The situation we find ourselves in with regard to Tier decisions for the new GCSE is unconscionable.
Deciding whether to enter a pupil for Higher or Foundation Tier will have an effect on their grade. A pupil capable of getting a grade 6 will be limited to a grade 5 if entered for Foundation. A pupil who falls short on Higher is in real danger of getting a U.
In a normal year, this is a tricky situation. And the particularly low number of pupils getting a grade 6 in languages is a sign that schools know they have to play it safe and enter pupils for Foundation Tier. Especially schools who have had their fingers burned with pupils getting a U.
But this year is different. Very different. And much, much worse. It is an impossible situation for schools, and deeply unfair for pupils.
We have a new exam. With new style papers, different content, but the same standards. The Sample Assessment Materials seem much more accessible than the old past papers, but we have no grade boundaries to determine what the pupils' marks mean or what Tier they should be entered for.
What can schools do?
1. On Speaking and Writing, you can gauge pupils' performance against the standards stated in the specification (although this has been the subject of much prevarication) and make judgments of parity with expectations in the old exam. Can pupils speak and write coherently and accurately at a level that we recognise as matching a certain grade? We can make some judgements here.
2. On Listening and Reading, you can invent grade boundaries for the Sample Assessment Materials exam papers. You can adjust these to be more cautious given that the papers seem more accessible, especially the listening. And you can back this up on hearing anecdotal evidence from teachers at schools where large numbers of pupils are scoring full marks or close to full marks on the papers. You can use your impressionistic knowledge of your pupils and how they compare to previous cohorts. You can moderate with other schools and trusts to see if your invented grade boundaries deliver reasonable outcomes when you plot larger numbers of pupils onto a curve. Ofqual have optimistically offered guidance on the shape of the curve, even though they know that this information is useless for individual schools.
3. You can identify the "cross over" questions which appear on both Higher and Foundation and check how pupils are doing on these key questions, to see if they would perform well at the lower end of Higher Tier, which presumably is aimed at grades 4 to 5.
4. You can give pupils old style past papers, for which we do have reliable grade boundaries. Because although the content is different and the exams are very different, the standards should not have changed.
5. You can look at pupils' "targets" and decide if you think they are working well and would be on track to meet expectations.
What happens when you do this?
1. Pupils perform well on Speaking and Writing. But we know that our pupils have always had a "spiky profile", doing better on some papers and worse on others. While encouraging that our pupils can speak and write well, if other schools' pupils also perform at this level, then this is not what is going to determine their grade. I currently have pupils with very strong Speaking and Writing who are entered for Foundation Tier because their grade will depend on the Listening and Reading.
2. Moderation with other schools confirms that the papers are more accessible. And that we need to be conservative with our grade boundaries, avoiding allocating high grades on Listening to pupils who come out with marks much higher than in previous years. While useful in demonstrating that we have done our best to deal with the impossible situation, it doesn't give enough confidence to trust the grade boundaries when it comes to making Tier decisions that could limit or wipe out a pupil's grade.
3. Looking at the cross over questions: do we really make decisions on individual pupils' tier of entry based on a couple of questions rather than their overall mark? What if pupils seem to do about as well on these questions as on the others on the paper? Does this mean we should calibrate downwards their grade because they are underperforming on these key questions? Or calibrate it upwards because they are doing as well on some "fully Higher" questions as they are on the cross-over questions? If these questions are aimed at pupils in the grade range of 4-5, these pupils are not the ones who should be entered for Higher Tier anyway. This exercise just seems to confirm that pupils are finding the SAMs accessible and that the grade boundaries this year could be ridiculously high if the real exams are anything like the SAMs.
4. There is no point giving pupils the old style Higher Listening paper. As the marks for all pupils from grade 4 to grade 7 all tend to fall into a narrow range of marks. A few marks either way would totally change the grade. So it's not a reliable indicator of anything useful. Therefore we are dependent on the old style Higher Reading paper to try to calibrate pupil performance. Firstly, it becomes painfully obvious how bad the old papers were. Pupils who know the vocabulary and grammar are bamboozled (quite deliberately - that's how the papers are set up) and come out with very low marks. Secondly, how do you use the information? Do you use the old Reading grade to entirely set the expectation of the individual pupil's overall expected grade? Do you use it to specifically check against the individual pupil's SAMs Reading grade and calibrate that? Do you use your cohort's performance on the old paper to get a general calibration of how far all of your grades are (or are not) in line with your invented grades based on the SAMs? How many goes do you have at old past papers and which of those do you take as significant if the grades come out different every time? When does it start to become depressing for the pupils because of the negative experience? And is it a waste of time because you should be practising the new style papers? If we were to go by the old style Reading, we would be entering nearly all of our pupils for Foundation Tier.
5. Pupils and parents look at the "targets" and the teacher's report saying that the pupil is working well. And wonder why they are not being entered for Higher Tier if their target is a 6. So we have to explain that the targets this year were homemade because the pupils didn't do SATs in KS2. And that pupils this year have been given the same target in all subjects, regardless of the fact that the grades given out in languages are a grade lower in languages than in other subjects.
In other words, we are doing an incredible amount of hard work but we are still completely in the dark in making a decision which will directly affect pupils' grades, and which could result in them getting a U.
There is nothing more that teachers can do. We have been badly let down by the exam boards, ofqual and the DfE. There are whisperings that something is going to be done about grading. Which would be welcome. But just throws another unknown into the mix. People are saying that it's going to be really embarrasing if pupils score high % marks but get low grades or no grade at all. We need absolute clarity on this now, so we can enter pupils for the correct tier. If I enter them for Higher on the basis of these whispers, I am gambling with their grade. If I enter them for Foundation, I am limiting them to a grade 5.
Either grades are going to be more generous. Because everyone knows they have been unfair for years. And not having the baseline of SATs is an opportunity for the DfE and ofqual to tweak this. As well as the declared aims of the new GCSE to have a better curriculum and better teaching, which ought to be rewarded with better outcomes. In which case if we put pupils in for Foundation, we will be penalised.
Or grading standards will be maintained. Because that is ofqual's brief. In which case there will be a bloodbath of pupils getting a grade U because their teacher made the decision to enter them for Higher Tier based on their high % score on the SAMs.
So we have to guess and gamble one way or the other.
When the old new GCSE came in, for the first year there was a wider grade 3 safety net on the Higher Tier. The fact that we have not been given a safety net this time round, even though the situation is even trickier, is a dereliction of duty between the exam boards, ofqual and the DfE, with no-one taking responsiblity. They are all waiting to see how things turn out. And teachers will get the blame and pupils suffer the consequences. This is disgraceful.
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