Is there Salvation for the GCSE Conversation?

 In a previous post, we looked at how this definition of "good development" is a joke.

AQA exemplification of "amount of information" in the new GCSE spec

Choosing the example "I don't like social media because it is boring" as the definition of "good development" is knowingly taking exactly the sort of answer we don't accept from pupils and holding it up as desirable at GCSE. The post recognises it is doing the important job of signaling that memorising long fancy answers is not required. But that job should have been done by the parameters of the task, not by the markscheme.

So we've ended up with a markscheme that defines as "good development" something which patently is not an example of good development.

The exam board have rescinded the 17 question guidance for marking. Although I have yet to see any information about its promulgation or withdrawal on any AQA site. But they cannot rescind the markscheme. Because it's in the specification.

Let me give you one example of what this would mean. Out of these two answers, which would score higher?

¿Tienes un restaurante favorito donde te gusta ir para celebrar una ocasión especial?

a. Me gusta Ed's diner. Es grande y es divertido.

b. Pues, en el pasado, siempre me gustaba ir a festejar el cumpleaños de mi hermana menor en un restaurante pequeño cerca de mi casa.

The answer is of course, a.

Answer a. has three clauses and is not just well developed. It is an extended answer. Answer b. is a minimal response with just one clause with pieces of information added on. A minimal response.

Or try this one:

¿Te gustan los animales?

a. Sí. Tengo un gato. Mi gato es grande. Mi gato es negro.

b. Sí, y algún día espero ser veterinario en mi propio consultorio.

Answer a. again is an extended answer. Two bands above answer b. Which is only a minimal answer.

And of course, in both cases, the pupil attempting answer b. would be more likely to fall into error. So we should strongly advise pupils against this kind of answer which does not score well for development and could also lose marks for accuracy.

The exam board when they withdrew the 17 question guidance were shocked that schools would "game the exam" by training pupils to give 17 accurate 3 clause answers. This is the problem. We have an exam board setting the goal posts. Then bemused that schools aim for them.

We have already seen this in the Photo Card where the marking guidance actively disincentivises good teaching. And in the questions following the Read Aloud task, where the best tactic is to say 3 random things linked to the topic of the question.

The problem is that there is no credit for true development. For coherence. For the three clauses to be linked. Or convincing or personal.

It has come down to saying three accurate clauses. Only got 2 clauses? Train your pupils to throw in a third formulaic add on:

Sí, y algún día espero ser veterinario en mi propio consultorio. Si puedo.

Sí, y algún día espero ser veterinario en mi propio consultorio. Creo yo.

Sí, y algún día espero ser veterinario en mi propio consultorio. Me gusta la idea.

Sí, y algún día espero ser veterinario en mi propio consultorio. ¿Por qué no?

That would lift those minimal answers to "good development". Although still not good enough to be "extended".

It's a markscheme that rewards inanity.

It's a markscheme that is inane.

Is there anything we can do?

Yes. There is. But it's going to take a bit of sophistry and exegesis. Because the exemplification is written into the specification and will have to be interpreted in the same way jurists look at the intention of the framers of a sacred text like the American Constitution.

This would mean making a nice distinction with the exemplification in the specification: it is there to exemplify. NOT to define. So although an inane 2 clause answer would qualify as "well developed", a coherent answer should qualify as "better developed" than an inane response. Over a 5 minute conversation, a candidate who can be personal and coherent, should see their responses rewarded over the candidate whose responses come in 2 clause bundles, but where the information is basic and the purported links are inane.

And a pupil whose responses over a 5 minute conversation take answers and extend them logically, coherently, with convincing detail and examples (even if it means making a few more mistakes) could be rewarded more highly than responses made up of random assertions bundled into a 3 clause answer but with no real link, lacking anything that would actually be worthy of the name "development".

The exam board could stop counting clauses as the Church stopped counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. They could allow the examiners to take into account whether the information in the answer was coherent, personal, linked, thoughtful, interesting. An answer that was going somewhere rather than an answer that is going nowhere. Because although the overall criterion is "amount of information", it is broken down into the idea of "good development". And coherence is surely a factor to be considered when looking at "good development".

The exam board have made their point with the exemplification that long fancy memorised answers aren't wanted. The exemplification has dealt with what is NOT wanted. It's done its job. But it mustn't define what pupils must do in the exam. The exam board clearly confessed this when they bemoaned teachers "gaming" the guidance. So they need to not be pinned down by it.

The exemplification applies to the micro level of utterances. What they hadn't thought through was what their goal posts mean for a 5 minute conversation. Clearly, "because it is boring" is not going to see a pupil through 5 minutes.  This was the purpose of the apocryphal 17 Questions. They were an attempt to extend the micro exemplification to the whole conversation. An interpretation which as it was not in the seminal text, after a few days in limbo, could be withdrawn. Especially as it tried to do away with the timings, which although "recommended", were in the framers' original text.

So let's pin our theses to AQA's door. The conversation should be around 5 and a half minutes, as stated in the specification. The conversation should not be rote memorised fancy answers, as exemplified in the specification, nor conducted via a list of pre-ordained questions. The criteria for marking are for the amount of information, including how well this is developed and extended. The specification exemplars take us only so far with this, exemplifying how fancy long answers are not wanted. But they don't show us what a 5 minute conversation of developed or extended answers should look like. A conversation with give and take with the examiner, genuine questions about the pupil and their ideas. Some of these will be developed in more detail than others, and a good candidate will have genuine and convincing development, with a level of coherence and exploration. The intention of the framers was not to reward counting inane 3 clause clusters of meaningless language, deliberately kept simplistic but accurate.

And the whole catechism of I have a cat It is big It is black thing brings the GCSE into unsustainable disrepute when Year 9 are attempting things like this (below). We cannot have a GCSE that rewards inane 3 clause bundles over genuine development and whose cardinal role is to hold back pupils' expression and bind them to arcane formulaic responses. Don't know where this religious metaphor came from. But it does feel as if we've gone back a few hundred years to something on the verge of collapse! Read this. It will cheer you up: