72. THE 2021 EXAMS ARE NOT CANCELLED - But They Should Be

There is a theory behind public examinations in schools which goes something like this:

By sitting the same question paper in the same conditions at the same time with access to limited and agreed resources (which are also the same for everybody) following a period of studying the exact same specified curriculum of knowledge the results of such examinations will be “fair” and give a good indication of ability across the country without the possibility of teacher bias.

The motivating worry behind the theory is that if individual teachers, or individual schools, were left to assess students in their own individual and diverse ways, teachers may be too “generous” with the grades they give and the data - the grades - would become meaningless.  Putting aside the very real possibility that grades are meaningless in any objective sense of the word anyway, the worry comes because we live in a radically unequal world economically, and know that these grades - whether or not they are meaningful - can and do determine a student’s future employability, as well as access to further and higher education which can, likewise, increase or decrease their chances of earning a decent living in a highly competitive, dog-eat-dog, job-market.  By taking the final assessment out of the hands of teachers, we teachers are therefore able to morally divorce ourselves from the horrible reality that what a student gets in our subject may ultimately impact their overall chances in life.  We can say, much like the Prime Minister (and just as wrongly) that “we did everything we could” for our students and their final success or failure was ultimately down to them and them alone.  You can lead a horse to water, and all that…

But if it is us who has to put that final grade together that might open, or slam shut, the door on our students’ future aspirations then - so the argument goes - we will be loathe to condemn anyone we have spent at least two years getting to know, and seeing their struggle, to anything that puts an obstacle in the way of their dreams.

And maybe that assumption is correct.  Maybe teachers recognise that giving a grade that labels a person a “failure” and disadvantages them for the rest of their life in future applications to colleges, universities, and jobs is a very big deal and requires far more compelling evidence to motivate such a decision than a single mark in a terminal exam?  The opportunities public examinations give to absolve teachers of responsibility for perpetuating social inequalities via the questionable metric of meritocracy is perhaps only further reason to argue that such examinations should be abolished?

I have argued elsewhere that exams don’t work, and in that post I pleaded with the government to cancel the 2021 exams.  Now that they have, however, why do I remain unhappy?

Well, firstly, because they haven’t actually cancelled the 2021 exams.  A pathetic “consultation” has been launched where the government has presented a proposal for alternative arrangements to teachers, students and anyone else interested in seeing the plan and inviting them to comment on it.  Comments, however, were reduced to a rubber-stamping multiple-choice questionnaire about how strongly one agreed or disagreed with the proposal, with little room for meaningful comment or the presentation of alternatives.  And the plan itself is merely to outsource traditional external examination to schools, making teachers do the work of the exam boards, possibly using exam papers prepared by the exam boards, for us to administer in school and mark ourselves.  Exams have not been cancelled in the proposal at all, they have just been modified to add to teacher workload and be administered slightly differently.  Furthermore, and perhaps more worryingly given that Ofqual and the DfE have had since march of 2020 to prepare for the effects of COVID-19 on public examinations, little is mentioned in the proposal about the safety arrangements of these alternative exams beyond hoping that the pandemic will have “run its course” by mid-May and that exams can be held in schools as normal.  That’s right: crowding poorly ventilated rooms with unmasked pupils sat breathing the same air as each other for two to three hours at a time.  A question is asked in the proposal about whether or not some students should be able to do their exams remotely if they have tested positive for COVID, or are self-isolating because of someone else’s positive test, but that is all.  The fact that, if the Department for Education are adamant that formal examination must continue, they haven’t, along with Ofqual, come up with a viable remote alternative by now is yet another negligent failing of a government department who is already responsible for so many.  We now know that no matter what happens with the vaccination programme, it will be September at the earliest that most adults in the UK will have had their first shot of the vaccine.  Even those with both shots will not have unlimited immunity - and we are still learning about the vaccine’s efficacy against new strains and mutations.  Much like the annual flu jab, it is possible we may need an annual COVID vaccine going forward, and it seems likely it will still be a few years before any semblance of the old “normality” can be safely resumed.  Masks and social distancing will continue to play a part in our lives for years to come.  We clearly have the technology for exams to be done online, remotely monitored and checked for plagiarism, and if the will was there to roll it out to keep staff and students safe (and, considering the majority of children undertaking exams never write by hand unless they are at school, and typing is their main form of written communication, writing on a keyboard for those long examinations instead of insisting on antiquated writing by hand will be much more natural to them than gripping an unfamiliar pen for two to three hours at a time).  But the will is not there.  Possibly because the DfE and Ofqual simply don’t understand the threat and magnitude of COVID-19.  Possibly because they don’t want too much probing into the current examination system in case it disturbs the myths that support it and bring the whole house of cards crashing down.  

