The middle-class mummies who cheat

Round and round and round it goes: coursework or exams? Who benefits from which and why?

The last two years have been well out of the ordinary, and lessons were or weren’t learned by teachers and the government.

The debacle of Williamson’s algorithm in 2020, followed by the shouts of exam inflation in 2021, have left parents and students confused: what do the results actually mean? And wouldn’t it be better if exams were cancelled and everything was judged on coursework?

After all my years in teaching, I am absolutely of the belief that exams are the fairest way to judge a student’s performance. Some students respond well to the adrenalin rush of an exam and others don’t. Some students relish the extra time coursework gives them and some are too lazy to take advantage of that time.

But the single most powerful reason against coursework is quite simply that it unfairly helps the middle class.

For a couple of years in the run-up to COVID-19, I took up tutoring. I taught local children at a local reasonable price, but also took advantage of the ridiculous amounts of money some London parents are prepared to pay (on top of the boarding-school fees). I would toddle up to London every weekend, trail around knocking at the basement doors of grand mansions. I once made the mistake of appearing at the front door, and was soon put in my Agnes Grey place.

And I’d do my damnedest to push up their grades. Until I was complained about to the agency. The complaint was that one parent did not ‘like [my] morals’. On further enquiry, it turned out that what had been found offensive was my refusal to write coursework for the child. ‘Other tutors do,’ the mother complained.

That might be an extreme example, but it is not the only one I can give. A child I was tutoring locally managed only a grade four in his mock exam.

‘I don’t understand it,’ the mother said, ‘you got a six in both of your last essays.’

‘That is because you wrote them, Mum,’ answered the child. (Considering she had a degree in English, I was rather shocked at her poor result.)

And it’s not only the parents who will write the coursework. I know of one case where when a particular teacher’s class coursework was moderated he was caught out, basically having written the essay. The task had been so heavily scaffolded for the students that the 30 essays were almost identical. We teachers are answerable for our results; let’s not pretend there isn’t a temptation to cheat.

So what about those of a nervous disposition who panic about exams? Should they be penalised for their sensibilities? Of course not. They too must, as Lady Macbeth would have it, ‘be provided for’.

And that, I am afraid, takes hard work – hard work on the part of the students, and also hard work on the part of the teachers. The bane of all our lives is the marking that comes with the job. We heaved a sigh of relief when coursework disappeared, but if we are doing our jobs properly, we should be marking a heck of a lot more now – not less.

The simplest, best, most successful way of driving children’s grades up is through practising exam questions weekly. Don’t wait until the run-up to exams; start as the students begin to grasp a text.

Begin by setting easier, narrower questions, perhaps – but those students need to sit down confidently for 45 minutes again and again until the exam room holds no fears. I’m not interested in marking a parent’s attempt at a question on Henry V. I’m not interested in looking at some piece plagiarised from the Internet (although I always take a babyish pride in catching the miscreant out). I want to know that my students, whatever their ability, are prepared.

That takes a lot of work on all our parts, but it’s worth it.