilson government, but has been the victim of Tory class political dogma ever since.
Blair talked the talk (and didn’t he just) but he never delivered on education.
The Workers Educational Association was the product of early 20thC Liberalism, but greatly expanded after WW1.
A rediscovery of institutions like this on the left, and expansion of the OU would be very helpful indeed.
Not that we have a progressive Labour government, so the pressures would need to be external.
Exams are a terrible way to assess achievement that bias those inclined to be good at them (me) and prejudice those not able to do so (those with ADHD, for example)
Baccalaureates can work – but they have to be flexible on assessment method.
We udner value course work assessment in the UK – but it is what reflects life. I heavily favour it.
I taught both Geology and Geography to Advanced Level, and History to the Scottish Intermediate level (so 16+).
If you don’t have good observational, measuring, recording and analytic skills you’ll never ever make a decent Geologist or Geographer.
History needs collection and collation of evidence, review and then building connections between events, so much critical analysis.
I’ve never been a supporter of the exam system.
There is no reason why a very large proportion of assessments in the three subjects with which I am most familiar could not and should not be examined by way of continuous project and practical appraisals.
Normative based exams measure much less of value, in terms of actual skills and abilities, but will fit you neatly under a bell shaped curve.
IMO benchmarked summative assessments are of much more importance, but these do not need to be formally examined in the traditional sense.
I entirely agree
I examined on the basis of essay, group work and a presentation. It was much harder work for me, but fair for my students.
For me – plain and simply – those who rule the world from the shadows – the hyper-rich who use their unpaid taxes to pervert politics – obviously see no need for people as they advance the cause of artificial intelligence and reach capitalist nirvana with even more profit.
And as for buying their stuff – well, don’t worry about that, you’ll be able to hire it and borrow to pay for it.
For as long as you live. You’ll die not owning anything – it will own you.
Politicians like this because it reduces the vexed (but actually illegitimate problem) of taxation and alleged funding of the state, so that they can play culture wars instead and sweat the small stuff, but keep the gravy train going in order to bail out the rich when it all goes wrong.
That is how the state will become the monster the Neo-liberals accuse it of being since that vision was one that belonged to the rich who will not bow to any master, and it is a vision – the worries of the rich that their power and wealth will be curbed – that has become popularised and taken up by society at large.
Mass employment is now being wound down before society has had time to adjust. That is what is happening in my view.
But it does not have to be like this.
Interesting Richard. On the impact of Brexit on movement – I wonder about this one. I suspect that more affluent, middle class people may well have been the ones who were more likely to travel to work and study in the EU rather than those from less affluent households. If you were/are deprived in Camborne the idea of wandering off to an EU country was and is never on the horizon.
The psychologist Peter Gray has done some interesting research looking at the causes of teen suicide levels in the US. I think some broad themes are also applicable to children here, if not the specifics. He notes a study into the causes of teen stress which found 83% citing school as the cause of their stress, and the large rise in this figure since the introduction of a more rigid curriculum/high stakes testing regime.
A lot of his work focuses more generally on the loss of play, which is so crucial for children’s development.
I think there are definitely parallels with the UK in the increased focus on academics at a younger and younger age and the general lack of opportunities for young people to make mistakes and learn from them without thereby messing up their whole future.
https://petergray.substack.com/p/d5-why-did-teens-suicides-increased?r=j7bjf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2XTZOC6I1R8SKOxiQhkkFQjQXGNInxP2bxlDAVLoAK_AU1zn0lyFSsaUY_aem_7cMDNrxcQjECfnt466IIiw&triedRedirect=true
There were some interesting responses to the recent story about Kirsty Allsop (her off the telly) allowing her 15 year old son and another boy aged 16 go Inter-railing unaccompanied. While some were horrified, many applauded her, pointing out that young people were allowed far less freedom than they were. That being given free rein to explore their neighbourhood and interact with strangers was good for personal development and interpersonal skills. Further academic studies were cited which suggested that ‘screens’ were responsible for a breakdown in interaction with their peers and thus a reduction in self awareness, personal development, worldliness and ultimately confidence.
I began travelling by myself – admittedly during the day at first, but long days and long distance – when I was 13
It was one of the rare things my parents got right in my teenage years
I agree with all of this. To add:
Getting off their screens -with a lot of American content as we -sort of-speak the same language, would help.
From my own family’s experience, I know it is difficult for even 16 year olds to get the sort of jobs that were about in the 1970s.
Joining a youth organisation widens experience. I spent 3 years with the air Training Corps. Not for everyone but it was a structured environment which set challenges and we went places and met real people doing real jobs. I noticed what was going on in the world -like the Cuban missile crisis. But one advantage was that with only two channels, one couldn’t avoid the news. Today many intelligent young people have no idea what is happening.
Coming from a single parent family , as i did, with a mother unable to work, was much rarer. I hd less contact adults which is why work and the ATC was so useful.
We have a responsibility to young people to engage and talk to them.
I admit I am frequently staggered by how little many people know about the news
I suggest this applies to both children and adults.
I used to make a point of listening/watching the news. Tis has made me realise that I have been gradually switching off from listening and understanding of the last couple of years. I’m not sure of the reason, but I do get fed up with all the comment that so often now seems to accompany the actual facts of the news. This particularly applies to economic affairs where the ‘reporter’ spouts a load of neoliberal twaddle, supposedly as an ‘explanation’. It just makes me see red that a false narrative is being provided day-in day-out.
It’s no wonder that children get depressed. They believe it and no-one is saying often enough thaat it doesn’t have to be like this.
Maybe they’ve all switched off to the news as it is generally quite depressing
Give me your children until they are seven, and I’ll have their minds for the rest of their lives.
15 year olds should be able to look forward to choosing the kind of education they want at 16 or have the option to go into full time work if they prefer. For many 15 year olds that would be a good starting point, forcing them all into various forms of education might feel like a good idea, but freedom of choice would be better.
I suspect Brexit might play into the minds of some, but most 15 year olds wouldn’t be in a position to take advantage of relocation in the immediate future due to language and financial barriers.
It wasn’t touched upon, but I suspect university places and tuition fees should be the dark cloud lingering on the horizon for many 15 year olds. Even if you are in a position to pay £9,250 per year the freezing of fees has left universities in a position where they are taking more and more foreign students and you can’t necessarily get a place at a suitable university. The funding of universities is a big issue, but retaining an artificial £9,250 per year cap for home students isn’t working.
A wealth distribution system that hugely favours the wealthy is usually the single biggest root cause factor of various significant outcomes throughout life. It’s the very opposite of a meritocracy. For those not benefiting from these bias’s, the realisation of this inequity when growing up is one of life’s harsher lessons. As such, given the disproportionate bias’s that favour the wealthy in the UK, young people suffering a higher proportional level of despondency in the UK as they come to realise how these bias’s directly affect them, is a very rational response to a highly discriminatory and immoral system, and one that clearly leads it to increasingly become a kakistocracy (for all except the wealthy).
‘The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries.’
‘Britain in the 1970s was one of the most equal of rich countries. Today, it is the second most unequal, after the US.’
‘Inequality is more than just economics: it is the culture that divides and makes social mobility impossible,” he said. “The mere accident of being born outside the 1% will have a dramatic impact on the rest of your life: it will reduce your life expectancy, as well as educational and work prospects, and affects your mental health.’
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2023/nov/27/uk-spends-more-financing-inequality-in-favour-of-rich-than-rest-of-europe-report-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Ian
your link should be more widely read. Thank you.
Might the 1988 Education Reform Act have been the unstated foundation of Austerity/Neolberalism?
It presents knowledge as fixed and not to be questioned or explored. This approach, enforced by a rigid, closed minded enforcement arm of government, obstructs initiative and innovation and so brainwashes students and teachers to accept what they are told by government passively and submissively.
It recognises that those who are trained not to use knowledge exploration, creativity and the validly heterodox are much easier to govern and exploit socio-economically. Today it appears that could be the case if we are not very careful.
(Thanks again for you valid heterodox interventions!)
Might it be indicative of the anti-social purposes of the 1988 Act that it imposes normative referencing assessment, which does nothing to help the student develop, and ignores ipsative referencing, which tells the student something about changes in levels of performance, and criterion referencing which informs about performance in relation to what has been taught-learned?
Criterion referencing suits administrators and does nothing of learning worth for students.
Interesting idea
I was a governor at the time and was not an enormous fan of it
The aim was homogenised education
Firstly, there are and have been many functional maths tests, some of them perfectly acceptable to universities even, let alone employers. Adult access to higher education classes had them from the early 1980s onwards. Not to make those available to kids is a political choice.
Secondly, as an older cove, I’d agree with you about the 1970s. I’m currently writing a necessary intro for Year 12 (16s) to explain why education, and UK society, changed dramatically in the 1980s. They do know little of modern affairs, what they do know is culled from social media, and a lot of it currently is filtered through a very right wing lens. I’m setting a comparison between Finland (happiest country) and the UK (20th) and their education systems, and then getting students to debate about culture and its contribution to both achievement and mental health. I am, sort of, fortunate in that I have a few students with MH issues who are vocal about the causes and triggers, which does aid discussion. It is a massive blot on the morality of politicians that humanity is so lacking in them and their influence on society.
George Monbiot a couple of years ago wrote a piece on this very issue – https://www.monbiot.com/2022/04/30/tested-to-destruction/.
His conclusion is young people are being let down by an education system which places too much importance on exams – leaving young people stressed – and a curriculum which is uninspiring and rigid. There’s no doubt the education system fails to provide young people with deep and joined up knowledge that’s required to deal with the challenges we face such as the environment, preserving democracy and public health.
Another factor with regards to education’s impact on young people’s life satisfaction in the UK could be that we are an outlier in terms of the school starting age. The UK alongside some other former British colonies are among a small number of countries with school starting at the age at 5. In the nordic countries, instead of starting school, 5 year olds are learning through play at kindergarten – the spirit of which is cooperative rather than competitive. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/20/grammar-schools-play-europe-top-education-system-finland-daycare#:~:text=In%20Finland%2C%20children%20do%20not,league%20tables%20do%20not%20exist.
Once at school pupils in Finland are not burdened with lots of homework. https://in-finland.education/homework-in-finland-school/#:~:text=The%20truth%20is%20that%20there,getting%20a%20good%20night's%20sleep.
In Denmark teenagers have option of attending an Efterskole with a focus on enlightenment instead of formal education.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efterskole
Lesley Riddoch has done a lot of work raising awareness of how the Nordic nations function. In her film, Denmark – State of Happiness, around 12-22 minutes it focuses on the education system.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UTJnu6lAhvM&pp=ygUObGVzbGV5IHJpZGRvY2g%3D
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/lesley-riddoch-changing-school-age-should-be-on-msps-radar-1484720
Young people in the UK without a doubt have been negatively impacted by socio-economic factors. Today’s 15 year olds were born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and have grown up with 14 years of particularly awful Tory governance. Their parents have likely been impacted by the Great Recession, student loans, stagnant wages, precarious employment, reduced quality of public services, less generous social security, high house prices and rents, expensive or time consuming care for elderly or disabled relatives and more recently Covid, Brexit, cost of living crisis and higher interest rates.
Their parents are stressed and young people themselves have had to deal with the impact of austerity and high energy prices resulting in less libraries, youth clubs and leisure centres. All of this happening against the backdrop of more than 4 decades of neoliberalism which has resulted in the UK being among the most unequal countries in the developed world (in terms of income, wealth and geography). And of course during the past 15+ years social media has become a larger part of everybody’s life and for young people it accentuates the sense of competitiveness and status with their peers and amplifies the feelings of stigmatising inadequacy that comes from living in an unequal society that’s driven by atomising individualism and soulless consumerism and materialism. Young people recently have also had to deal with increasing risks of crime and anti-social behaviour in their neighbourhoods, anxiety about the impacts of climate change on their futures and polarising and toxic debates in the culture wars.
We need to do much better for everyone and especially young people.
Much to agree with
Thank you
Professor Lindsay Paterson has long bemoaned the transitioning of the Scottish education system away from the acquisition of knowledge to acquisition of skills, which he reckons has diminished the educational achievements of Scottish children, particularly in the secondary sector.
The childrens society links to the Pisa 2022 report to get it’s cross country statistics. A couple of quotes which support your view that the change on 1.1.21 is significant: – Students reported a higher life satisfaction in PISA 2022 (an average of 6.48 on a scale of 1-10) than in PISA 2018 (6.25). – Students’ satisfaction with life, more generally, declined in many countries and economies over recent years. In 2022, 25% of students in the United Kingdom reported that they were not satisfied with their lives: they rated their satisfaction with life between 0 and 4 on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. In 2018, about the same number of students were not satisfied with life (26%). On average across OECD countries, the proportion of students who are not satisfied with life increased from 11% in 2015 to 16% in 2018 and 18% in 2022.
I had a similar discussion only this morning. It began with someone saying they’d give Labour the benefit of the doubt until after Conference and the Budget, and that children in the future might benefit from Labour’s intention to “fix the economy”. My response was that children are in poverty NOW; unhappy NOW; and that in seeking future growth by re-imposing austerity, Labour is condemning a whole generation. Or more specifically, the poorest of a whole generation. So much for breaking down the class ceiling.
