EDIT: Sorry for the length … I got a little carried away and have cut this into 2 blog posts!

I’ve now been mulling this over for 24 hours as I didn’t want to blog about the consultation released by Ofqual on Friday afternoon in the heat of the moment. I am also not commenting on the fact that there is nothing in there that couldn’t have waited until Monday morning … oh ok … yes I am. No doubt there will be parents and students up and down the country that will be reading and hearing about the consultation and looking to schools for guidance so once again there will be people fielding these emails and enquiries over a weekend which given the pressure they have been under is just unacceptable.

I don’t make that comment lightly and its also not made looking for sympathy but on Monday 4^th January at about 8pm the educational landscape changed. Yes, its temporary but the pressure and stress that people who work in schools are under cannot be overstated. Lockdown 3 feels different. It looks different and it is different for so many reasons but that’s not what I’m going to elaborate on here as it would take forever. I don’t profess and in fact will admit to saying that I don’t know what the alternative is … my instinct is that this is all overcomplicated. Off the cuff a few weeks ago I suggested that maybe exams should be optional. I don’t know how this could work but cancelling them completely and replacing them with the proposal (which is essentially not cancelling exams!) is not the solution either.

The use of the term “teacher-assessment” by Gavin Williamson in his speech seems deliberate too. Any grade done on the basis of predictions should not be fecking teacher assessment. Everyone that runs a department will know that they don’t have free reign and there will always be someone else who has an input and so it will be a “centre” assessment.  Too much to say on that point!! But the use of teacher rather than centre is a shift … I do wonder why the language changed. It just feels too deliberate to not wonder why?

I also feel I must do the right thing by the school I teach at and make it clear that the below are my own personal thoughts – I’m drawing on conversations and (worried) emails from lots of other maths teachers too but are my own opinions. That said … as a school we’ve found ourselves in a really lucky situation and our students have had a great diet since schools returned in September and we’ve been able to do most of the normal things that happen in the Autumn term including giving year 11 mocks … in fact within Maths, we and the students were gearing up nicely for the Summer exams. Our year 11 were performing better than last years cohort were at the same point despite lockdown#1 – I don’t say that lightly and am not gloating (I really don’t want it to come across that way). They returned in September really positive across the board and within maths we have years of experience and strategies to deploy for proven rapid improvement! We’ve done it before in two schools – one that needed to get out of National Challenge (and went onto get Most Improved School) and the other where we went onto get a national award for the department. Having to respond to a question from a year 11 student after Gavin Williamson had announced exams were cancelled during the lesson straight after his announcement was awful. I am not saying it is right and is indicative of the direction of travel with edu-policy over the last 20 years but to have a student state that they feel that the last 11 years have been wasted as they wont get to show what they can do is heart-breaking (I did reassure them that exams won’t define them!) … HOWEVER I do know that not every school has been so lucky.

So to the consultation – I have tried to bring my thoughts together in terms of 1 main “issue” and peripheral stuff rather than dealing with every question being asked as part of the consultation but first an observation: The first thing that came through in the introduction is that this is a joint consultation with the DFE and Ofqual – last years consultation about the exams may have been joint (I have only gone back and looked briefly) but if it was it certainly wasn’t the opening statement. I am hoping that this is because Ofqual don’t want to be hung out to dry!

ISSUE 1 – the exam system .. that’s not how grading works. We don’t make the rules!

This consultation is proposing that “a student’s grade in a subject will be based on their teacher’s assessment of the standard at which they are performing” and  this is what I have a huge number of issues with. Where do I even start?

Its not a prediction of what we thought they’d get had they sat an exam. Its where they are performing at that point in time … based on what? Decided using what criteria? Previous cohorts? And therein lies an issue. We just don’t know how this year would perform compared to previous years unless they sat an exam and no matter what the awarding bodies feel they are able to provide in terms of statistics on specific topics/questions it won’t take into account the fact that we can’t get away from: this cohort nationally may not be able to do the same level of stuff that previous cohorts have been able to. The extent of which they won’t know. Fact.

