Examination Chaos: A Press Release
Matthew Milburn, Executive Headteacher of Saddleworth School, Oldham has sent out a press release, condemning this Government’s haste in protecting a deeply flawed system at the expense of the young people trapped inside it. In this acutely sharp piece, he identifies the central issues with the current system and outlines a humanising, student-centred alternative which he and his colleagues have developed over many years now, celebrating the breadth and depth of the individual student.
The uncertainty, disarray and stress surrounding 2020 A level and GCSE results could have been avoided if only the needs of young people and their families were placed at the centre of the assessment process. Sadly, this was not the case. In its haste to protect the system, the government seemed to have forgotten about the young people directly affected.
Our reliance on exam grades that are set to fit a curve agreed in advance for a cohort of young people has been exposed as being deeply flawed. What is interesting about the results that we have shared with students is that they are not ‘generous’ or ‘over-inflated’ - but that they are far more aligned to the results those young people achieved in their SATs in 2015. In that year, 80% of children got the levels expected at the end of primary education. We should expect that at least the same number achieve the ‘expected’ pass at GCSE, but the system does not allow this to happen. At least it didn’t until now and it wouldn’t have even done that without the extraordinary outcry in response to the A Level results. Teacher grades were given taking a child’s prior achievement, progress and work into account. They were not adjusted up or down to meet any expectation - except those placed on senior leaders by government. Namely that the results should be in line with those of the previous three cohort of students; that in effect children could only be as good as those who went before them. What we are left with is a realisation that in a normal year, those same children would have been underscored to fit an expectation set by people who had never met them. It happens every year but this year that process was fully exposed.
In schooling league tables and bell curves have well and truly run their course and a more bespoke and human method of assessment should be developed. The current system ignores the fact that children, like all humans are multi-facetted and have numerous strengths, some of which simply cannot be captured on an exam paper or measured using the written word. Nor does it acknowledge that a child might know more and be capable of doing more than they managed to show on one day when a whole host of other factors might have impacted on their performance - sickness, bereavement, anxiety or basic human error like missing a question on a paper. As a society for too long we have accepted these cases as collateral damage to protect the perceived integrity of a flawed system. Perhaps we should instead seek to protect children.
The over emphasis on exams is absurd. Our addiction to them is such that even when young people hadn’t sat them, schools had to pretend they had. The blinkered focus on public exams has become more acute in the 17 years during which I’ve led secondary schools exposing an endemic lack of trust in teachers and narrowing options for young people. Last year colleagues at our school felt crushed when the results came in after yet more punitive changes to GCSEs and I’m sure many students will have done too. According to the progress measure our school had not done as well as it should, yet we now see nationally that the exam pass rate is set lower than the students’ prior achievement. In effect it expects some to go backwards. Results day 2019 felt bleak for us until the pupils came to collect their results and my spirits soared. So many of them were celebrating their successes and I could see the confidence, resilience, thoughtfulness and essential humanity that each of them demonstrated, even in moments of disappointment. These are things that school should nurture just as much as reading, writing and arithmetic.
The 2020 pandemic has marked a turning point in the history of humanity. For example, it was hard to conceive that in our world, health and wellbeing would be valued more highly than economic growth and yet (for a short period at least) it was. We re-evaluated for a time who had most value in our society and it turned out to be those in essential but low paid jobs. Covid 19 has brought about a step change in the confidence that many of us have in using communication technology. Families have come together and many adults have realised that a commute to work is no longer necessary. In the same way, the chaos surrounding this year’s exams is our opportunity to think again about the way in which we assess young people. We need to move away from scoring students, schools and MATs and towards a humanising form of assessment that empowers the student and gives them the tools to take control of their life.
For years Saddleworth and schools in the Dovestone Learning Partnership have worked with an assessment process we call Pupil Driven Review. It does what it says on the tin. It invites the pupil and importantly their family / carers, to undertake a self-evaluation regarding how well they are progressing. It encourages the child to take ownership of their learning and responsibility for their progress. Of course they must take into account their success in English, maths and science but they also need to reflect upon their successes beyond school and how they are developing as a human being. The process culminates in a meeting with their form tutor, parent or carer and three or four of their contemporaries. It explores not just academic progress but also mental health and wellbeing, attendance, happiness and ambitions for the future. It aims to be a holistic assessment of the child that involves a rounded, evidence based discussion about how they are progressing rather a narrow focus on how well they can recall and write about geography, history or RE. It is far closer to the kind interview that you might be expected to undertake for a job
To illustrate the point, last year, my eldest son got a job as a building surveyor not just because he’d got a degree but on the strength of his personality and his ability to work with a wider team. The company wanted to employ someone who was already Chartered - a level beyond his qualifications - but having tested the field, decided to go with the less experienced candidate because he was a better fit given his personal qualities. There are countless examples like this beyond the world of education and we are increasingly seeing large companies and organisations appointing candidates without asking to see their qualifications as a matter of course. What does that say about the faith that these employers have in exams.
I do hope the debacle around A level and GCSE results this year leads people to campaign for schooling that empowers and inspires the whole child and doesn’t just focus on English, maths and other arbitrary subjects that some consider “important.”
By the way, students at Saddleworth have done really well this year and thoroughly deserve the grades that they have been awarded. I wish each and every one of them well as they progress on through life; they will flourish because they are great people and it has been an honour to walk beside them for the past five years. I apologise to each and every one for my terrible jokes along the way.
Matthew Milburn
Executive Headteacher, Saddleworth School