Bit of background, I got grades CDD, and I’m happy/accept the C and one of the Ds, but I’m not particularly impressed with the other D as that one was in my best subject. (EDIT: I have now received my Centre Assessed grades, and the D I wasn’t happy about is now a B)
The alternative solutions I can think of so far (this list could get bigger): I know in some countries they did this, and that some people think the U.K. should have done this. Whilst I know we can easily socially distance in an exam hall, at the time of schools shutting we didn’t know how serious Covid-19 would be a few months down the line. I know some people think that in March students have finished learning new content, but certainly for me in all my subjects that’s not true. If we went into school in person, there would be disruptions if outbreaks happened in schools, which would be unfair to those students, and it would also be unfair for students who’s teachers have to isolate (for me at least half of mine would). Distance learning would also disadvantage some students with siblings and lack of access to computers (I have 2 siblings in year 9 and 11 with only one laptop between us all (used to be zero) so it would have been a nightmare with me trying to study for my A-levels with a sister trying to study for GCSEs).- Give students their mock grades. I don’t know many who support this, apart from those who did well in their mocks, but badly from the algorithm, in that case they would be fine with the “original” triple lock solution. However the problem with using mock results for everyone is that you don’t know how regulated they are between the different schools, or even the different classes within the same school. In one of my subjects, someone managed to find out what the mock paper would be and found the mark scheme. I was offered the mark scheme but refused it because I wanted to see what my weak areas are that I need to revise for the real thing. Meanwhile about half the class memorised the mark scheme for the mock. It would be unfair for me to be graded against them, as well as students from other schools. Although these students that cheated would still wrongly benefit from the triple lock. Other people who would also be disadvantaged are those who’s schools didn’t do mock exams, or do them in time before lockdown, or missed them for whatever reason, as well as students who were going through difficult things at the time (I appreciate that there are students that go through difficult situations during real A-level exams but the difference is that they know that they’re the real exams, whilst people going through difficulties during mocks wouldn’t be motivated to try hard then). Also most students don’t revise hard for mocks, use them as a way to work out their weak areas, and teachers often mark them harshly to make sure they don’t slack for the rest of the year. Despite saying the above, and doing badly in my mocks, I do think if the government decided to use a previous school exam result as our final grade, the fairest one would have to be our mock results as we can’t pick and choose our best exam result.
- Give students what their teacher predicted them. This seems to be the most popular, but does come with its own issues. People’s main concerns are the over inflation of top grades, and also teachers’ favouritism and biases coming into play. Last year in one of my subjects, a student in the year above was constantly bigged up as an “A* student” by the teachers. He was the best in the class but got a B in the final exam, with everyone getting grades below him. The reason why I’m concerned is personally, at the start of year 12 I was almost kicked off my maths course and had my parents called in to be told by the head of sixth form that “Ella’s teachers have told me that she will not get an A-level in maths, and whilst it’s still early days, they are very good at their predictions and know what they’re talking about”… a few months later I sat my year 12 mock and got a C so my predicted grade went from a U to a B. A lot of people, myself included, are slow at learning compared to the class, but have it all nailed for the time of the exam and pull it out at the last minute. Despite stating the above, I understand that no solution to the A-levels issue is perfect and there will always be people who are going to be disadvantaged no matter what happens, so despite the fact that hypothetically this particular solution would personally affect me negatively, I can’t say it’s “wrong” or “bad”.
- Use the current algorithm. Our grades were predicted by being ranked in our class, and then having the average grade for the past 3 years in that school and subject related to that rank. For example, if you were the top in the class and an A* student, but for the past 3 years the average top grade in your subject at your school was a B, you’re not going to get above a B (this is exactly what happened to someone in my year in a different subject). I’m not going to bore people with the main issues as they’ve been mentioned on here lots, but one of the issues is that my year, if we sat our exams, should have achieved higher exam results on average compared to the last few years due to us sitting the new “harder” GCSEs, which bridged the gap more between GCSEs and A-levels. As a year, we were meant to get more of the top grades, which seemed to be what politicians were worried about? We had our grades based on the average of students that weren’t as prepared for A-levels as we are. Another issue I have is with the class ranking. In my maths class, the people in it are extremely smart and almost a half are Oxbridge candidates, with the rest applying to the likes of UCL/Imperial/ etc. With the class ranking, the absolute highest I could have possibly been ranked is third from the bottom, despite being an “average” student. The students who were doing significantly worse than me were kicked off the course and made to repeat year 12 again or only do the As. Having our ranks dictate our grades did no good as our grades wouldn’t have been evenly distributed anyway within the class. Also I think people underestimate how different students in one year are compared to the other in the same school. A teacher was telling me how my school a few years ago used to have a GCSE maths and English pass rate of just 30% and then out of no where the next year suddenly had a pass rate of 60%. My final, not normally mentioned, issue is that it disadvantages schools with expanding sixth forms, and schools that are improving quickly. With my sixth form, the amount of students in it are almost double the previous year. There’s about 80 in my year, 40, the year before, and no more than 30 the year before that (with about 15 people from that year staying on to do year 14). I know that in my subjects, the classes before us had some quite significant discipline issues. The year above in one of my subjects used to run into our class playing loud music from speakers and then run out again, and the year that’s 2 years above in a different subject had such significant discipline issues that they’re basically a legend that the teachers still talk about to this day. Why should my class of over 20 people have our results dictated by the 7 people in the first case? And why should my class of 9 people have our results dictated by the no more than 5 people in the second?
Finally, now that I’ve complained a tonne, my attempt at a solution:
So firstly, I’ve been told that before this year, teachers submitted predicted grades anyway, if this is true (Gill Bullen would be able to say) then I think some nerdy computer should look at previous predicted grades, and actual exam results, and see how accurate schools (and subjects within them) are at predicting grades, and generate an “Accuracy Score” for them. Depending on the score, the more “weight” they get when predicting our grades for this year if our year at their school does a lot better than usual compared to their previous years. I also think that our target grades (our predicted grades we get at the start of year 12 based on our GCSE results) should have a bigger part to play in our results than the average of the 3 previous years results. I know people do better/worse than GCSEs but it reflects us better individually than some random person who happened to take the same subject as us 3 years ago.
So to summarise, I would have teachers predict the students grades and tell them that they may be required to give evidence of individual students‘ grades if asked. Now I would keep this part secret until results day: the students that get flagged up as needing evidence are the ones who’s grades are more than +/- 1 of their target grade. The reason why I would keep it a secret is otherwise if schools are told this, then they know that they could get away with over-predicting students (eg my target grades were BBB and there’s no way, as much as I would like to happen, that my teachers should be able to get away with giving me AAA). If it turns out that too many students are more than +/- 1 of their target grades for exams boards to regulate all the evidence, then I think either results day should be delayed OR if it’s still impossible, the exam boards should trust and not bother checking the schools that have a high “Accuracy Score” above a certain number to save them time (to make this fair, it’s also important that schools should not be told their “Accuracy Score” so they know that they won’t be checked if there’s not enough time to regulate every students’ evidence).
Overall, whilst I know the over inflation of top grades devalues A-levels, I think the negative impacts are less than having grades downgraded. The reason why I say this is that as students we all know ourselves and our capabilities better than anyone else. If students were to get into a university course that they’re not good enough for, they’ll drop out. If they’re good enough, they’ll stay. And as adults we should be realistic enough to know our potential and not bother trying to get into a course that is too difficult for us.
Thanks for Reading 🙏😊
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