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Soraya Hedges took over her secondary school in the Midlands two years ago. It was almost £1m in debt, employed more than 20 supply teachers and had a terrible reputation among local people. But Hedges (not her real name) has overhauled the school and says students have made considerable progress. Two years on, the entry classes are full and attendance has shot up to 89%, above the national average.
Now, though, Hedges is worried for her students and her school’s reputation, as she awaits GCSE and A-level results that this year, because of the pandemic, will not be based on exams. Instead, the exams regulator, Ofqual, has decided that in England and Wales predicted grades will be “standardised” against a student’s prior attainment and, crucially, their school’s historical performance.
“I’m so angry,” says Hedges. “This model means one of my year 11s may have performed exactly the same as another child up the road, but because that more privileged school doesn’t have a history of underperformance, their child doesn’t get penalised, mine does.” She points out that a school whose performance declined this year but which has had historically strong results, such as a grammar school, will be rewarded.
The idea, devised by Ofqual after a consultation, is to guard against overenthusiastic grading from staff, keen to give their pupils the best chance. But in schools, the decision has caused almost unanimous angst. Leaders are warning that students in rapidly improving schools – likely to be in the most disadvantaged areas – will be penalised for previously poor results, just when they were on track for breakthrough grades. The consequences of a dropped grade could be life-changing.
Jon Coles, chief executive of England’s biggest academy trust, United Learning, has joined the argument. Coles, a former director general for schools at the Department for Education, is not usually found railing against official procedure. But United Learning has taken on numerous ailing schools in recent years and he is worried his students could suffer.
“In the most stable schools where results have often been the same, it will be fine. But in the more volatile schools, especially where results have improved strongly, they’re going to be undergraded. That’s my worry.”
There has already been uproar around results for the International Baccalaureate, graded using a similar method, with teachers shocked by some students’ lower-than-expected grades.
According to Coles’ analysis, Ofqual’s data shows only one third of schools and colleges get pass grades, or above, that are within 2.5 percentage points of the previous year’s results. In other words, for most schools the previous year’s results can’t accurately predict what this year’s will be. This will be particularly true for improving schools.
He is calling on colleges, universities and employers to be flexible with their grade entry requirements this year – and for Ofqual to “build a bit of slack or leniency” into results. “They know perfectly well they can’t get it perfectly right, so what they need to do is make sure they don’t unfairly prejudice some children’s life chances. The cost of undergrading is so much higher than the cost of overgrading.”
Hedges, meanwhile, cites the example of one pupil, Mara (not her real name), whom she fears might pay a high cost for this year’s grading system.
She says she met the girl wandering round the school, soon after she became head two years ago, and asked why she was not in class. “She told me: ‘There’s no point, it’ll be a supply teacher. Why do you want to be a headteacher here? It’s rubbish’.”
The head said she escorted Mara to her lesson, where the surprised girl found the new teacher was a fully qualified scientist, recruited by the head to a permanent post.
Hedges continues: “During the course of her year 10, I saw Mara go from being 10 minutes late to every lesson and having an excuse for everything, to someone who wanted to be a paramedic. She talked to all the teachers in lunchtime and after class and when lockdown happened she emailed saying, ‘what else can I do?’”
Mara’s story could be that of many pupils in the school, almost a third of whom speak English as a second language and about half of whom are on free school meals. Despite Mara’s unsettled schooling in years 7, 8 and 9, the staff have managed to get her to the cusp of the grade 5s she needs for college.
“It was going to be tight to get her on the course, but I genuinely think because of her determination and all our work she’d have pulled it off,” the head says. Mara will be “devastated” if she misses her grades, and retaking exams in the autumn, as also suggested by Ofqual, would come too late for her chosen course.
The school’s data, shared with the Guardian, shows that last year it accurately predicted student grades across all subjects, even occasionally underpredicting them by 0.1 point. “Ofqual should have looked at how accurately schools predicted their grades in the past, not at the historical results,” the head says. “This is so far from a fair deal.”
The data would appear to support Hedges. A study by SchoolDash, which analyses schools in England, suggests more than 5,000 year 11s in rapidly improving schools face losing out under this year’s temporary model.
Rob Campbell, chief executive of the Morris Education Trust, in Cambridgeshire, says says it would be simpler just to trust teachers’ grades without Ofqual’s “standardisation”. “I’m one of a dying breed who was working the system pre-1992 and before league tables, and we were trusted to make accurate grade predictions. We were utterly professional in making sure our understanding of a C or a D grade was fairly applied. It’s only when you add in accountability measures like we have now that you get distortions in behaviour.”
Campbell is particularly concerned that the hard work of his students at Witchford Village College, a struggling school near Ely that joined his trust three years ago, will not be recognised. “When I first walked in there, I’d never seen anything like it. It was so challenging. But two-and-a-half years down the line, it’s a lovely school. The children have bust a gut and I feel bitterly disappointed for them that they’re going to be judged on how the school used to be.”
Last week MPs said they were especially worried that black and minority ethnic pupils, and those with special educational needs, could be disadvantaged by the standardisation process.
An Ofqual spokesperson said: “While we recognise that for a small number of centres it would be desirable for calculated grades to reflect recent or expected improvements in results, our research into GCSE grading shows the performance of centres rarely improves (or deteriorates) consistently in the short term. On balance, it is therefore best not to try to predict improvements in performance.”
The government has promised its “priority will be making sure no pupil is disadvantaged by the cancellation”. For Mara and others like her, only results day will tell.
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