THREAD on the Ofqual consultation.

The exams situation is a fiasco on top of a debacle. Yes - loads of kids have missed out on schooling. That is bad. Yes - the provision across the system is the most unequal it has been in living memory. That is bad.

The solution proposed by the DfE and Ofqual is to get teachers to submit a grade that they think their students are “performing at”. Here there are a number of problems:
Problem 1: what does “performing at” a grade even mean? An exam grade is comparative - if someone has any particular grade all it tells you is where they are compared to their peers. There is NO SUCH THING as “grade 6 content” or “working at grade 6”.
This is as true in maths, where content is cumulative, as it is in something like English, where examination is much more subjective. If you ask teachers all across the country to grade, you will get substantial variability because objective criteria simply do not exist.
That’s not our fault, it’s not a training need, its not that we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s literally the way the system has been designed. You can’t train someone in a concept that does not exist.
If they want to change this and give us some kind of valid, objective criteria on which to judge, then they would need a lot more than five months to set and agree such a thing to any kind of reasonable standard. All else is smoke and mirrors.
In the proposal, exam boards are to provide papers that may or may not be compulsory, along with training for teachers to set and assess these papers, which leads us to...
Problem 2: If these papers are not compulsory, then why? How will you create a fairer system by having some students sit them and some not. Will some schools choose to not “risk” giving the papers for fear of underperformance and a forced lower grading?
When teachers want the best for the kids they care about, this could happen. So what then? The ones who didn’t sit the paper do better than the ones who did? (This could also work the other way). Optional is ridiculous. Which means...
Problem 3: If these papers are compulsory, how good will they be? It takes a team of examiners a long time (over a year) to write and quality assure a set of exam papers properly. We’ve only got up to five months.
That begs the question, will they just use the 2021 papers they’ve written? In which case, why scrap the exams if you’re going to use them anyway? Mixed up with this is...
Problem 4: Schools have paid entrance fees like normal to the exam boards. But, in the proposal, the exam boards won’t be paying actual experienced examiners to mark these papers. That’ll be up to teachers who are already up to their ears in, well, teaching.
Which is a non-stop full-time job despite what the outrage merchant press and bitter trolls might tell you. Linked to this is...
Problem 5: The actual, experienced examiners who won’t get any work for a second year running include part-time teachers and others involved in education, as well as retirees, most of whom tend to use it as an income top-up. They’re there to do the work, but now can’t.
The situation is a pea soup, apparently caused by ill-conceived reactionary responses and a distinct lack of planning (because, seriously, who would plan this?)
They could have kept exams. It wouldn’t have been a fair situation given the way this school year has been, but the proposed alternative is far, far worse.
The consultation itself is poor. The questions are written such that it’s a done deal. No, “do you agree with what we’re about to do?” Just “to what extent do you agree with certain parts we’re still debating?”
Whether you like the proposals or not, the consultation is here. Do respond: https://t.co/VwwFJisgN8
Oh, I forgot Problem 6: Appeals should be made to the school. Anyone who knows about school will know the kind of time this will take up when WE HAVE NONE, and how much pressure and emotional blackmail will take place. Just. No.
Also, read this: https://t.co/KLjvD3r6jN
Problem 7: https://t.co/WkSD1hw4so

More from Education

Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.
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