So it wasn’t a dream – when I wrote THIS POST. On the one hand we’ve got answers and I applaud that, but on the other hand I’m not convinced this has been thought through in terms of its implications. Let’s take a step back to September when the original grade equivalencies were set out …
Ofqual published the above (which has been superseded) along with analysis of the consultation responses of the “Setting grade standards consultation” ( a copy is HERE) which was the first time that it became clear that a G was going to be pinned to a U (after the specs had been submitted which accounts for some of the boards initial Foundation tiers being tough!) I think someone at the DfE had finally realised that raising the bar at the lower end would mean about 25,000 more students achieving a “U” grade than under the A*to G exams. We had the following clarification.
Part of Nicky Morgan’s speech on Tuesday was entitled “fairly graded”… but rather than misquote it, here is the paragraph that refers to grading:
Let’s deal with the glaringly obvious misnomer about us supposedly starting to teach this “from September”. If we’d left the teaching of the new GCSEs until September we’d be right up shit-creek. Most of us have already started teaching it. Where, oh where are you getting your information from? If the students had been subject to the new “improved” KS2, 3 etc programmes of study yes I’d agree it would just be a continuation and so could be “a two year course” … but the fact is our poor year 9s are the gap generation as they haven’t been subject to the new world of the previous key stages.
What does a “good” pass mean? I can’t find clarification about whether this is the bar for “resits” at college/6th form etc but assume that the press release that accompanied this showing the below means that as it’s the “accountability measure” then it will be the standard by which students need to achieve so as not to have to forcibly continue with Maths GCSE post 16. I may be wrong with that assumption.
In my previous post I made a stab in the dark attempt to look at numbers this would involve – however someone else (who shall remain ever nameless) has done some crunching of the numbers too and come up with potentially 100,000 students caught in the “good/not good” borderlands. Whether it’s that figure or less, you can rest assured it will be in the tens of thousands of kids that will be affected. These are the students that today get a C – considered a “pass” (and who are in the bottom two thirds of a C grade) that in the new world will get a “4”.
The important point is that it is likely that the proportion of grade 5 “passes” could be roughly the same as C grade passes back in the late 80s/early 90s. To use a phrase quoted to me, it is almost a “resetting of the clock”
Now if that is the intention everybody should be prepared and brace themselves for the media fallout and the government need to at least be open and honest that they are aware of this and are prepared for the fallout. What happens with floor targets … how low can they go? Again, more questions … or is it really a case that it will force more schools to become academies? Or is it just a clever plan – in 5 years’ time (when we have the next election) we’ll be three years into it and current and incoming year 7’s will be going through the system (remember there have been subject to the new programme of study at KS3 and KS4 but not KS2) so should be slightly better prepared, teachers will get used/more adept to the exams and so the results will improve? The ideal would have been to wait for the students in the “curriculum change funnel “to work their way up the system – for example our current year 3 or 4s are the first group (someone can tell me definitively I’m sure) that will have followed all 4 NEW key stages and so it’ll be at least 7 years until we see the impact. Now if education wasn’t a political football, we’d wait and not put undue, unnecessary pressure on a generation of students by gap filling through necessity. We’re supposed to be enriching their maths experience … not worsening it by constantly playing catch up!
It is far worse than that though, dear reader. Even if we genuinely embrace the changes and bust a gut to raise standards and every student genuinely does better on the new GCSE, the same 100,000 (I say 75,000 but hey what’s 25000 between friends) will be automatically failed as the 4 and the C is proportionally linked to 2016. SOOOOOOOOO … the outcome of this policy is that these same students HAVE to fail in 2017, so in essence we’re onto a loser whatever we do.
By the way I still tell ALL my students that any grade apart from a “U” is a “pass”. If you have ever taught students for whom a “G” or an “F” (basically any grade!) is an achievement it is sad, that here we have our government making it clear that only a 5 and above will be considered “Good” – how will that make the students feel?
So it would appear that we’re going to have even more shades of a “pass” than we do today … almost got to the end without my “fifty shades of pass” reference!
