More questions than answers over OFQUAL’s GCSE and A-level grade award proposals

The announcement of the OFQUAL proposals for grade awards in the 2020 exam series is likely to cause some heated discussion amongst teachers over the next few weeks and months. Some people will like it more than others, but in all honesty it is a solution that will probably please very few people (which I think, to be clear, would be the case with any attempt to resolve this problem). This is as much a reflection of our imperfect system of examinations anyway as the particular challenges faced this year. What we have essentially got is a situation where kids may as well have rocked up on the day of their exam, only to be told that the exam wasn’t happening and we were going to make a judgement based on what we’d seen over the previous two or three years. That clearly will favour some students and disadvantage others but any solution was going to do that.

As a current Head of Department, I am going to have a significant role in the award of grades to students — far more influence than I ever would have in normal arrangements. This moves me from the position of being like a driving instructor to being the driving test examiner — and there’s a reason those two people are different in all cases. The instructor, working closely with the pupil, will be subject to all sorts of influences and biases — both in their professional relationship with the student and their relationship with the accountability measures and public perception that influence their job. As the examiner, those influences are dramatically reduced and you can be much more impartial and make that profound pass/fail decision more rationally.

We are not going to be in that position this year. We are going to have to make decisions about students who we really care about, who we have invested huge amounts of our time into, that could be life-altering. Saying that Student X is a Grade 3 rather than a Grade 4 in Maths, English or any subject is going to be extremely difficult to do. I am sure we can all recall students we have worked tirelessly with even though we knew it was likely a forlorn hope that they would get a 4 (or a C in old money). We wanted it badly for them even if we probably, on the basis of our experience, knew it was unlikely. It would never stop us from trying. We might have got to know that student, their personal circumstances, their motivations, their interests. We may well remember them fondly (or, dare I say, with frustration perhaps as well). We’d say to them ‘if it was up to me you’d get a C for all the effort you’ve put in’.

But the fact is, for this year group, we have to put that to one side. Yes, of course students can appeal the grade and sit another exam if they want to — that gives us some consolation. But if you’re a History teacher like me, the chances of that student sitting an exam in the Autumn of Year 12 in a subject they are likely not carrying forward (even a 4 in History is a flimsy basis to do A-level study in the subject) means that this will be it. That is going to be hard to deal with.

Fundamentally, we are going to have to be hugely professional about it. Hard as it is, we are going to have to divorce ourselves from our emotional connection to students, and try to look at their past and likely future performance objectively. In many ways, this is a tremendous opportunity for the profession — we are being trusted by our paymasters to do ‘the right thing’ and to do a quality job — and as difficult as it will be for all sorts of reasons — we need to do that, and I’m sure we will.

And that is important — we may be faced with the same situation again in the future. Indeed, in the event of a COVID ‘Double Spike’, we might be looking at the same thing next summer. Even if we don’t, the precedent of this means we and students will have in our minds for a long time, ‘what if?’ It will take us a long time to institutionally ‘forget’ these events and not be shaped by them, and it may indeed be undesirable to do so.

Therefore, we need to think about all the precedents and possible unanticipated consequences of what could and will be happening with this now. I’m currently feeling as though I have more questions than answers, as the next part of this piece will show.

First things first — teaching staff and heads of department will need serious protecting and looking after. They will be the ones with the most direct influence over grade awards this year. Therefore, they may well be the target of pressurising emails from parents and students. Schools need to ensure that they have procedures for managing this that protect all of their staff. Thankfully, OFQUAL have said that there should be absolutely no discussion of grade awards between staff and students or parents until the Results are published.

Will some parents take legal action if they are not happy with the school’s award of grades to their child? Will they start demanding portfolios of work be looked at, or asking searching questions about why little Johnny doesn’t have his exercise book full of work. Will schools protect staff or capitulate to parents and pile pressure back on rank and file staff and expect ongoing portfolios of evidence for future year groups to be prepared ‘just in case’?

It is vital that schools remove all accountability over results from grade awards this year (and, frankly, in any year but that’s another conversation) to ensure the process is not warped further by perverse incentives. It is vital that schools do not input grades into platforms like SISRA to identify under-performing subjects in comparison to others (you might think that’s a mad thing to say but I think most of us could think of schools where, actually, it’s not such a crazy scenario — and looking one or two things I’ve seen around expectations of staff workload during this ‘remote working’ period, I have to say I don’t always feel encouraged — thankfully again the government has I believe come out and said that this should not be happening). In such schools, is it crazy to imagine a self-interested head of department favouring his or her own classes groups in the award of grades over and above those of other teachers’ classes? Accountability also needs to be removed from the Autumn Series of exams as well.

Thankfully the process of awarding those grades looks a lot clearer to me having read Chris Baker’s excellent series of twitter posts on this, now turned into a useful blog. We will need to be very wary of our own unconscious biases — this process to me seems likely to favour studious girls moreso than disadvantaged boys. Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts have written marvellously about this in their seminal work Boys Dont Try (and I was fortunate to hear them speak about it at the T&L Leeds Conference in June 2019). Consideration of future potential as well as past performance will be important (essentially, solely relying on mocks is a bad idea).

With regards to A-levels, the situation is complicated further by the smaller class sizes where performance can fluctuate rapidly year on year due to the variability in cohorts that you are more likely to get in that situation. I have a Year 13 class of two students — I have a good idea what I’d award those students but what if OFQUAL give me unacceptable options? If I’ve got students who are, let’s say, both B grade students — yet that doesn’t track well with past performance in the centre with small cohorts of very mixed ability— well this is obviously problematic.

Speaking of that autumn series, this is also going to need some serious thought. Are schools going to put on ‘revision sessions’ for new Year 12 students just as they start highly demanding A-level and BTEC courses? What are 11–16 schools going to do, where their students have gone off to College and don’t want to look back? Are students in those schools going to sit exams at the college or at their previous school? Are staff going to be forced into massive intervention work because even though there will be no OFSTED or league table accountability about these results, it’d look really good on a banner and at an Open Day presentation (and it might put more bums on seats in the School Sixth Form with extra funding benefits that entails)?

If our proper return to school is September it is going to be really challenging for teachers as it is, managing the fall out of the COVID crisis for people’s lives with all the possible horrendous implications of that, as well as the ‘school stuff’ that needs doing such as a rushed Year 6 into 7 transition, rushed Year 11 into 12 transition, getting timetables sorted, working out what on earth we’re doing with new Year 11 and 13 with potentially reduced teaching time and who knows what happening with regards to Summer 2021 exams. In addition — who knows what effect six months away from school is going to have on staff, pupils and parents and how quickly or slowly it will take to get back to normal? We need to really manage that Autumn examination series really thoughtfully to protect staff and students alike. An overwhelmed, overworked staff body (many of whom may be dealing with their own fallout from COVID) are not going to be best placed to support students through what will be an extremely difficult period.

I believe that the overwhelming majority of people in our profession are good hearted and rational, and will come up with sensible solutions. I have concerns that there are just enough people who aren’t that things could be made to be quite miserable for some teachers in September at a time that is already going to be extremely tough anyway. Hopefully I’m wrong about that.

EDIT 9th April 2020 — Please note: I’ve made a couple of small changes to this post to correct an error I’d made over my initial reading of the OFQUAL guidance. Thanks to Carly Waterman for flagging this up.