School Days

Once, when I was in trouble at my (last) school for something I had written in this Venerable Organ, one of the senior management said two things to me.

Both underlined my general sense of discomfort with the school and most of what it stood for – at least in its upper echelons.

One was ‘I don’t read the newspapers as it’s all nonsense’ and the other was ‘I don’t think people should write about what they know about.’

Well, I might have slightly rephrased the second ‘soundbite’, but the essence is entirely correct. I should not have been writing about schools because perhaps I had some idea of what was actually going on.

Now, foot-stamping and frustrated, I feel I need to set a few non-teaching pundits straight. It’s all about something called CAG – Centre Assessed Grades – which is the way students were awarded their GCSES and A levels last year, and will be again this year.

As I wrote at the time, Gavin’s Lovely Algorithm nearly did for the clever, hard-working children from poorer backgrounds – but, thank heaven, he buckled and gave in to common sense.

This year, there has been more time to consider how the students will be given their grades and, rather than anyone attempting to create another Lovely Algorithm, we teachers are once again awarding the grades.

And oh, the outpouring of bile on Twitter and in the press and from parents (but not, interestingly, from students).

Someone has a favourite; someone doesn’t like my ‘kid’; someone is unfair. Are they adults, these people, or whining children who have hacked into their parents’ accounts?

Here is the thing: I have been building portfolios for my Year 11 children for ever, but particularly since Christmas when the third lockdown was announced. I have impressed on them that everything they do now counts.

For a while, they were submitting half-hearted work. But when I explained to them that actually it is harder to do well with CAG because we have to have evidence spread over months, not just the one-day exam test, they have really raised their games.

Gav and his underlings will have the right to ask for every exam, essay and report the students have ever had.

Cardboard folders with essays and marks and comments and tear-stained responses are piling up in teachers’ cupboards all over the country.

And ‘favourites’? Even before this all started, any teacher worth his or her salt was particularly careful about students they instinctively either liked or distrusted. And, of course, we can’t help it – we are human. There are inevitably some children we warm to more than others. If I give a mark much higher or lower than the child has ever had before, I make sure another member of the department has a look.

I have one student whose predicted grade is a 5. Over the last few months he has been creeping ever upward, and is now looking at a good 7.

He is exactly the sort of student any mediators worth their salt would want a close look at – and they can look all they like, but they will not be able to fault the 7 I plan to award this boy.

There is a downside, of course. One of my students submitted an essay really rather better than I was expecting.

At first, I preened; then I googled. Pick a phrase that seems just a little sophisticated for the student, type it in and … bingo! I found the entire essay ready and waiting to be copied and pasted.

Oh, the cold wrath, scorn and curled lip with which that essay was met. I did my past aspirations as an Ellen Terry proud. It won’t happen again.

So please rest assured that if your grandchildren are given high grades, they deserve them. And if they are given low grades, they deserve them too. We know what we are doing. Trust us.