So did you get the grades you wanted?
It’s A-level results day, and the future of a generation has never been more in turmoil. Here, three writers reveal their hopes and fears
‘I told my daughter to do her mocks as if they didn’t matter – but, suddenly, they do’ Victoria Pougatch
‘If my twins don’t now get the grades I know they deserve, there’ll be a reckoning...’ Jenny Pitt
‘As a former teacher, it’s the solid ‘Gemmas’ of this world that I feel sorriest for’ John Nield
‘From Covid to the recession, the class of 2020 has had some terrible luck’
This is my third set of A-levels as a parent – the third and the most stressful. How do you calm a child when the news is relentlessly bleak? What do you say to a child who is about to be given grades for exams she hasn’t even sat? This isn’t normal pre-results fear.
But the Government has decided it knows best. Even though – if Tuesday’s late-night announcement about mock results being part of a “triple lock”, not to mention the furore in Scotland, is anything to go by – they may already be regretting the algorithm that has downgraded more than 40 per cent of the teacher recommended grades.
There is certainly nothing fair about now bringing mocks into the results equation.
Pupils whose mocks were in December, as opposed to March, are at a ridiculous disadvantage. It’s laughable and unjust and certainly won’t offer any comfort to my daughter who sat mocks in January after spending two weeks in bed with flu over the Christmas holidays.
We told her to do the exams anyway as they didn’t matter. Retrospectively, they do.
My daughter has already started apologising for the grades she is about to receive. She’s convinced they are going to be lowered and doesn’t want us to be disappointed in her. She’s worried about her class ranking. Who pits a group of stressed teenagers living under forced lockdown against each other?
Exams were never about classroom league tables. What a great message to pass on to these anxious teenagers: that to succeed, someone else needs to fail. And fail some will – courtesy of a computer.
This year group, more than any other, deserve to do well. This “Covid cohort” of vulnerable, exhausted, anxious and stressed children have had to stay at home for months. There was no end-of-exam euphoria, no (in the case of my daughter) first legal drink in the pub, no parties on the beach or clubbing in Magaluf, none of the rites of passage experienced by her older siblings.
They’ve had no final assembly, no end of school balls or parties. Their wings were clipped when they were unceremoniously kept at home. Later today, many children will feel they might never fly.
My daughter has been fretting in her bedroom. She’s got her old books out of the cardboard box and shown me her notes – notes she never got to use because the Government lacked the imagination to find a way to allow our children a say in their own future. She wanted to sit her A-levels because it looked as though she was going to peak academically at the right time. She didn’t even get the chance to sit an open-book exam, like her university siblings.
If things don’t go her way today, she can sit her A-levels in the autumn – but she hasn’t been in school since March. Let’s hope universities focus on why they made offers to students and not care about these made-up results.
Any university would be lucky to have my daughter, and I’m immensely proud of her. I hope we will be celebrating today, but there’s a real chance we may well be disappointed for her. At least I could never be disappointed in her.
Back in March, when my 18-year-old twin daughters, Alex and Maddy, were told their school and sixth-form college were closing, there was a mix of confusion and sadness… and, oddly, a moment of euphoria (they’re teenagers, after all). School was most definitely out.
Alex had been studying A-level history, politics and English at sixthform college in Esher, while Maddy was studying history, English and art at her comprehensive school in New Malden. It soon dawned on us all that no lessons meant no structure, no learning, no revision – and, critically, no chance to prove yourself in an exam. There would be no chance to cram it, work until the wee small hours, no chance to really revise to pull it out of the bag to get those much-prized grades.
As we scratched our heads and wondered how on earth A-level grades would be awarded, Ofqual, the exam regulator, announced that three elements would now be taken into account: teachers’ assessments, previous attainment in mock exams and coursework, and the school’s overall performance in previous years.
It didn’t take long for us to realise that the teachers’ assessments would be worth little more than the paper they were written on. The mock exam results were an unrealistic reflection of overall performance – simply an indicator of progress. Which just leaves that godawful “statistical model” that considers the academic achievement of students from previous years. Your results will only be as good as the track record of the institution you attended.
Alex is despondent. Her sixth-form college is excellent in many ways, but isn’t widely known for its consistently high grades. Although she is predicted three As and hopes to go to UCL, her grades may be moderated in line with the academic achievement of students in previous years – downwards. Whereas Maddy attends a school that has been rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, with incredibly high results, and she is predicted A*, A and B. She has secured her place for a foundation year in art, but her deferred university choices for 2021 are looking decidedly uncertain.
Given the exam grade chaos in Scotland this past week, with predictions for similar or even worse to happen in England and Wales, I’m horrified that empty political gestures will affect my daughters’ future – they feel they are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
And, quietly, I am furious on their behalf that, for no fault of their own, they might not get the grades I know they deserve. It’s enough to make me embrace my inner “Karen” – to use the popular slang term for bossy, opinionated middle-class woman with sharp elbows – and do battle with the exam boards on their behalf.
When you think about it, Class of 2020 has had some terrible luck. In 2018, they were guinea pigs for the new GCSE grading – the age-old A-to-u grades were replaced with numbers 9-1 – and a tougher curriculum. My daughters sat the famously awful biology paper – remember that debacle? And if today my daughters are given A-level grades that are not a true reflection of their ability, they can’t easily defer and take a year out: there are no jobs to be had, no gap-year travelling to be done (thanks, Covid…). Their only viable option is to get into university, hunker down and grit their teeth, because who knows what the situation will be like next year?
As a parent, it’s hard not to feel isolated and alone as I’ve never been through this process before. But my girls are sick of it: sick of the worry, the anxiety and the confusion. What about the emotional impact and mental wellbeing of thousands of 18-year-olds? The outlook is so bleak, it is only just that there is some reckoning.
All any parent wants is a just and fair system, and the very best for their kids. Is that too much to ask?
When I was a proper teacher, the school I taught in did well by the “Gemmas” of this world.
Gemmas? They were the sort of girls who never missed a deadline; they never got into trouble and they got a raft of solid grades at GCSE: they were little gems. They went on to become the staff nurses that we applauded every Thursday night and the mothers who are now watching their own sons and daughters going through paroxysms of doubt and fear about GCSE results day next Thursday. The exam-season debacles so far don’t bode well for the Gemmas of this world, who will be hit really hard if they are repeated. At the moment, they are barely holding it together as they await the inevitable disappointment that will be the judgment on their 11 years of education by an algorithm.
These kids deserve better; in fact, they deserve the best. Our youngsters are behind the School Strike for Action movement; they are driving the Black Lives Matter agenda and it is they who are doing something about the proliferation of plastic in the world. If you aren’t lucky enough to have a teenager in your life, then you are missing out.
This year’s Gemmas did not have the chance to work like stink for the final three months of their secondary school careers and batter the system into submission by the honest application of hours of revision and practice.
This year’s Gemmas are having to face up to the reality that, as a society, we will wheel them out in their inadequate PPE and expect them to “be there for us”.
There are nearly one million students embarking on their final year in secondary school in September and another tranche beginning Year 10. We have to do better by them and give them an assessment system that works with and for them, rather than one that is so esoteric and obtuse that only a handful of Dominics understand how it works.
Who do we value: the Dominics of this world, or the Gemmas? Give me the Gemmas any day!