Cast your mind back to August last year, when a rogue algorithm caused chaos with exam grades and CAGS, TAGS and SAGS entered the national consciousness.
We asked our spy in the staffroom to look back at what went so wrong last year and explain how things are being done differently in 2021.
The chaos of the Covid pandemic has been particularly felt by the education sector. From the loss of essential teaching time to the vast reduction in social and sporting opportunities, children have been affected perhaps more than any other group.
A key concern has been the enormous disruption to the examination system in both 2020 and the upcoming 2021 season. The cancellation of public exams, as well as the ongoing worries about the true scale of the impact of the disruption upon their education and development, led to what was undoubtedly an imperfect and rushed solution in 2020. Pupils who were expecting to sit exams were instead awarded their predicted grades, with some minor standardisation – and because of problems with the A-levels algorithm, GCSE students ended up being awarded the higher of the teacher-predicted grades and the algorithm.
At the time, the government acknowledged the shortcomings of this approach, and it has implemented a new grade-awarding system for 2021, in light of the continued disruption to teaching for much of this academic year.
So, three questions:
- What happened in 2020?
- What’s the plan for 2021?
- How will this year’s plan work in practice?
What happened in 2020?
As the government scrambled to manage the first wave of the Covid pandemic and the school closures that accompanied the initial lockdown, the decision was taken that pupils in exam years – that is, those sitting GCSEs (Year 11), AS-levels (Year 12) and A-levels and the IB (both Year 13) – could no longer be expected to sit public exams.
This was made for a variety of reasons: there were still very real concerns about the safety of gathering pupils in halls and potentially contributing to the spread of the virus and putting them and their families at risk; in the face of the national lockdowns, the logistics of producing, supplying and marking the papers were a genuine issue; and the impact on children’s education from the closure of schools was not clear.
This last point was particularly sensitive – the government was acutely aware that pupils could have covered very different parts and quantities of the required curriculum, with very different approaches and relative success rates from different schools when it came to distance learning. (Speaking from personal experience, some schools very quickly transitioned to fully livestreamed and interactive teaching, while others stuck with the ‘complete this work by the end of the day’ approach.)
The upshot of all this was that grades were awarded according to teachers’ predictions – and the phrases TAGS (teacher-assessed grades), CAGS (centre-assessed grades) and SAGS (school-assessed grades) entered the national lexicon. While this solution took into account the massive disruption to students’ education, there have been concerns ever since from a variety of areas that it may harm them in the long run. The acceptance of predicted grades – which are almost always highly optimistic views of how a student might perform in an exam – caused a large spike in grade inflation from 2019 to 2020. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) itself has recognised this issue, reporting that:
The worry is that this grade inflation will damage the reputation of these qualifications, making them less valuable to students and less attractive to employers and universities. And there is a wider, unanswerable concern about the long-term impact of Covid-19 on education as a whole – how far behind have the children of the pandemic fallen, and how great an impact will this have on their futures?
What’s the plan for 2021?
In the aftermath of the 2020 exam-grades debacle, the government (through Ofqual) held an open consultation on the plan for 2021. The eventual solution occupies a middle ground between the still untenable exams and the overly generous awarding of predicted grades:
- Teachers will still assign grades to pupils, as in 2020, which will be quality-assured and standardised by both the schools and the exam boards.
- These grades are based on assessments of what pupils have learned so far, rather than a reflection of missing knowledge – that is, pupils are not being negatively marked for not having covered material.
- These grades must be supported by the data – there is a raft of options on how this data can be gathered (see below), but the main options are internal set work, past papers, published and unpublished questions from the exam boards and class essays and tests. Coursework is also accepted as a part of the wider-evidence base.
- Teachers will submit grades to exam boards by Friday 18 June 2021.
- Results days for GCSE, AS- and A-level and some vocational qualifications will then take place in the week of Monday 9 August 2021, to give extra time for any appeals to be assessed.
The government hopes that this approach will help to curb grade inflation, as well as give universities and employers greater confidence in the value of the qualification.
The plan in practice
So how have schools reacted to this new guidance? Without naming names, they seem to fall into a couple of categories of thinking, with the major consideration being how best to gather the evidence required to substantiate a grade. The lists of questions that the exam boards are publishing can be taken and used in any configuration by the schools, which allows them to easily assess material that has been covered. Many schools have set several rounds of fixed assessment in late April and May that will form the basis for the evidence.
The reality of the situation is that the more admissible evidence there is for each student, the easier it will be to substantiate the allocated grades (and, perhaps more cynically, the more chances each student will have to produce work that is of a high enough calibre to merit a grade bump).
Other schools have opted for weekly assessment, to give a more reliable average and benchmark, as well as some discussion over whether to use the exam-board questions. While they are undoubtedly a useful resource, there are genuine fears over basing a student’s grade largely upon their answers to questions that are open for all to access beforehand. The view is that many schools will opt out of these set questions to avoid fears over cheating (with students able to easily prepare for the exact question they are going to see) and the potential further impact they could have upon a student’s education if they were able to restrict their revision and further reading solely to the list of approved questions.
The ultimate test of the system will be in the standardisation and quality assurance, with the exam boards having been instructed by Ofqual to be particularly tight on grade inflation – the ‘generous’ approach is certainly no longer in effect. The boards have been given a longer window than usual to scrutinise the schools and will be using both a representative sample of all schools and colleges, and more targeted checks using risk-based criteria – that means spot checks, something that is not lost on the schools. Hopefully, this new approach can produce more reliable results without putting too much extra strain on both pupils and teachers.
From a student perspective, this approach is undoubtedly harsher than the one taken in 2020, although the hope is that the grades they receive will be more reliable and helpful for them in the future. There has been some clarification on students’ right to appeal their results – as in any other year, they (through their school) can appeal the results to the exam board, who will reassess the evidence – although there has not been any news about whether they will be able to re-sit in autumn or winter if they are unhappy with their grade.
Conclusion
This year’s grading strategy is largely a response to what is widely considered the failure of the 2020 approach. The shift towards evidenced grading by teachers, standardised by schools and exam boards and heavily quality-controlled by the awarding bodies, is intended to halt the massive grade inflation that was seen last year.
The ultimate cost of the pandemic in education has been to children’s development and learning, and it is vital that this is not amplified by wayward policy.
While cases of grade inflation can be worrying, there were many cases last year (and will be many more this year) where the grades were spot on – and pupils should still be hugely proud of what they’ve achieved. Most importantly, along the way, pupils will have picked up all sorts of soft skills that will stand them in great stead for the future, which should be widely celebrated.
Last year, we commissioned Sir Anthony Seldon to write a letter to the class of 2020. His brilliant words still ring very true today: ‘You’ve proved what an adaptable, upbeat and go-getting year group you are by the way you responded to the chopping of your final year. These are precisely the skills that are needed. That is why I am so optimistic for you.’ Read his words of encouragement in full here.