2020 exam grades: An algorithm, mock exam that doesn’t tell you anything… or one almighty mess?

News last night that the government is launching last-minute changes to this year’s grading process has all the hallmarks of ‘yet another knee jerk’ to me. The new announcement means that A-level and GCSE pupils can either accept a standardised grade based on teacher estimations, or appeal and change it for a mark gained in a mock exam.

Already teacher’s estimations are being put through an Ofqual standardisation system to ensure they’re fair and to address concerns that schools might ‘mark up’ grades. Now, if pupils in England feel this system has marked them down, they can appeal and use their mock exam results.

It comes after protests in Scotland against the standardisation model after 124,564 exam grades were downgraded. It led to a decision to scrap the model and switch to using teachers' predicted grades instead.

Now let's put aside the fact that Scotland and England now have two different grading systems. Let's put aside the fact that the standardisation model appears not to have worked. Let’s put aside the fact that, by their nature, mock exams vary from school to school, subject to subject, so how can you judge a grade? Let’s put aside that teachers' grades would be a far more accurate reflection of a pupil’s performance - they know them best, after all. And let’s put aside that this is a clear sign that the Government is not confident in their grading system and only muddies a very muddy water more.

Instead, let’s look at the children, whose lives have been messed around with enough this summer. My 16-year-old son has been robbed of a chance to determine his own future. Instead his future is now in the hands of algorithms, at the mercy of Government ministers who have taken a scythe through the exam system with nairy a backward glance.

For the record, my child’s GCSE mocks were terrible (he’s a lackadaisical. last minute pull-it-out-of-the-bag coaster), so we won’t have that option even if we feel his grades are unfair. Mocks are traditionally used by teachers to scare the living daylights out of pupils like my son and they obviously had that in mind when he did his back in December as he failed a couple. He had a good three months left of learning between mocks and exams - three months can be a several grade difference - besides, in a couple of subjects they hadn’t even finished their course.

What would have been better is to have the option that Scottish parents now have and opt for teacher’s grades. Is Ofqual’s concern for ‘marking up’ really all that justified - as a teacher friend of mine said to me today “We’re professionals, we know our pupils, don’t they trust us to make an accurate assessment?”

All these changes have done is leave me feeling more confused and more anxious than ever, more concerned that my child is now going to lose out by having grades that don’t really mean anything.

What it boils down to is that this whole mess was really unnecessary. In March the exams were abruptly cancelled - two whole months before the exams were to go ahead. Would it have been more perspicacious to have waited a few weeks, look into whether delaying them and doing socially-distanced exams in late summer would be a better option instead? There was plenty of time to plan a better Plan B. Instead schools were closed and pushed aside, a non-priority on the Government’s to-do list.

March’s decision was knee-jerk, this decision too. And it leaves the question that parents and universities and future employees will be left wondering for years to come: what even is a 2020 exam grade? An algorithm, a mock exam that doesn’t tell you anything… or one almighty mess?