What has happened?
33 ½ hours before the students are due to receive their
A-level results the government announced that if their mock exam grade was
higher than the grade they receive then they can choose to use the mock grade.
According to the Guardian:
Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, abruptly announced that pupils could substitute the grades they received in mock exams held by their schools earlier this year – so long as the mocks were held under exam conditions and could be “validated” by the school.
Why not use mock exam results to determine students’
grade this summer?
As I have written elsewhere, using mock exams to determine what grades to award every student is just not realistic. Mocks are taken at different times in different schools (from Nov to March) and are not marked in the same way.
Are mock results usually higher than the real exam?
In the vast majority of cases, in a normal year the mock exam results are lower than the actual result a student gets in their exams. One would hope that an additional three to six months of study and revision would lead to an improvement!
So why mention them this year?
This year, a student ending up with a ‘moderated grade’ (as most people seem to be describing it) that is lower than their mock exam grade has almost certainly not been awarded the right grade and for those students to be allowed to have their mock grade instead does seem to be a reasonable way to right that injustice.
But what about ‘walking, talking mocks’?
In some schools the mocks are done with considerable support from the teachers – as a way of modelling exam technique and supporting students through the exam process. The second half of the quote shows that those mocks won’t be able to be used: “so long as the mocks were held under exam conditions and could be “validated” by the school”.
How many students will this affect?
I would guess there won’t be many students whose mock exam results are higher than the grades that are received on Thursday.
Who will be disadvantaged by this?
In a way no-one will actively be disadvantaged. This is a post-results change, so it isn’t
the case that if one student’s grade goes up then someone else’s will go down.
There are some students who won’t be able to take advantage of this. They include those whose schools had planned mock exams for after lockdown and those whose mock exams were not carried out under exam conditions. That is a shame but isn’t a reason to allow other students’ clearly wrong grades to stand.
So what’s the problem?
·
After teachers have spent so much time trying to
get the CAGs right ...
·
After schools have explained the system and
rules to students and parents
·
After Ofqual have gone through multiple stages
of proposal-consultation-plan
·
After schools/teachers have read vast numbers of
documents
·
After teachers have had to upload data carefully
·
After exam boards have had to change all of
their systems and scramble to get the results out on time
… the government has changed the rules only 33 ½ hours before the results will arrive at students’ email addresses.
Can we have a summary?
Pros:
This is an easy way to redress clearly unfair grades.
It should affect a small number of students.
Cons:
Some students won’t have valid (or any) mock results that
they can use and won’t be able to take advantage of this.
The government is clearly very scared about negative
backlash.
After teachers and schools have invested so much in this
process, it is galling to see this last-minute change being rushed out.
