Whats the name for an edit comment that appears at the start of a post? Don’t know? Me neither … Well this is one of them … I started to write this post and it became something else but I’ve left it as it is … apologies in advance!

This will be the first of several (lots probably) posts, hopefully culminating in some guidance (with a MASSIVE health warning) for the new GCSEs in terms of grade boundaries. I say “lots” because in each post I want to focus on ONE SMALL ASPECT of the new grading system … think of it as breaking it down into bitesize chunks.

At the minute we are all pi55ing in the wind and there are so many concerns we all have, as we approach the end of year 10 with the first cohort of students for the new GCSE. Like me you will probably have loads of questions that need resolving and decisions to make at some point in the next 6-8 months: Which students will be Higher tier? Which will be foundation tier? Which exam board? What tests do we use to assess students when they’re in year 11? If we use any specimens/mocks/practice papers from the exam bodies how do we tell students, parents and of course, our gaffers what grade these students are working at?

I’m not promising to answer any, or all, of these questions – I’ll be chronicling our thought process through this series of posts, with each one looking at different elements but because I’m taking it right back to basics I apologise if some of you think I am teaching you how to suck eggs but you would be surprised how many people don’t know some of the more basic information.

Right! So let’s start at the beginning … there are TWO tiers in Maths. The foundation tier will only award grades 1 to 5 and the higher tier will be grades 4 to 9 with a consolation/discretionary grade 3 – I’ll come back to these in the next post but right now lets look at the “overall” grading mechanism. The awarding of grades was original set out by Ofqual back in 2014, but back in April they announced that there was another consultation (I wrote about it here -> Moving goalposts ) to look at how grade 9 was going to work, so here we are at the end of year 10 for the first cohort and we still don’t have the complete picture.

Before I go on, I have to share this quote from Ofquals “setting the grade standard – part 2” :

Our proposals are designed to protect students taking the new qualifications, particularly in the first year when teachers will be less familiar with the new content and how it is assessed. We want to minimise unexpected or unfair outcomes for students in the transition to the new GCSEs.

I’m sharing because it just makes me smile; my first thought is … well it’s a little too late for this now isn’t it? I just can’t help thinking that all of this weeks media frenzy about the SATs tests isn’t a patch on what is to come next summer – what we *could* have done to achieve the same aims is to have just raised the “gold standard” to a grade B at GCSE and introduced an A **. I say that very tongue in cheek by the way.

Anyway, back to the grading … the grades in year 1 (i.e. 2017) will be statistically set and going forward thereafter this “grade standard” will be carried forward to subsequent years. Ofqual say that in subsequent years, grading will be through “largely the same approach as is in place for pre-reform GCSEs, which is based on a mixture of statistics and examiner judgement” and that they will “look to improve on the current approach where possible, for example through using the outcomes from the National Reference Tests.”

With regards the first year what does “statistically set” mean? I know that some of  you will say that the first year the grades would be anchored against the outcomes from the 2016 results, to ensure that there is parity in the level of award but this isn’t the case – the use of the word “broadly” was very clever. In fact, in the first “grading” consultation document Ofqual stated they will use “statistical predictions”, with these predictions being ” used to determine the proportion of students are awarded at least a grade 4. The predictions will be derived from the cohorts performance in their Key Stage 2 tests relative to the performance of previous cohorts, as now.”

Now I must reiterate this is not a change on Ofquals part but it does seems to have bypassed most (again, if you’re not one of them I apologise!) people, that prior attainment is being brought into the mix. It is interesting taking the time to review the SATs results for the 2012 cohort (i.e. the year that our soon to be year 11’s sat their KS2 papers) because both their 4+ and 5+ percentages showed increases on the previous years. I’ve shown them below:

This isn’t the blog post that I set out to write because as I’ve been writing, it became clear that there isn’t the clarity most people thought they had – most people thought that the results would be anchored to this summers results, when in fact 2016 is never referenced “explicitly” – it would have been simple to check that the percentage awarded the grade 4 in 2017 was the same as those that got a C in 2016 but I can see that there is some sense in checking against prior ability too. It does however beg the question about the level of transparency we will have when the results are published (I’ll be watching closely!) about how the proportion at each grade were allocated – I know that press releases are usually soundbites but publication of the national figures next Summer will need to be carefully managed (I have on my list of blogs to write to look at potential “pass rates” by that I mean 5+ in 2017 to give people something tangible to manage expectations next Summer. Some people haven’t yet realised that the ar5e is going to drop out of national “pass rates” in maths … cue the maths teacher bashing! (that reminds me … I need to buy a tin hat and flak jacket!)

I’ll be back shortly with the one I intended to do about the placement of specific grade boundaries.

I am seriously considering a #blogaday over the Summer holidays … you have been warned!