A-Levels 2020: Hey, Gavin, Leave Our Grades Alone

So today was A-level results day. It has not been a good day. Students up and down the country received grades far below what their schools predicted, because of a system that appears to have downgraded pupils in disadvantaged areas, whilst protecting the grades of those at independent schools. Who could possibly have seen this coming from a government that is building its legacy on classist cronyism?

In all honesty, my personal experience could’ve been a lot worse. I got two Bs and two Cs, and as much as I would have liked an A, I know that there isn’t the evidence to show this. But experiences like mine are unfortunately a rarity. A friend of mine was predicted AABB by his school, but the government system pushed him down to CBBB. He missed his offer for University and is currently trying to appeal it. Scroll through any social media platform, and you’ll see countless students who were predicted As and A*s given Cs and Ds. Stories like this are echoed across the country, as my generation tries to make sense of this bizarre and unjust system.

We Don’t Need No Education (Secretary)

The results system was flawed. For all the Prime Minister’s platitudes about looking after children’s mental health by getting them back to school, at the moment when it really mattered, his government failed us by sacrificing our prospects on the altar of bureaucracy. It is a particularly cruel irony for a government that professes disdain for process to strangle a generation’s future in reams of red tape.

The end of our school life should have culminated in the opportunity to prove how much we had learnt, how far we had come and what we were capable of. It should have been the chance to achieve grades that we would use to demonstrate our employability and our academic skills. When the pandemic hit, it undermined what we had worked for, but knowing that our teachers would spend hours considering what we deserved was at least some comfort. And then the government decided that a global pandemic and no exams wasn’t enough of a problem to deal with – we needed to be treated as faceless numbers in a system instead of hardworking individuals with goals and aspirations.

You cannot use a statistical model when the system is based on individual performance. Treating us as numbers, facsimiles of our peers last year, takes away everything our education has been about. Work hard? Prove yourself? Why bother. None of us had the chance to prove what we could do in the shape of an exam. All of our coursework counted for nothing. This was a system where it really did not matter how long or hard you worked – no hours of reading or revision counted in the face of the government’s model. So much for pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps eh?

These exam results will influence our lives for years to come. The Education Secretary and Ofqual have ensured that COVID-19 won’t just impact us until there’s a vaccine, but probably for life.

Williamson’s attempted ‘olive branch’ of Mock Grades is, quite frankly, a mockery. My school administered full papers under exam conditions; no extra help, no ‘easy/partial’ questions and stringent marking. In my school, mock exams were supposed to motivate students to work hard to get a good grade in the end. Like many schools, this was a system that was designed to galvanise students before exams, and not to deliver a finished product months in advance.

My twin brother did mocks completely differently. He had three separate exam occasions, with a gradual build up of intensity over time: supported questions, topic warnings, take-home papers. In his school, the philosophy of mocks was to build confidence and gradually increase technique.

Neither idea is wrong and neither is right: like most things, schools will find different ways to do things that work well for them and their pupils. But to then use them to adjudicate on the final grade is not at all fair. Any two students on different sides of the country will have had widely varying experiences of mock exams, and yet the government blindly assumes this could somehow carve a level playing field from the minefield that their system left.

From reading the news and talking to teachers, it would appear that the only aspect of teacher assessment that has had an impact on moderation of grades is the ranking of classes. Again, this doesn’t work. This idea of pre-determined ‘rankings’ in a class somehow corresponding to overall grades is grossly unfair. It presumes that there are a set number of high and low grades in each class, and effectively nullifies the idea that grades are there to be earned through hard work and dedication. Equally, it minimises prospects for ‘middle’ pupils in high-achieving state schools with large classes, whilst maximising them for equivalent pupils in independent schools with smaller classes. The Tories should print it on t-shirts at this point: “You’ll be fine as long as you went to the right school.”

There has always been some form of moderation in exams and coursework – teachers are used to proving that their students deserve the marks they have given. From Year 6 writing through to Year 13 coursework, any teacher is ready to use evidence to prove that the marks they have given are fair and justified. Why could we not have used a system like this ? Why not allow the professionals to do the job they trained for? Why not use the people who knew us and who had actually seen our work and our potential? Moderation isn’t a new thing in education but moderating without evidence is and it’s not a positive change. It sucks.

All in all? It’s just another brick in the wall

No one could have seen a pandemic coming. No one expected the answer to be perfect but we did perhaps expect that, with five months to consider it, the government’s attempt would be fair or logical. At the very least, we hoped they would listen to the teachers who know us and knew what we were capable of.

Instead, we were left with a system that disregarded our years of hard work, tore up our teacher’s assessments and left us at the mercy of a statistical model that disproportionately lowered the grades of already disadvantaged students.

Today is a painful and upsetting day for young people. But frankly, it is just another example of the Tories’ disdain for our generation. A decade of Tory rule has given us crushing austerity, soaring inequality, and the knowledge that we will be poorer and less secure than the generations who came before us. I wish today came as a surprise. However, from the party that tore a nation apart to keep itself together, it’s just another brick in the insurmountable wall that they’ve built in front of young people in this country.

COVID-19 robbed us of the chance to show what we were capable of in exams. But the Conservatives have robbed us of our future.