Awarding Grades Summer 2020 Edgbarrow School Hello, my name is - PDF document

Awarding Grades Summer 2020 Edgbarrow School Hello, my name is Phil Marshall; I am a teacher at Edgbarrow School and I am part of the senior team responsible for whole-school data. You may have heard me talk about data at one of our information evenings. I also teach maths, computer science and occasionally physics, so I may have taught someone in your family over the last few years. 1

Awarding Grades Summer 2020 • GCSE • A level • Vocational courses Schools submit Exam boards data to exam award grades boards In this video we are going to explain the process for awarding grades for GCSE, A-level and vocational courses, both the school part of the process and how the grades will be awarded at a national level. 2

Questions and Concerns • What grades will I get? • How will my grades affect what I do next year? • Will my grades be “fair”? • What I still get my place at • 6 th form? • University? • My apprenticeship? Results days • Year 13: 13 th August 2020 • Year 11: 20 th August 2020 We know that there are a number of concerns about the grades this year and many students are frustrated that, having worked hard for two years, they will not get to “prove themselves” in an exam. Teachers are equally concerned and frustrated; we believe that some students will be pleasantly surprised by their grades this year, but equally we know that there will be students who are disappointed and don’t get the grades they perhaps hoped or expected to achieve. For us, this is not new. Whilst we know that the system this year is not perfect, there are many people who would argue that exams are not perfect either. With exams, you can work hard and achieve highly for two years, then have just one bad day and get a lower grade than expected. There are almost always surprises and disappointments, whatever the system for awarding grades. So the highs and lows of results day are familiar to us and whatever grades you receive and whatever your plans for the future, your teachers, tutors, heads of year and senior teachers will be available over the results period to support and advise you, just as they always would. We also know that colleges, universities and employers are going to have to be sensible when it comes to considering grades this year. 3

National A National Process Subject • NOT individual teachers “choosing” grades for students School • Schools submit data to the exam boards… …Exam boards award grades Student • Aim to ensure fairness • Lots of people and data involved at the school level • Process based on advice from many sources The process of awarding grades this year has lots of steps and uses data about the student, the school, each subject and national data. This is a national process and is not about individual teachers “choosing” grades for students. So the basic process is that schools will submit data to the exam boards and the exam boards will use our data and also national data to award the grades for each subject as fairly as they can given the circumstances. Now, there are lots of people involved in the school part of the process, and we are using a wide range of data about our students to ensure fairness. We have taken advice about our process from many sources, including the Department for Education, OfQual who maintain standards for qualifications, the Association of School and College Leaders and ALPS, who provide data support to schools. Much of this advice is in the public domain, so there are links to these sources at the end of the video if you are interested. 4

This process has lots of steps, so we will try to break it down for you; my email address is also at the end of the video if you want to ask any questions, although please be aware that there is some data we are not allowed to share yet as it would be considered malpractice by the exam boards. The process makes more sense if we start with the big picture and then work in to the student data. 4

Fairness of Grades Grades Awarded Nationally in 2019 20.00 18.00 16.00 14.00 Percentage 12.00 10.00 8.00 6.00 4.00 2.00 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Grade In order to understand what we mean by “fair” grades, we need to consider the national data. Here, *roughly*, is the distribution of GCSE grades last year. As you can see, most grades we around a 5, and between 5% and 10% of grades were a 9. 5

Fairness of Grades Example of "unfair" data 25.00 20.00 Percentage 15.00 10.00 5.00 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Grade National Example So let’s imagine if the national grades this year looked like this light blue set, with far more higher grades and nearly double the number of grade 7s. If those were the results from a set of exams, we would say that those grades looked unlikely and we would probably say that the exams had got easier, rather than that students had suddenly performed that much better. We might consider that these inflated grades would be unfair to students and unhelpful to employers or colleges trying to choose between students. In fact the exam boards already manage this each year by adjusting the grade boundaries of the exams so the grades awarded each year are broadly similar to previous years. This is called having “comparable outcomes” and it means that colleges, universities, employers and so on know that a student with a grade 7 one year is similar to a student with a grade 7 in another year. Even without exams this year, this principle of keeping results similar to previous years will help to ensure fairness across the country. That said, there have been calls to be more relaxed about that this year to reduce the impact on students. Part of the issue is that we can recognise when something looks unfair, but it is far 6

harder to define clearly what we might accept as fair. Therefore the exam boards won’t make the final decisions on some of these details until they have actually seen all the school data. So what follows is the guidance we have, on the understanding that there are some things we can’t know yet. 6

Different Subjects Subject 1 Subject 2 20.00 20.00 18.00 15.00 16.00 Percentage 14.00 Percentage 10.00 12.00 10.00 5.00 8.00 Grades Awarded Nationally in 2019 6.00 0.00 4.00 20.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2.00 18.00 Grade 0.00 16.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 14.00 Grade Percentage 12.00 10.00 Subject 4 8.00 Subject 3 6.00 25.00 4.00 25.00 20.00 2.00 Percentage 20.00 0.00 15.00 Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 15.00 Grade 10.00 10.00 5.00 5.00 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Grade Grade Of course, each subject is different. If this was the national picture, each subject has its own national distribution of results, like this. This is important as it is the subject-level data that will be used to make sure that the grades are fair. 7

School data per subject National Subject Data vs Edgbarrow Data 35.00 30.00 25.00 Percentage 20.00 15.00 10.00 5.00 0.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Grade National Edgbarrow We also know that there are differences between schools. For example, here is the national data in dark blue for one subject… and the data for the same subject at Edgbarrow School in light blue As you can see, our most common grade is a 5 in this subject and we have more of the high grades. Overall, we do better than the national average in this subject. Now, in general, we would expect our subject results to be slightly better than the national averages because our Progress8 score is positive. Last year our Progess8 was +0.37 and this means that, on average, our students scored just over a third of a grade better than the national results. Of course, just like the national data, this varies by subject within a school. This is the most important data, as it is the subject results for each school over the last few years that will be used by the exam boards to moderate and standardise our results. If this seems slightly strange, it is worth knowing that the majority of schools across the country have “stable results”, that means they don’t change much from one year to the next, or only change in line with national changes. 8

We would therefore expect that the subject results for each school in 2020 will be similar to the subject results achieved in 2019. If we submit grades that are too generous, or too harsh compared to previous years, the exam boards will change them, just like they do at the moment when they moderate coursework and projects. Of course, this is not perfect but this may be the “least bad” way to ensure fairness across the country, and we know that there are still discussions happening about exactly how this will work at the national level. There are more checks as well and we will come to those shortly. 8