Pupils in some schools let down by teachers who significantly overmarked GCSE English work to boost results, says Ofqual
Children have been let down by an exam system that was open to abuse by teachers under pressure to achieve good grades, the exam regulator warns in a report on the chaos in this summer's GCSE English grading.
Glenys Stacey, the chief regulator for Ofqual![ext]()
, said the organisation had been "shocked by what we found" during the inquiry into the debacle, which saw grade boundaries raised between the January and June exams, leaving thousands of teenagers with disappointing results.
She said teachers in some of England's secondary schools were guilty of significantly overmarking pupils' GCSE English work this summer in order to boost results. But blame was laid on the intense pressure on schools to reach certain targets, which led to some overmarking, as well as poorly designed exams featuring a significant amount of work marked by teachers.
"Children have been let down. That won't do. It's clear that children are increasingly spending too much time jumping through hoops rather than learning the real skills they need in life," said Stacey. "Teachers feel under enormous pressure in English, more than in any other subject, and we have seen that too often, this is pushing them to the limit."
An alliance of schools and councils has begun legal action![ext]()
over what they see as the unfair decision to raise the grade boundaries in GCSE English between January and June, resulting in an estimated 10,000 pupils dropping a grade. But Ofqual's second report into this year's exam, released on Friday, confirms there will be no re-mark. The watchdog, which monitors exam standards in England, argues that altering the June results to match those from January would see many pupils' work "significantly overgraded", skewing the 2012 tallies against earlier years.
Overall, it found, results were broadly similar to those in 2011, but with significant variations in individual schools.
The revised English GCSEs, which were awarded for the first time this year, were split into modules, with pupils sitting written exam papers and controlled assessment – coursework completed under strict classroom supervision. The coursework element was marked by teachers and then graded by exam boards, and the proportion increased from 40% to 60%.
Ofqual's report found that some schools used the marks pupils received in their first exams and the January grade boundaries to work out what score a pupil would need in their controlled assessment and marked it accordingly. The majority of controlled assessment work was submitted in the summer, and examiners saw evidence of overmarking. Results data also saw significant bunching of marks around the threshold for particular grades.
In one popular paper, the report noted, if the grade boundaries for June coursework had stayed the same as for an externally marked exam in January, the proportion of C grades would have shot up from the 65% seen in 2011 to 85% this year.
The report is at pains to blame the system for placing an excessive burden on teachers, particularly as many felt the system was being abused by others. It said: "No teacher should be forced to choose between their principles on the one hand and their students, school and career on the other."
It nonetheless got a frosty reception from some school and teaching groups. The Association of School and College Leaders![ext]()
, which is leading the legal challenge to the June grades, said it was an insult to suggest that teachers would seek to bend the system. There was a need for a wider rethink on assessment, it added, but the pressing issue was "what went wrong for young people this year and how to put it right".
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers![ext]()
, said Ofqual seemed to be shifting the blame. She added: "The fact remains that young people were let down. The solution is to regrade the exams of young people who, together with their teachers, worked to the parameters set in January."
Andrew Hall, chief executive of AQA, the exam board responsible for more than 70% of the papers involved, said he was "acutely aware that the results this summer had a big impact on some schools and have left many students and teachers feeling very let down". AQA would work hard to ensure future years worked better, he said.
Stacey said a key problem was the unprecedented complexity of the new system, which offered a possible 2,500 variations on exams, modules and timings. In an introduction to the report, she wrote: "We have found that the qualifications are easy to bend out of shape: they can buckle under the pressures of accountability, and the evidence we have is that this did happen to some extent."
Ofqual expressed a wider disquiet over this accountability system, which strictly ranks schools by exam passes and places huge pressure on those that fail to reach targets. The new GCSEs, Stacey wrote, "have reinforced the trend of running years 10 and 11 as a tactical operation to secure certain grades and combinations of grades. This has come to be seen as 'what good schools do' despite the awareness of many teachers and parents that the concept of broad and deep learning can get lost along the way."
The system should be rethought, she argued: "It ought to be possible to have strong and well-directed accountability without necessarily assuming that what can be accurately captured in accountability testing represents the totality of what should be taught in schools."
Announcing his planned new replacement for the GCSE, the EBacc![ext]()
, in September, education secretary Michael Gove said the change would also see the introduction of a broader way of assessing school performance.
The report announced measures to prevent a repeat of the fiasco, with external moderation of controlled assessments tightened immediately. More significantly still, no grades will be released for modules taken in January next year, with all grading decided at one go in June. Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 hours ago.