(https://www.twinkl.co.uk/news/breaking-the-class-ceiling-keir-starmer-announces-labours-five-education-pledges)
Poverty stunts physical and psychological growth; it creates unbearable stress in families and slashes life chances. How can any child learn if they don’t know where their next meal is coming from? Or that the home they live in is secure? And that is not even taking into account the moral bankruptcy required to obliterate the wellbeing of millions of poorer children.
I also grew up in the 70s. I was actually a hippie, much to my parents’ dismay. However, I knew absolutely that I would move out into a world where almost anything was possible. It was never a question of struggling to find a job – any job; it was that I could choose what I wanted to do from a vast array of careers. I had hope; I got encouragement from my parents and my teachers to pursue whatever it was that I wanted to do. Having that hope for a good future nurtured my curiosity. It gave me self confidence.
I travelled around Europe with my parents, and if school started before the end of our holiday, I was despatched from the age of 14 back to the UK on my own from whichever country we were in at the time. (Great, because I could buy 200 duty free Gauloises on the ferry)
My generation and the one above me took all that away from young people – 75% (?) of people over 60 voted for Brexit. 75% of people under 25 voted to stay in the EU. What on EARTH possessed Starmer to refuse the offer of European exchanges for young people?? Why are we never given the rationale for such decisions?
If I were young now, I would be deeply unhappy too. Younger people are much more globally connected via social media than I ever was – our young people see their European peers doing all the things they are denied.
I read a book recently called “Head, Hands, Heart”. In it, the author makes the utterly compelling case for fundamental changes in how the UK values skills. Here, the emphasis is almost entirely on academic or cognitive skills (Head), to the detriment of technical/practical skills (Hands) and nurturing/caring skills (Heart). This is not the case in other European countries. The author’s proposition is that until these three categories are put in balance and given equal weight and status, the UK’s less academic children will see themselves as failures.
Thanks
Very well said. As a young person myself, for as long as I’ve had an understanding of the job market it has always seemed bleak and cutthroat, so the idea that you felt hopeful about your future career is completely foreign to me.
Seeing neoliberal policy prioritise profit growth over human wellbeing at every turn has made poverty and misery ubiquitous: turning off almost all of my friends from keeping up with the news for the sake of their own mental health, as good news seems non-existent. Even this last election, which should have been a moment of hope, was tarred by how obviously Starmer and his Labour government represent the same out of touch elite as the Conservatives before them, and seem to have no intention of tuning into the reality their constituents face every day as a result of austerity politics.
Anyone still confused as to why young people are dissatisfied with the status quo is doing their very best to avoid reality: a luxury only the richest of my generation can share.
Thanks and good luck
I’d expand the educational model of “Head, Hands, Heart” and retitle it as:-
“Head, Heart, Hands, Feet”
The addition of ‘feet’ covers a wide range of physical needs – sport, walking, running, swimming, jumping, climbing, and definitely dancing.
Pretty much all dance is a phenomenal discipline… and of course includes head, heart and hands.
Music and dancing go together and I see both as absolutely essential to the human condition, representing expressiveness, creativity and fun, both individually and collectively expressed.
Watching the recent Prom “Everybody Dance! The Sound of Disco” triggered this thought. Last year’s Northern Soul Prom was equally inspiring.
The downside, and nightmarish image you will never ever be able to shake off, was the recent video of some of the grotesques in the Tory party, now including leadership candidates like Patel .. trying to err… ‘get it on’ with Nigel Farage..
(I offer a fulsome apology to all blog readers for resurrecting this image)
I do not know if the other great apes make music and dance, but we do.
I don’t think the model is complete without ‘Feet”
And our lifetime educational entitlement needs to encompass opportunities for all four, without grading or prioritising them.
PS – my friend John Carlisle asked me this question:
“Since when did reducing the national debt take priority over our wellbeing?”
A very good question
Re exams- not a huge fan, though I do find things I had to revise for really stuck, so something to be said for that intensity, if not the exam hall. However since over the last 18 months I have seen a tsunami of assessed work that has not gone through a student’s brain (AI generated, not traditional plagiarism), there has to be some way of carrying out an assessment that goes beyond coursework. Multiple vivas maybe but that would be very labour intensive. Or the whole thing needs a massive re-think.
Vivas are going to happen….