One idle thought I'd had was, if we are going to allow teachers to hand out GSCE and A-level grades, a good way to prevent grade inflation (or deflation) would be to bear in mind that a school's overall results don't change much from year to year and each school is allowed (or is obliged) to award the same number of each grade in each subject as pupils achieved in 2019.
So if last year, 50% of pupils achieved an A grade in GSCE maths at a particular school, this year, the teachers are allowed to give 50% of pupils who would have taken maths GSCE an A grade.
Still a bit unfair, but to be honest, exam results always are a bit unfair; exam marking is fairly subjective. Some people argue that the whole exam system is unfair (I've no complaints myself, I usually did very well in exams). And sure, pupils at private schools will get given better grades, but they would have got those anyway, so that's not really an objection to the algorithm.
It turns out that that is what was supposed to happen:
From the BBC:
Teachers were asked to supply for each pupil for every subject:
- An estimated grade
- A ranking compared with every other pupil at the school within that same estimated grade
These were put through an algorithm - or mathematical procedure. The biggest element in that was the school's performances in each subject over the previous three years. The idea was that the grades this year - even without exams - would be consistent with how schools had done in the past.
So far so good, but the idiots didn't design the algorithm properly, and pupils at independent schools were awarded 4.5% more grades at A and above than the pupils in the previous year.
That is a bit of a smoking gun, if you ask me.
Debate Magazine