But the issue is bigger than that ….. it’s the way grading works. Just because a student gets a grade 5 in a particular exam sitting (and on a specific tier of entry in terms of maths) they only get this based on the whole cohort. Don’t blame me – we don’t have criterion-based exams whereby students have to prove proficiency of certain things to get a grade (think driving test) – we have a system which in normal years says that X% nationally will get awarded each grade (+/- the previous year based on exam board evidence and supposedly the national reference test … but that’s a whole other blog post). So, unless I know where my students are performing compared to everyone else at that point in time it’s impossible to say … yes we can use past papers (and I’d prefer that to made up papers that haven’t been through a whole cohort!!) but there is still a massively element of uncertainty. I digress but for you non teachers … believe me when I say there is no such thing as grade 4 content (for more detail see this blog post ) . What we do have is woolly statements for grade 2, 5 and 8 like below which can be found on the Ofqual site (I do wonder if these descriptors will disappear shortly!?!?) but the reality is that even if a student can prove they can do all of this their grade is not based on these – because of comparable outcomes year on year what a student (who achieves a certain grade) can and cannot do will change from exam session to exam session (Nov v June … again that’s a different blog post too).

TONGUE IN CHEEK – I think I can award 8’s across the board as I reckon I can produce some tasks for this that all students could access!!

None of this is the fault of the teaching profession – and it certainly doesn’t mean that we have a training need which I find quite insulting by the way Gavin! It’s the way the system works. We are being asked to build a house of cards on shifting sands.

Peripheral  issues – Compulsory/Optional/ Quality of materials/ Timing/Exam boards/Marking

So … we will be provided with papers from the boards but at this point we aren’t sure if they will be compulsory (how can they be if students aren’t able to attend?) and this is going to create further inequality across the system as not all schools will want to give their students these papers especially if they are of dubious quality or even worse if it shows that students won’t get the results they deserve … especially is based on the level they are purportedly “working at”. Why would I say dubious quality? It is an almost an impossible task being asked of the exam boards to deliver this in just (1/2 of Jan, Feb, Mar and April) … 4 and half months! If its rushed through it will be poorly quality assured and will inevitably be … ummm … shite! I am fed up being polite .. can you guess!). Papers for live assessments take months and go through levels of quality assurance and so unless we are “just” going to get the papers that would’ve been sat they will be of dubious quality with no credibility when it comes down to the grade boundaries/criteria that we are to use as no one knows until they’ve been through with students sitting them and any exam board that claims they can do this I would suggest that if it was the case, then why aren’t grade boundaries similar every exam season if you know before the exam what a student working at a specific grade  is going to be able to do?

What these materials look like is important but at this point I would prefer to use a past paper that has been sat by past students than something “made up” specifically for this purpose. Sorry exam boards … its not that I don’t trust you, but I think what you are being asked to produce is nigh on impossible.

I do wonder if this backtrack of “exams but not exams” is a result of timing. This year the cancellation was announced before entries for the Summer exams are made and so exam boards are facing a massive chunk of revenue loss … it is massive! I can imagine there were some phone calls between people in high place … or am I just very cynical?

On the one hand this consultation claims to aim to “minimise teachers’ workload” but the reality is that having to mark the papers and not get paid to do so will only increase it. I haven’t an issue with marking, but we are talking about millions of papers that need marking in a very short window of time. It also means that exam boards cannot expect to get the same level of fees (they can’t justify it if we are marking the papers for them) as they won’t be paying their marking team (and what’s the incentive for them to come back to mark next year??) and so will face a loss in revenue anyway.

So many issues … no answers I’m afraid … I will be back with more when I can bring my thoughts together on my further points. I don’t blame Ofqual – what they have been asked to do by Gavin Williamson is impossible. What worries me is that it will be teachers and schools that will be picking up the pieces and taking the flak from the media and picking up the pieces with students when it all goes tits up!

Before I post part 2 I’d love to know your thoughts … comments below (I may not make them public at this stage!)… as I hope there are some of you more positive about this than me. Tis late so I’ll be back with part 2 soon.

In the meantime, I would ask that whether you’re a teacher, parent, student you read the document and come up with your own conclusions but please do respond to the consultation.