Clamour to delay GCSE results in exam chaos
UNDER-FIRE Education Secretary Gavin Williamson was yesterday urged by a predecessor urged not to release GCSE results on Thursday.
Lord Kenneth Baker said publication should be postponed for two weeks as fury over the handling of this year’s A-levels intensifies.
He said: “If you are in a hole, you should stop digging.”
Yesterday, hundreds of pupils descended on Westminster to protest over A-level results.
Many are vowing to take legal action after seeing their university dreams obliterated.
Thousands of pupils have seen their grades hit by a controversial computer algorithm which is said to have disproportionately affected gifted state pupils from less advantaged regions.
Flawed
Demonstrators gathered outside the Department for Education. Many called the results system “classist” and were also seen chanting, “Justice for the working class” outside the building.
Students and teachers sat down at the front door of the ministry as hundreds of protesters filled the street.
Crowds also chanted, “Get Gav gone” and held placards calling for the Education Secretary’s resignation over the issue.
Lord Baker, who oversaw the launch of GCSEs in the 1980s, slammed the “unfair and barely explicable downgrades” of A-levels.
He said: “I urge the Education Secretary to instruct [regulator] Ofqual not to release the GCSE results this Thursday as their algorithm is flawed.
“The A-level results have produced hundreds of thousands of unfair and barely explicable downgrades.
“They have helped smaller private schools but hit the brighter students in a poorly performing state school.
“It is not surprising that various parties are considering legal actions.
“The Royal Statistical Society has claimed that Ofqual has breached its ‘obligation to serve the public good’ and its model failed to ‘achieve quality and trustworthiness’. Last week, A-levels were allowed to increase by two per cent.
“But for GCSEs this week schools have only been allowed a one per cent increase.
“This will result in millions of aggrieved students and many more millions of aggrieved parents and grandparents.
“If you are in a hole, stop digging.
“The GCSE results should be postponed for two weeks. The
Government can then decide either to accept the predicted grades or invite heads to resubmit new predictions which should not exceed three per cent of their performance in 2019.”
As the crisis grew yesterday, holiday-bound Prime Minister Boris Johnson was urged to abandon his vacation plans to take charge of the situation.
Ofqual issued guidance on Saturday setting out the criteria
for students to make appeals on the basis of their mock exam results, only for it to be withdrawn hours later.
Tory MP Robert Halfon, who chairs the Commons Education Committee, said the regulator’s actions were “unacceptable”.
He said: “Students and teachers are incredibly anxious, particularly the students who are worried about their future.
“This has got to be sorted out.” The suspension of the Ofqual guidance followed claims by Labour that assurances given to students about the appeals process by Mr Williamson were “unravelling”.
Mr Williamson gave a “triple lock” commitment to students – that they could use the highest result out of their teacher’s predicted grade, their mock exam grade or from an actual exam in the autumn.
However, the Ofqual guidance said that if the mock result was higher than the teacher’s prediction, it was the teacher’s grade that would count.
Thursday’s GCSE results will initially be based on teacher assessments and then “moderated” by the Ofqual algorithm to bring them in line with previous years’ results. Mr Williamson had insisted the process was necessary to prevent “grade inflation” which would render results worthless.
ADEEPENING sense of chaos hangs over the education system, fuelled by the explosive controversy of this year’s disputed A-level results. As the Government comes under a barrage of criticism, the combustible row is likely to worsen on Thursday with the publication of the GCSE results, which have been embroiled in similar problems.
At the heart of the current disarray over A-levels and GCSEs is the fact that pupils were unable to sit any exams because of the lockdown in schools. The education authorities therefore had to come up with an alternative method of assessment. What they devised was a computer algorithm which used factors such as the past performance of the school and the individual pupil to moderate the teacher’s predicted grade.
In the absence of real exams, this statistical model was meant to provide consistency and equity. But to its detractors, it has achieved the very opposite, replacing the quest for fairness with the descent into fiasco. In Scotland, where 25 per cent of estimates were downgraded, there was such fury that the SNP Government abandoned the algorithm and fell back on the teachers’ predictions alone to determine results.
IN ENGLAND, the impact of the computer formula has been even more dramatic, with 39 per cent of estimated grades marked down. But the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson refused to follow the Scottish example, fearing that reliance solely on teachers’ predictions would fuel rampant grade inflation. Instead, he and the exam regulator Ofqual introduced a “triple lock”, whereby pupils were offered three options: accept their calculated results, appeal to have them replaced by their mock grades or resit their exams in the autumn at the Government’s expense. All too predictably, this awkward compromise began to unravel over the weekend, when Ofqual suddenly withdrew its guidance on the appeals process for the use of mock exam results. New information will be provided “in due course”, said the battered quango. “It’s a farce. It’s a disgrace and Gavin Williamson should hang his head in shame,” declared one backbencher.
Yet amid all the outrage, a sense of perspective is needed. Yes, ministers’ approach has often been confused and dilatory but they were dealing with an unprecedented situation.
Nothing like Covid-19 has ever struck Britain in modern peacetime. Every part of our civic life, from the economy to the NHS, has faced unique pressures. In the education sector, there can never be a perfect substitute for proper, independent exams. Any temporary alternative was bound to be riddled with flaws and open accusations of injustice.
Tto
HOSE realities have too often gone unrecognised in the frenzy of anger. Indeed, some of the language has been hysterical, with talk of the “final betrayal”, “shattered dreams” and children being “punished”. On the BBC’s Any Questions, pupil Nina BuntingMitcham claimed the Government “has ruined my life”, which was now “completely over”. In the context of the Covid death toll, the care homes crisis, mass business failures and soaring unemployment, such self-dramatisation hardly deserves to be taken seriously. Miss BuntingMitcham will have plenty of opportunities to fulfil her ambitions, especially because universities have promised to take a sympathetic approach. It is too simplistic to say results should be based solely on teachers’ predictions, as such estimates are sometimes “implausibly high” to use the Ofqual verdict.
If the Government had relied solely on those forecasts, then almost twice as many pupils would have been awarded A-star grades than in previous years. One Whitehall source said yesterday that the surge in over-optimistic judgments is “the most blatant demonstration that teachers are not to be trusted on grading”.
Even the Labour Party admitted this last April. Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said “predicted grades are not always accurate”.
The turmoil of recent days has not been an edifying sight. Sentimentality can never be the guiding force of an effective education system. If Britain is to rebuild its economy, our institutions need to show rigour rather than indulgence.
Grade inflation might give the illusion of progress but it debases the integrity of exams. The proportion of firsts at UK universities has quadrupled since 1994, yet employers complain about lack of skills. The same toughness is needed in character. No one is helped by wallowing in victimhood.
‘Sentimentality can never be the guiding force of education system’