There was a small but significant protest against the
downgrading of the GCSE results at the Department for Education today. A number of teachers spoke out, including a Head of English, a South London English teacher, a NUT rep and the General Secretary of the London Association for the Teaching of English (LATE), John Wilks. The highlights of their speeches are included in my YouTube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_fj242f3MA&feature=youtu.beA few common points are emerging now. First, GCSE exam scripts needed to be urgently 're-graded' in line with January's grade boundaries because it will be far too late in a few months time for students who are about to enter the Sixth Form: the courses they opt for in September are dependent upon their GCSE grades. This can't wait for the Ofqual inquiry into the scandal, which may take months. Second, there needs to be an honest and frank discussion about how GCSE grades are decided. They are supposed to be
"criterion-referenced"; if students meet the criteria then they get the grade, no matter what anyone else has done. This means, in theory, everyone could get an A*, but so be it, if this is the case! Surely, that's the goal?? But, in fact, it now emerges, after a couple of decades of dishonesty, that they are really
"norm-referenced" like the old O Level; the government, the exam boards, and other powerful people, actually decide behind closed doors "quotas" of students to get specific grades. John Wilks pointed out this terrible contradiction to me in a succinct and clear way; if there are actually "quotas" of grades and our exam system is indeed "norm-referenced", then surely telling schools that they must meet grade benchmarks, such as saying 40%+ of pupils in a school must get 5 A*-C grades, is utterly disingenuous? The fact of the matter is that the government know a certain proportion of children, at the moment 40% of them, are not going to get the much heralded 5 A*-C grades. The government knows that certain schools MUST fail. Our pupils, our teachers, and our entire education system is in a Catch-22 situation; whatever it does, it fails in the eyes of the current regime. Perhaps that's why the teachers outside the DfE were shouting "Gove must go!"
Comments
Over the years the number of pupils gaining GCSE C has risen. It can no longer be regarded as showing above-average ability. So here is the problem:
Either GCSE C returns to being a sign of above-average ability (norm referencing) OR it is a sign that pupils who gain C have reached the set standard for a C (criterion referencing). It cannot be both.
If it is norm-referenced (and this is what appears to have happened with the 2012 English GCSE results because the bar was raised between January and June) then a set amount of candidates will be below-average - mathematically it can't be otherwise. It is, therefore, unfair to judge schools as "failing" because their pupils fall into the "below-average" category.
Yes, it's time that Gove went. And perhaps it's also time that GCSEs were scrapped as well to be replaced with a final diploma at age 18 which genuinely shows what a young person knows, understands and can do.
The best easy guide to how awarding (the setting of grade boundaries) actually works is AQA's A Basic Guide to Standard Setting available in PDF from the AQA site.
Also useful, to get a view of the standard procedures laid down by the regulator is
Section 6 of GCSE, GCE, Principal Learning and Project Code of Practice
May 2011, available from the Ofqual site.
The issues associated with criteria referencing and norm referencing still exist and are of very real importance.
The issue is about grade consistency. It was the setting of grade boundaries that started all this. Wake up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2195519/GCSE-English-As-70-000-l...
Aren't they publishing their initial report tomorrow?
The report is now out and this is what it says:
We have looked carefully in each exam board at how their examiners set the June 2012 grade boundaries for all units. We found that they acted properly, and set the boundaries using their best professional judgement, and taking into account all the evidence that was by then available to them. We have seen evidence of how it was done. The June boundaries have been properly set, and candidates’ work has been properly graded.
http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/news-and-announcements/130-news-and-announcemen...
"The exams watchdog highlighted concerns that modular GCSEs created particular risks in maintaining standards because they allowed pupils to “bank” grades early. It even came up with a workable solution that might have avoided the row that has erupted since last week, but decided not to implement it."
Ofqual, like Ofsted, appears to be increasingly unfit for purpose.
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2012/07/is-it-time-to-call-time-on...
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6287754
Breakfast news this morning (Sat 1 Sept): unions are meeting to decide whether to mount a legal challenge. Gove will be expected to answer questions in Parliament on Monday. Ofqual has "exonerated" Gove but if this is so then why did AQA decide to move the grade boundaries for English after the Jan exams? The official reason is that AQA didn't have enough info to work on at the time and therefore marked exams too generously. However, an alternative explanation would be that they realised that unless they raised the grade boundaries then too many pupils would get a C and this would go against Gove's much-publicised rhetoric about "rigour". They shifted the boundaries to avoid the Wrath of Gove.
but if this is so then why did AQA decide to move the grade boundaries for English after the Jan exams?
You often chide people for not providing links or references, however you clearly don't read the the material that is supplied. If you did, you wouldn't be asking this question. If some teachers had bothered to read the material supplied to them on the sites of the various awarding bodies, they would not have been taken by surprise or relied upon the Jan grade boundaries in the first place.
The 'awarding' (setting grade boundaries) system was adopted in 2009 and rolled out through AS, A and finally GCSE exams. It had noting to do with Gove.
The best easy guide to how awarding (the setting of grade boundaries) actually works is AQA’s A Basic Guide to Standard Setting available in PDF from the AQA site.
Also useful, to get a view of the standard procedures laid down by the regulator is
Section 6 of GCSE, GCE, Principal Learning and Project Code of Practice
May 2011, available from the Ofqual site.There is also an update of this tailored to this summer's GCSEs here
http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2012-05-09-maintaining-standards-in- summer-2012.pdf
So, according to David Triggs, , pupils who entered early in June 2011 also did better than those who waited until June 2012. Will Ofqual now say that June 2011 English exams were also marked too generously?
And the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust is also “backing the campaign” to discover whether disadvantaged pupils were particularly affected.
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6278850
Perhaps "maintaining standards" is somewhere else on Ofqual's website. Or maybe it's disappeared altogether.
http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/2012-05-09-maintaining-standards-in-
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