Gaming the System
Gaming the System
Gaming the System
I don’t think I’ve used the word ‘game’ as a verb until this examination season, with all of its depressing talk of schools ‘gaming the system’ through ‘easier’ courses, early entry, or using internally-assessed components to warp overall attainment.
This time last year we were in the thick of the English fiasco, and I was writing tiresomely regular blogs on the sense of injustice many of us felt.
At that time it felt as if people in obscure backrooms were manipulating results. And so I ranted.
But it got to the point that I realised that for ordinary people - rather than fellow English zealots - I had turned into a mad-eyed loon, a jabbering Ancient Mariner figure that people avoided in case I unleashed more incontinent ramblings about comparable outcomes or the shifting sands of January versus June entries.
So this year I’ve been very restrained.
But the more I talk to people the more I sense that something’s still not right with GCSE. We know from the heavy prior reporting of certain newspapers that there was talk of a ‘clampdown’ to avoid grade inflation.
The trouble is that headlines like that work at a very general level.
In schools, on the other hand, we work at an individual level - every statistic for us represents a student we have taught for two or more years. Small national statistical issues can be very big issues indeed for those of us teaching students.
And this year lots of people appear to be saying that there are plenty of unexplained results which don’t fit into a national narrative.
For example, at our proudly comprehensive school in Suffolk 132 students were entered for the Foundation tier in AQA English. On the day, just 9% of them gained grade C against an expectation that at least 25% would.
This wasn’t an inexperienced teaching team or one that was complacent or one that never previously got its predictions right.
We realise instead, having since done the analysis, that putting most of our students in for the Higher tier would probably have given them a better chance of gaining a C grade after eleven years of compulsory education because - unlike those early days of tiering - the students who missed out on grade C could still have been awarded a D or even an E grade.
The ‘clampdown’ on grade boundaries for us at least appears to have resulted in Higher tier students gaining their expected grades and Foundation students missing out on them.
In other words, it feels as if a C grade in English has become harder to attain at Foundation than at Higher tier, and therefore (I would hypothesise) schools which have seen their results stay lower are those with a greater proportion of Foundation students.
This at least is my instinct based on emails and conversations with dozens of teachers and school leaders across different schools.
But it’s a sign of the times that fewer teacher and Heads of English and school leaders are prepared to say it publicly.
I also know from similar conversations that the accusation last year by Ofqual and others that schools used controlled assessment and, especially, speaking & listening assessment to push the system to its limits has proved true.
I’ve already had emails from school leaders suggesting that English entry this coming November may be their last chance to use speaking & listening assessment to secure higher grades next summer (because thereafter speaking & listening will have been removed from the overall aggregation of English grades).
In other words - bleakly - we can see just how dysfunctional the current GCSE English qualification has become. It’s proving joyless to teach because of the heavy emphasis on controlled assessment and anthologised poetry.
And it feels to those of us who never used its idiosyncracies to inflate student grades that we may have paid the price in lower than expected grades because others have, consciously or inadvertently, gamed the system.
So although I know that high quality speaking & listening is integral not only to good English but to learning across all subjects, I reluctantly agree that spoken assessment should be removed from the overall aggregation of English attainment.
It’s a sign not of the corruptness of English teachers, but of a qualification that isn’t fit for purpose within an accountability system that has placed too much pressure on schools to demonstrate achievement in performance tables - often at the expense of other schools.
My instinct for the coming year: English teaching was always about principles. Let’s just teach students, and do everything we can to give them the skills and knowledge which ought in any rational world to gain them a C or higher in speaking, reading and writing.
Let’s give them a love of language and literature.
Let’s pay relentless attention to the basics, but not take students out of things like orchestras and drama clubs to give them extra literacy.
Let’s focus on quality of English teaching rather than quantity.
And let’s resist if we can the pressure to scramble for November entry.
Let’s also consider whether putting more students in for Higher rater than Foundation tier might ultimately be in the interests of our Department, our school and, most importantly, our students.
Here’s why:
Against a backdrop whereby every student is going to be expected to get a C in English and Maths by the time they leave school, might not a greater emphasis on the Higher tier actually be (a) a signal of our higher expectations, and (b) statistically, a route more likely (based on the 2013 experience) to give many of them the grade they need than the Foundation tier?
As ever, the pressures of a madcap accountability and utilitarian inspection system can feel as if they work against principles and, indeed, principals.
But let’s keep doing what we came into the profession to do - to help young people to gain the skills and knowledge that result in the qualifications they will need to become successful citizens.
That’s not gaming. It’s educating.
Geoff Barton
Suffolk
7 September 2013
Saturday, 7 September 2013