2020 has been unlike any other year in any number of ways. “Strange times”, is the phrase one keeps hearing people saying – and indeed they are.
The debacle over GCSE and A Level results is just one example of how badly the Government has handled the coronavirus crisis. Schools went to some trouble gathering the assessment data that we had available and ranking the students as requested by Ofqual, before submitting it to them, along with our predicted grades. Which the Government then decided to ignore, preferring an algorithm to generate the grades instead. Why bother asking teachers to predict grades at all, if you’re just going to ignore them?
The risk was always that grades this year would be somewhat ‘inflated’. This is a built-in problem when you have a system which puts pressure on schools to deliver the best results. Teachers naturally want their students to do well, partly out of a disinterested and understandable wish to see youngsters we have coached and educated be pleased with how well they have done, partly to make ourselves feel that we have done a good job of teaching them.
Ofqual apparently issued guidance to schools warning them not to be too ‘generous’ with their predicted grades, and rightly so. If the grades are too high, that is not necessarily fair on those who genuinely worked hard and who would have achieved top grades had they sat the exams as usual. Any school whose grade predictions looked to be too out of step from previous years’ could simply be cautioned that, once Ofsted inspections resume (which they presumably will in 2021-22, assuming exams DO go ahead next Spring), if their 2020 results were significantly higher than their 2021 actual results, then they might have a bit of explaining to do. The other problem with overly-generous results could be that the class of 2020 will have their grades looked askance at by potential admissions tutors or employers; though I suspect that once this crisis fades away (God willing) no-one will greatly care about the results of 2020, and students will have the chance to really prove their worth with subsequent examinations – whether A Level or degree.
Exam results tend to go up and down year on year – this is entirely to be expected. In any normal year there will be winners and losers. There is no real reason why 2020 should be any different.