The reason a remote alternative threatens those myths is because the main charge against remote examination is that it is far too easy to cheat remotely.  To have access to un-permitted resources; to have help in answering questions; to share answers with each other, etc.  And taking these issues seriously requires looking at what exactly we mean by “cheating” in an exam and that initial justificatory theory which underpins such exams in the first place: By sitting the same question paper in the same conditions at the same time with access to limited and agreed resources (which are also the same for everybody) following a period of studying the exact same specified curriculum of knowledge the results of such examinations will be “fair” and give a good indication of ability across the country without the possibility of teacher bias.

The claim that there would be “cheating” at home presupposes that the imagined baseline equalities in the above theory really do exists when examinations take place inside a school.  And while it is true that in an invigilated school hall there is unlikely to be anyone smuggling the answers in, or working with forbidden materials in front of them, the build-up to the examinations across the diverse pluralism of different school and life experiences means that the fairness examinations bring is pure fantasy.  In a normal examination year students taking these exams go to very different schools, and year after year we see that private schools and grammar schools produce - in general - higher examination results than their comprehensive counterparts.  We also know that different teachers have different impacts on different cohorts of student.  In the same schools, two different classes may do very differently simply because of one group having a more experienced teacher covering the course, or a less experienced one not dogmatically stuck in a mire of old ideas and bringing new insights to old material.  Maybe some students simply respond better to one teacher’s explanations and examples than they do to another?  Or maybe the students in question happen to suffer the effects of one or two disruptive students in their class who end up sabotaging their lessons and limiting their educational effectiveness?  Or one group’s teacher had to take maternity or paternity leave, or had a long-term illness, and the class gets stuck with an inexperienced cover teacher?  And then there are the individual students themselves, all theoretically sitting in the same lessons but having very different experiences.  Perhaps one student is a victim of domestic abuse and their mind is not really on their studies each day?  Another’s parents could be going through a divorce, or joblessness which makes it hard to know where the family’s next meal is coming from?  Some may be questioning their sexuality, their gender, or their politics more than they are concerned with their timetabled classes on any given day?  Others may be dealing with depression or suicidal thoughts?  Others still may be being bullied, or experiencing an eating disorder or other anxieties which take their mind off their studies.  More happily, some may simply be more concerned with the video game on their phone, a movie they watched, or having the times of their lives in their first relationships and have their minds on their passions instead of whatever it is that the teacher is saying?  As teachers, we all know learning is deeply individual, and that there can be no “one-size-fits-all” lesson plan for students who all will come to the material from very different starting points, abilities, and personal circumstances.  When they reach the examination at the end of the course, therefore, we are as much assessing which students benefitted from the luxury of a calm home-life, stable mental health, access to resources, the ability to focus well in lessons, the quality of their teachers and the efficacy of their lessons, as we are assessing any genuine academic ability.  And, as I have said before, we are basing our judgement not on the years of work and effort that has gone into a student’s learning, but a single day’s snapshot of a couple of hours, dealing with unseen questions designed to challenge and create “winners” and “losers” (successes and failures) rather than demonstrate a student’s aptitude at a subject in its best light.

Exams are not, and never have been, “fair”.

And this year, of all years, that unfairness of individual experience has been writ large.

