We’ve turned our attention to the examination standards in schools this week. Richard Pike, CEO of the RSC, was interviewed on the Today programme on Radio 4 – the BBC’s flagship agenda-setting news radio programme this morning about the 5-Decade Exam Challenge report that we have published, and our Downing Street web site petition. Currently we’re adding one name a minute.

Much of the UK media has taken interest – see today’s BBC News Online, Daily Telegraph, Independent, Daily Mail and Times.

But all this is making me feel old – I’m making the transition from ‘young turk’ to ‘boring old fart’ because I remember writing a letter of complaint some 22 years ago about the consequences of getting rid of ‘O’ level and CSE [don’t worry about what these are] and moving to the new modern GCSEs. It’s enough to say that GCSEs examine the whole of the 16-year-old cohort, while the former pair focused on either high ability [‘O’ level] or mid to lower ability [CSE]. And before anyone gets upset by this, I am the proud owner of a CSE for my performance in mathematics – although I can’t remember where my certificate is.

So let’s cut to the chase. What’s this petition all about? Well it’s not about attacking teachers or pupils. Pupils are working hard and learning new skills and knowledge. Teachers are teaching an ever broader range of skills and knowledge often without adequate material resources, in inappropriate teaching rooms and without the necessary technical support. More investment in our schools and to support our teachers and pupils are at the top of list of our demands.

No, what this petition is about is the examination system. A system that has moved from showing what students can’t do to showing what students can do has fallen into a dangerous trap. If you set the achievement bar too low – that is set the level that must be passed to receive a top grade too low then the very able are not stretched. You then have to try and fix the system by adding a new top grade A* beyond A.

But this doesn’t really solve the problem because very able students like the challenge of hard questions: questions that are not structured, that need thought, logic, problem-solving and are mathematically challenging: this is what employers want but as well as and not instead of communication skills and team working. Our challenge is to design an examination system to achieve this: what we have now doesn’t.