By Louise Atkinson, NEU national executive member, personal capacity
A quarter of a million six-form students have got their A-level results today, but their results have created a mixture of bewilderment, dismay and anger.
Imagine working for two years towards a qualification and as you prepare for the final assessment as a global pandemic strikes and your much-anticipated exams must be cancelled. Imagine the anxiety, uncertainty and stress that creates for the students, their families and the people that work tirelessly as educators.
Due to the Covid-19 crisis it was clearly the correct decision to cancel the exams this year. That was unavoidable. But the way in which the process for awarding grades to hard working pupils has been organised and communicated has been nothing short of cruel.
Downgrades based on a computer algorithm
It has been traumatic enough that our students have lost so much time in school with their educators and then had their exams cancelled, but to have their grades downgraded based on an algorithm which favours the test centre’s previous results is completely unfair to both the students and the professionals who teach them. The result is that students have not been judged on their own efforts but on the data of students who previously attended the same school. Anyone can see the complete injustice in this!
Many schools have had their total grades reduced by nearly a half. Some students have had all three of their A level grades reduced, some by more than one grade, putting their whole university careers in jeopardy. The entire process is a lottery that disadvantages those students from the most economically deprived areas and BAME students.
U-turn in Scotland after angry protests
In Scotland last week, students were awarded a set of results, downgrading nearly 120,000 results, 40%, from their original teacher assessments. This was all done in the name of ‘standardisation’, but such was the outrage among students, teachers and parents that the Scottish government a week later did a U-turn and reinstated the former grades. This was the right decision does not make up for the emotional impact from the uncertainty and indecision that affected thousands of Scottish students.
Now the same damaging algorithms have shattered the hopes and dreams of students in England. To try to avoid such a similar politically-damaging U-turn after awarding grades to students in England, Tory Education minister Gavin Williamson announced – only 24 hours before the A level grades were to be issued – that appeals would be allowed and students’ ‘mock’ exam results could be used instead. This is a complete nonsense, because Williamson has known for months that many schools cancelled their mock exams due for March because of coronavirus. Different schools have different policies on mocks, which, after all, are only a ‘practice’ exam and many (if not most) deliberately mark mock exams ‘harder’ to motivate students who are going into the real thing six months later.
English grades are another dog’s dinner
So now, in England, the results awarded by the exam board Ofqual, after their own process of algorithm ‘standardisation’, have produced another ‘dog’s dinner’, but one from which the government is unable or unwilling to retreat. There is now clearly an uneven playing field between Scottish and English students. Scottish students having the choice between standardised grades awarded by the exam board or the teacher predictions whereas English pupils have the options of accepting the compromised exam board grades or their mock results which take no account any further progress. Or they could sit the exams in the autumn term, just when they should be starting out in the first stage of their university education.
So students in Scotland, Wales and England, will in many cases be applying to the same universities, but with exam results based on entirely different systems of assessment.
Gavin Williamson’s partial and inadequate U-turn has followed months of defending the algorithmic system for awarding grades, as devised by Ofqual. But it should never have come to this in the first place. He should have listened to the concerns of teachers earlier and he should have trusted the professionals – the teachers – to make professional judgements on their students. If teacher assessment is good enough for Scotland, it is good enough for England.
Teacher assessments are not done lightly
Teacher assessments are not done lightly. Teachers look at mock exam results, they know their students and can gauge their progress and likely progress. Schools that I know have spent weeks deliberating, deciding and moderating their estimated grades. The hours of work, thought and stress that has been put in to centre assessment of grades by teachers has been completed disregarded. It is a clear indication of a complete lack of trust and disrespect for the teaching profession for the government to run away from teacher assessments in England.
The mock exams that Williamson wants school to fall back on are not standardised tests. Schools have the freedom to set the questions for mock exams varying difficulty across settings and they are free to administer them and mark them as they choose. To rely on mock exam results as a definitive measure rather than as part of a professional judgement made by teachers armed with all the information is not only unreliable it is a very clear message that teachers are not trusted.
Entire exam system needs overhaul
To announce such a drastic change – albeit an unsatisfactory one – to A-level grades at such short notice is a clear indication that the whole process has gone badly wrong and that the entire exam system needs to be urgently reviewed. Exams are not and should not be the only way to assess learning and progress of a student’s development. For years prior to Covid, educators have been explaining how a punitive accountability system, which is based on several high-stakes tests, does nothing to improve social mobility and close the attainment gap created by austerity and the subsequent poverty which is endured by millions.
In fact, the current exam system, coupled with league tables and an overbearing inspection regime, continue to compound the structural inequalities inherent in our education system. The narrow focus on exams and grading throughout the system repeatedly penalises schools and educators who are doing great work in some of our most disadvantaged communities.
When 40% of the attainment gap is cemented in a child before they even start school, measuring the ‘performance’ of schools based so much by test or exam results will always unfairly judge schools serving disadvantaged and deprived areas. The pressures put on such schools to ‘raise standards’ by improving exam results inevitably makes it harder to recruit great educators and even harder for them to stay knowing that all their hard work will never be valued by the system.
Better and fairer system of assessment
This has been an exceptional year, creating a unique set of circumstances. But the fiasco which has unfolded over A-level exam results – which may well be repeated in ten days over GCSE results – has highlighted the many flaws in an education system which relies so heavily on standardised tests rather than professional judgement.
At the National Education Union, we will continue to discuss issues around a better and fairer system of assessment and school accountability for all. And we will continue to ensure that our members, the education professionals are at the forefront of those discussions aiming to shape the future of education for the benefit of all.
August 13, 2020