When students in Year 11 and Year 13 reach a terminal assessment at the end of the academic year every single one of them will have been affected by COVID-19 in different ways.  Some of them will have experienced bereavement and loss of a family member or friend; some will have experienced that multiple times across the pandemic.  Some will have had COVID themselves and been too ill to work for at least one long period of time, more if they suffered “long COVID” as so many people do.  Some will have had family members sick with COVID and will have had to step up around the house and play the role of parent or older sibling as the sick family member(s) recuperate.  Some will have had long interruptions in their learning, self-isolating due to contact tracing which others in their school did not experience; others will have had weeks off as a year group in self-isolation while others in the same year group in schools in areas with lower rates of infection missed very little school.  Some, missing school, will have had no interruption in their learning at all due to excellent remote teaching.  Others will have not had equal online provision and may have been left to fend for themselves, or did not have access to the technology needed to fully engage with the online provision.  Some individuals or groups may have had excellent remote teaching this year, in Year 11 or 13, but last year, when the pandemic started, and schools were first moved online after only a term and a half of their GCSE or A-level course, perhaps the provision wasn’t so great as teachers learnt on the fly how to deliver education effectively through a computer?  Or maybe last year their teacher was an adept remote educator but a new year and new teacher has meant this year’s remote provision has not been so good?  Some students being assessed this year will have had no COVID, no family members or friends with COVID, and no interruption to their learning at all.

Recall the rationale for public examination: By sitting the same question paper in the same conditions at the same time with access to limited and agreed resources (which are also the same for everybody) following a period of studying the exact same specified curriculum of knowledge the results of such examinations will be “fair” and give a good indication of ability across the country without the possibility of teacher bias.  COVID-19 makes a mockery of such reasoning because none of these students will be “in the same conditions” at the point of any final examination, not all had access to the same “limited and agreed resources” across the two years of their course, nor, because of disruptions and different levels of teacher-competence at online delivery, is it even guaranteed that “the same specified curriculum of knowledge” has been equally delivered.  While I would argue, further, that this remains true for all terminal examinations at school due to the structural inequalities in provision, resources, and quality of education, this year in particular any process of assessment which pretends like a terminal paper or two is a guarantor of fairness and equality is clearly delusional.

“Teacher bias”, conversely, is what we want.  A teacher who knows their students and can put together a portfolio of their accomplishments across this unique and highly individualised period in their education.  Not looking at their gaps in knowledge, their failings, and not looking to challenge them by arbitrarily restricting their resources and the time in which they can accomplish a given task, but looking back at all the work produced - at home and in-school - and setting further tasks which allow each student to shine, then selecting four or five of the very best pieces to justify a final grade.  And furthermore, such “work”, “tasks”, “tests”, or whatever you want to call them shouldn’t be limited to traditional models of assessment.  Papers and written questions.  Why not credit the verbal discussion which showed deep subject knowledge?  The presentation which wowed us?  The standout piece of work they did that wasn’t intended to be formally assessed?  

What is the worst that could happen?  More A*s and grade 9s and less Us and 1s?  More students leaving school with the doors to their possible futures open wide instead of crushed merely ajar?  More students taking an interest in all aspects of their work rather than concentrating only on a final exam - cramming enough into their short-term memory to trick a test paper and retaining none of it for longer than the length of the examination?  More students feeling like their teachers are there to support and to champion them instead of judge and fail them?  More young people recognising that there is more to an education than passing exams, and the limited contents of their subject’s exam specifications?

But alas - my suspicion is that the DfE/Ofqual consultation is a fait accompli and that too many teachers can’t think of “fairness” in grading outside of the limited model of public examination.  We know no other way than the model of success vs failure.  Of grade boundaries designed to explicitly limit the accomplishments of some.  Of the notion that every cohort must have winners and losers.  And we haven’t the time to spend on creative alternatives.  Easier to just continue doing the thing we’ve always done, accepting the same structural inequalities, the same guilt-easing notions of “social mobility” and “meritocracy” that allow us to sleep at night about the outcomes of our decisions and believe that we are actually doing good by working hard to ensure there are at least some winners and successes in every cohort instead of transforming the system - and the world - so that everyone wins.  

I don’t believe in examinations, but I do believe in moral tests, and I worry that when we do eventually hear back from the consultation about the alternative to 2021 GCSEs and A-levels we will have failed yet another one.

Author: DaN McKee

My book - AUTHENTIC DEMOCRACY: An Ethical Justification of Anarchism - is available HERE  and from all good booksellers.