I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet.  On Friday I tweeted a poll asking a simple question:

The given options were: Grade 4,Grade 4 for 2 yrs then a 5 or Grade 5. As of this morning (5th November) 521 people have responded (the poll still has another day to run) and the results so far are shown below: 

It would seem that there has been a communication breakdown somewhere  – the performance measure and what schools are measured on WILL BE A 5! It has been for some time … there is no period of grace. Don’t believe me? Check out page 7 of  THIS DOCUMENT – it is dated October but the previous versions referred to a grade 5 being the performance measure. This is not new and I have written about this before! The most worrying aspect about these poll results is the number of people who still think the accountability measure is a grade 4. However, the number of people who think there is a period of grace and in the short-term it is a grade 4 is equally worrying.

As to why or how it’s happened is irrelevant (or is it?) but fewer people seem to think that we are pushing on for 5’s than is acceptable given that we have about 7 months to go. Some of this misconception will have come from the original grading postcard (on the right of the image below) that Ofqual published that was then superseded by the one on the left. 

Some of the confusion will also stem from people mixing up post-16 conditions of funding. For clarification, post 16 have been given a 2 year period of grace, in that they will still recieve funding where a student joins them on a grade 4 even if they don’t resist with a view to getting a grade 5 (More to come on that because making resits for grade 4’s compulsory will be one of the worst things to happen in post 16 and there is lots going on to raise the profile of the problems! One college had 666 (the irony!) candidates taking November resits this week … imagine that nearly 700 students and this number will only grow when the bar is raised. It’s an impossible task).

To clarify and for the naysayers amongst you who think I’m a negferret (I’m not by the way!!) the students shouldn’t be affected by this. This is a school accountability issue. This is an issue of how “we” the profession are communicated with and where that responsibility lies. I could add something cynical about whether or not, certain bodies are effective in making this happen but for once I’m not going to. I do know that it shouldn’t be down to people like me blogging about it (but if we can do it whilst teaching full-time delivering results, why can’t these other organisations that are getting shed loads of public money?) Whilst I do enjoy keeping up to date and I enjoy writing about the changes I’d much prefer that this blog was a bit more teaching and learning focussed. My 4 year blogging anniversary is next week and looking back I never envisaged the journey that we’ve been on. Is it the blog that I anticipated/wanted? I’m not sure. For now, like the changes that come down from the “powers that be” it is, what it is and I will continue to document the changes. It isn’t in my nature to keep my gob shut!

As a maths teacher I understand the limitations of surveys of this nature but equally it cannot be ignored. The population of the sample coming from just Twitter people means that we shouldn’t extrapolate the findings to the whole teaching population but the question as to whether this misconception is the same in the general teaching population needs to be considered. Where do people not on Twitter get their information from? are they likely to be more or less up to date than those on Twitter? You draw your own conclusions!

I also know, that at the end of the day what we get measured on shouldn’t matter but IT DOES. Going forward the “grade standards” (as set out on page 3/4 of  Ofquals consultation response to Grading Part 2 and shown below) established in the first year will be carried forward in subsequent years so effectively what happens this year is going to get carried forward and because of the way grading is awarded means that any future changes in cohort outcomes will be harder to argue and we’ll all get accused of gaming all over again and another cycle of change will inevitably get forced through again in the next few years. Nothing will have changed apart from the fact that the kids are sitting tougher papers. The implications are far-reaching though – some people are now making tiering decisions based on aiming for a “4” and the subsequent level of teaching that goes with this target … the point of these changes is to “up the game” and the outcomes for students.

I should make it clear that the “current” Ofqual postcard does make it clear that it doesn’t expect colleges, universities etc to raise the bar to a 5 but I have evidence that schools are raising their entry requirements to a 5 …. so many mixed messages!

I’ve been re-reading some of the original documents published back under Gove’s tenure and the original premise of these wholesale changes. I always believed in the principles behind the changes but am coming to the conclusion (OK … I’ve been thinking for a while) that from the original publication of the programme of study, the consultations, the accreditation, grading changes and now the fact that a large proportion of teachers seem to think wrongly that the accountability measure (even if just for the next two years) is a 4 (it’s a 5!! Have I said that already?) that the planning and execution of these large-scale changes has been p1ss poor. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

To lighten the mood and because the irony of it made me chuckle I thought I’d share this: Ofqual tweeted a link to a webpage which contained a copy of a letter to headteachers requesting support to communicate changes to staff and parents. I find this mildly insulting that they would think, that with less than 8 months to go, schools haven’t already done this. What do they think we’ve been doing since 2014 when lots of us started teaching this new GCSE as a 3 year course?

Overall, an interesting little poll and I’ve set a reminder to run the same thing in January to see if anything changes … fingers crossed.