Next steps
Next steps
Next steps
It’s good that the GCSE English fiasco has remained in the news. It’s especially good that big guns are now being rolled out: the call by ASCL, NAHT and the influential AET chain for a legal review of the decision over grade boundary changes is hugely significant.
All of it should help beleaguered and battered headteachers to feel that they are not alone. That, it seems, has been the main feature of the past few days - an initial sense of panicked isolation slowly changing into a realisation that at least there are lots of us feeling similarly outraged. We must try to resist that obvious instinct that the school’s poor performance is a sign of our own personal poor performance. It’s not. And nor is it a reflection of the performance of teachers or students.
Which is, of course, what makes this matter so unfair.
A tiny decision about grade boundaries is creating a ripple of considerable unintended consequences. For schools pushed below the floor target of 40% or schools appearing to have nose-dived against neighbouring schools which haven’t, the consequences at the moment will feel very dark and worrying indeed.
But we all know that ripples in a pond will, if all goes calm, finally stop. Which is why we need to leave the big players to pursue the legal route while we, from our own schools, do all we can to create more ripples.
Here are some thoughts, based on lots of conversations with people in school leadership over the past two days.
1 Keep the issue clear
This isn’t about falling standards, exams getting easier, exams getting harder, inaccurate marking, teachers being defensive, students being protected from a ‘school of hard knocks’ view of life or any of that nonsense. This is about fairness.
A change to grade boundaries between January and June means that students within the same year group are being assessed differently and getting different grades. A child of the same ability who got a C in January might now be getting a D. That’s not fair, and as it seems to be affecting the C/D borderline the most, especially the foundation tier, these are students for whom a correct grade may be most important, opening doors to college and sixth form.
We owe it to them to keep articulating the injustice of the decision, the consequences, and our determination not to let it go.
2 Create momentum
So now we need to make sure that the issue doesn’t die away during a news agenda that will seek other stories as we move from a bank holiday weekend into the last week of the holiday.
Here’s what I would suggest we do before next Thursday (ie don’t let more than a week go by):
Governors
Every chair of governors in a school affected by this should write to their local MP expressing dismay at the effects of the decision, giving some specific examples (in particular use some students whose UMS marks in January would have resulted in a grade higher that he got last week. Ideally find a clear C-to-D example and an A*-to-A or A-to-B if there is one: it will show that a range of young people are being blighted).
This letter needs to include a request that the MP personally writes to the secretary of State for Education requesting an explanation. If you write to Mr Gove directly, he won’t ever see the letter; if the MP writes on your behalf, then parliamentary etiquette makes it more likely (in theory at least) that the strength of feeling will reach him in person.
The letter should ask specific questions about how the decision was arrived at; why an inquiry hasn’t been ordered; and whether the Secretary of State agrees that young people and schools are, in very many contexts, likely to be disadvantaged by the decision.
I’ve just noticed that ASCL have produced an exemplar on their website.
Heads of English
Being Head of English or Maths is to my mind one of the toughest jobs in schools. At our initial staff briefing we must express full support of our English team and lament the fact that this is a problem which is not of their making.
Heads of English should write a letter, jointly signed by the Headteacher, and send it to the chief examiner for English setting out some specific examples of the unfairness of grade boundary changes and asking what the board will do about it; asking how it intends to preserve any sense of reliability as an assessment agency; and asking whether - if lots of centres request re-marks - the board will be waiving fees, given the extent of the problem. It would be a double insult if we felt for-profit examination boards were to profit more from this process.
The English team should then start investigating other examination boards, using the grapevine and subject associations (NATE, English Association) to see which appears to be most reliable.
Parents
Parents feel incensed. Many talked to me in school yesterday and expressed their support for all of us fighting the injustice of it all. But that emotion will fade as their children readjust and settle into different courses or get their university places. Real life will kick in.
We therefore need to mobilise some parents very quickly to write to their MP and the the local paper giving clear, factual expression to their dismay at the way young people are being affected by the decision to shift grade boundaries. They need to do that in the next couple of days.
Heads
We need to send examples to the TES (ASCL / AET) campaign. Their website is currently down, it seems, but we must get on and do this soon, before anyone starts to make us think that it’s not so bad after all, it was all a bit of August madness, and so on.
The issue will also be much more powerfully articulated if we can also show a collective public response - such as a letter in the local newspaper and sent to all our parents signed on behalf of all heads in a pyramid, cluster, locality, partnership or county. Ideally involve heads and principals from all phases of schools and colleges to emphasise that this is not about our own individual institution (some of which will have seen results go up) but about a shared sense of injustice on behalf of young people.
The more who can be brought on to sign this letter, the better.
Those with good media links need to keep local journalists up-to-date with developments, and keep providing specific, clear-cut examples of how this week’s results have affected (a) individual students (but not naming them) and (b) the school.
3 Keep perspective
Finally, being a head is an exposed job at the best of times. Many great people are currently feeling huge pressure and demoralisation at the very time when they should be emotionally recharging themselves for the year ahead.
We need to take succour from the fact that many different types of schools in many different parts of England and Wales have been affected, and we need to feel a genuine sense of collective purpose in the way we’re doing everything we can to redress an appalling injustice. We’re dong it for our students and for the reputations of our school and its staff: there can’t be a better moral purpose in all of this.
But we also need to grab some holiday. We owe it to ourselves and our families.
So, keep fighting the good fight, but try to switch off a bit, and best wishes for the rest of the break.
Geoff Barton
25 August 2012
8:40 am
Saturday, 25 August 2012