Middle-class pupils have tests edge

Children from well-off families will have unfair advantage preparing model answers, says exams adviser

MIDDLE-CLASS students who can prepare “model answers” to exam questions will have an advantage in this year’s A-level and GCSEs, an Ofqual adviser has warned.

Grades will not be fair if some pupils are given perfect responses to memorise in advance, according to Barnaby Lenon, who sits on the exam watchdog’s independent advisory board.

This week, it emerged that exam boards would publish test papers before pupils took them, after officials decided it was inevitable they would be leaked online if they tried to keep them secret.

But Mr Lenon said that once the questions were published, the “completely natural response” of teachers would be to prepare model answers for their students to commit to memory and write down in a test paper, which could then be used as evidence for their predicted grade.

The Department for Education has already announced that end-of-year exams – which teachers can use to inform their predicted grades – will be voluntary. Exam boards will prepare a series of test papers for every subject, but teachers will be allowed to choose whether or not to use them to inform their predicted grades.

If teachers decide to use the papers, students will not need to take them under exam conditions. Teachers will also have discretion over whether they are taken at home or at school.

“In a normal year, most good teachers try to guess what questions will come up and give students model answers,” Mr Lenon said.

“That would be normal. But, of course, in a normal year they don’t actually know. They are just guessing. If the teacher knows the questions, then it becomes much closer to a form of malpractice. This year it is sanctioned malpractice.”

The test papers will be made publicly available in advance so students have the chance to see the questions before they take them.

Students with an advantage this year will be those whose teachers have produced model answers for them, he said, or those with educated middle-class parents who have the time and resources to help them.

Mr Lenon said that the system for awarding grades this year is “more dangerous” than last year’s in terms of the potential for unfairness.

“Last year, although there was much unfairness, at least most schools were doing something similar,” he said.

“It’s not too late to manage this, as long as clear instructions are given about the production of model answers.”

Ministers have insisted that this year’s grading plan is the “fairest possible system” for pupils and that the Government is putting its “trust in teachers rather than algorithms”.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “Teachers will determine students’ grades based on their overall performance and will consider a range of evidence in their decision, including in-class tests, coursework and exam board questions – many of which will be taken from past papers that are already published.

“The provision of these materials – which can be completed by students at different times and in different formats – was widely supported by teachers in our consultations.”

An Ofqual spokesman said: “A wide range of questions will be made available by exam boards.

“So while students will have access to them all in advance, they will not know which ones, if any, as the use of exam board materials is optional, their school or college will use.”