Children have been let down by an exam system that was open to abuse by teachers under pressure to achieve good grades, the exam regulator warns in a report on the chaos in this summer's GCSE English grading.
Glenys Stacey, the chief regulator for Ofqual
, said the organisation had been "shocked by what we found" during the inquiry into the debacle, which saw grade boundaries raised between the January and June exams, leaving thousands of teenagers with disappointing results.She said teachers in some of England's secondary schools were guilty of significantly overmarking pupils' GCSE English work this summer in order to boost results. But blame was laid on the intense pressure on schools to reach certain targets, which led to some overmarking, as well as poorly designed exams featuring a significant amount of work marked by teachers.
"Children have been let down. That won't do. It's clear that children are increasingly spending too much time jumping through hoops rather than learning the real skills they need in life," said Stacey. "Teachers feel under enormous pressure in English, more than in any other subject, and we have seen that too often, this is pushing them to the limit."
An alliance of schools and councils has begun legal action
over what they see as the unfair decision to raise the grade boundaries in GCSE English between January and June, resulting in an estimated 10,000 pupils dropping a grade. But Ofqual's second report into this year's exam, released on Friday, confirms there will be no re-mark. The watchdog, which monitors exam standards in England, argues that altering the June results to match those from January would see many pupils' work "significantly overgraded", skewing the 2012 tallies against earlier years.Overall, it found, results were broadly similar to those in 2011, but with significant variations in individual schools.
The revised English GCSEs, which were awarded for the first time this year, were split into modules, with pupils sitting written exam papers and controlled assessment – coursework completed under strict classroom supervision. The coursework element was marked by teachers and then graded by exam boards, and the proportion increased from 40% to 60%.
Ofqual's report found that some schools used the marks pupils received in their first exams and the January grade boundaries to work out what score a pupil would need in their controlled assessment and marked it accordingly. The majority of controlled assessment work was submitted in the summer, and examiners saw evidence of overmarking. Results data also saw significant bunching of marks around the threshold for particular grades.
In one popular paper, the report noted, if the grade boundaries for June coursework had stayed the same as for an externally marked exam in January, the proportion of C grades would have shot up from the 65% seen in 2011 to 85% this year.
The report is at pains to blame the system for placing an excessive burden on teachers, particularly as many felt the system was being abused by others. It said: "No teacher should be forced to choose between their principles on the one hand and their students, school and career on the other."
It nonetheless got a frosty reception from some school and teaching groups. The Association of School and College Leaders
, which is leading the legal challenge to the June grades, said it was an insult to suggest that teachers would seek to bend the system. There was a need for a wider rethink on assessment, it added, but the pressing issue was "what went wrong for young people this year and how to put it right".Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers
, said Ofqual seemed to be shifting the blame. She added: "The fact remains that young people were let down. The solution is to regrade the exams of young people who, together with their teachers, worked to the parameters set in January."Andrew Hall, chief executive of AQA, the exam board responsible for more than 70% of the papers involved, said he was "acutely aware that the results this summer had a big impact on some schools and have left many students and teachers feeling very let down". AQA would work hard to ensure future years worked better, he said.
Stacey said a key problem was the unprecedented complexity of the new system, which offered a possible 2,500 variations on exams, modules and timings. In an introduction to the report, she wrote: "We have found that the qualifications are easy to bend out of shape: they can buckle under the pressures of accountability, and the evidence we have is that this did happen to some extent."
Ofqual expressed a wider disquiet over this accountability system, which strictly ranks schools by exam passes and places huge pressure on those that fail to reach targets. The new GCSEs, Stacey wrote, "have reinforced the trend of running years 10 and 11 as a tactical operation to secure certain grades and combinations of grades. This has come to be seen as 'what good schools do' despite the awareness of many teachers and parents that the concept of broad and deep learning can get lost along the way."
The system should be rethought, she argued: "It ought to be possible to have strong and well-directed accountability without necessarily assuming that what can be accurately captured in accountability testing represents the totality of what should be taught in schools."
Announcing his planned new replacement for the GCSE, the EBacc
, in September, education secretary Michael Gove said the change would also see the introduction of a broader way of assessing school performance.The report announced measures to prevent a repeat of the fiasco, with external moderation of controlled assessments tightened immediately. More significantly still, no grades will be released for modules taken in January next year, with all grading decided at one go in June. Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 hours ago.