Commenting on the GCSE results awarded to students today, Geoff
Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and
College Leaders, said:
“Congratulations to students on their GCSE results and to their
teachers. These have been extraordinarily difficult
circumstances, and this generation of young people has suffered a
degree of uncertainty and disruption that is without precedent.
They lost out on the normal rites of passage of leaving school,
and on the chance to show what they could do in a set of exams.
“And they must have been watching the news anxiously following
last week’s A-level results to see if they were going to lose out
again because a computer algorithm might downgrade them – before
the government and Ofqual performed a U-turn and reverted to
centre-assessed grades
“In the circumstances, this was the only viable option. But we
have to know why the problems with the algorithm were not
foreseen, what steps were taken to test whether it was fit for
purpose, and why Ofqual and ministers were not on top of this.
For this reason we have called for an immediate independent
inquiry to be conducted to rapidly ascertain what went wrong. We
think it is the least our students deserve.
“If we’ve learned anything from this sorry saga, it is surely
that our education system has become far too obsessed with
statistics. In many ways, the debacle over standardisation is the
logical conclusion – the idea that the entire grading system
could be mirrored by the application of a statistical model. In
truth, there is a statistical conundrum every year. We have fixed
in aspic the distribution of grades, and every year we consign a
proportion of young people to leaving school feeling that they
have fallen short.
“This year more students will receive higher grades because of
the decision to revert to centre-assessed grades. But this is by
accident rather than by design. In the longer term, we have to
think again about our statistics-fixated system. We have to do
better.
“Another lesson for the longer term, is that we must surely
reduce our reliance on a massive national bout of terminal exams
each summer. There was nothing to fall back on in this crisis,
unprecedented though it was, and the government still doesn’t
have a contingency plan in the event of disruption next year. But
it goes beyond that. In the digital age, we treat a system that
is rooted in the 1950s as an article of faith. We simply must
revolutionise assessment, utilise technology and provide a
variety of assessment approaches.
“Finally, let’s remind ourselves this was a situation like no
other. I have been hugely impressed by the painstaking care that
leaders and teachers have taken over centre-assessed grades, the
determination to get it right on behalf of students.
“The profession rose to the challenge admirably. It was events
beyond our control that sunk the standardisation model. Schools
and colleges have once again been left to clear up the mess.”
