William Brierly, Headmaster at Claremont Fan Court School, reflects on one of the most turbulent times ever faced in schools.
When Oliver Twist asked for more, we always reflect upon the shock on the master’s face at his request. In reality, the children were all being undernourished and under-fed in the workhouse and if there was more to be served, perhaps the just thing would’ve been to give every child a little more.
I wonder in the same way about the allocation of A level grades this year.
This has been an exceptionally difficult year for all pupils, and our leavers have lost the opportunity to prove themselves, with grades awarded based on what schools honestly felt they would get.
The awarding bodies then adjusted our recommendation using their algorithm. Was it fair? Not really.
Worse still, as I looked at one of our pupils who gained 4 A*s (and I suspect always would have), there must have been an element of deflation in knowing he had not actually had the chance to earn these grades, and therefore couldn’t truly celebrate the success he deserved to celebrate.
On results day 94% of our pupils had their places confirmed at their preferred universities.
In some respect, therefore, you might argue this was a fair year for us, if not for others.
However, for our pupils, they could see 32% of their grades had been lowered from what the school recommended (we knew we had a particularly strong cohort), and of course not every pupil will have been happy with what we estimated their grade would be – we took our own tough decisions in moderating teachers’ recommendations, as we were rightly expected to do.
Some universities were very helpful to our pupils whose grades were lowered, but in other respects, particularly in a year where overseas candidates will be fewer, I was surprised they had not been more generous still – for example one strong university initially declined a pupil who had the right grades, but in the wrong order, before thinking better of their decision.
There were students across the country who were angry about the way their grades had been adjusted, and understandably so, but of course that does not make it correct to have then, four days after results were released, ditched the whole awarding bodies’ moderation of grades.
Hindsight is a great thing, and the fact that the overall grade makeup turns out to have been less generous than the average of the last three years is a fundamental error.
Nevertheless, the consequence of giving more flattering grades to some, because the grades allocated was so mean, is also peculiar.
Had every school estimated A*s for every pupil (perhaps we should have), would it be justice for everyone to have the same grade?
It still remains the case that pupils who peak at the end will have gained results lower than they otherwise would have achieved.
It still leaves families cross when schools took tough decisions in internal moderation of the grades they recommended, indeed the blame shifts to the school.
The algorithm includes (I believe) an adjustment factor that boosts or lowers the results awarded for each subject in each school based on contextual data.
This would have been the easiest thing to change so that the boost to grades was awarded more fairly (a bit like giving everyone in Oliver’s workhouse a little more).
In reality, once the Scottish parliament had reverted to their schools’ recommended grades, every other nation within the United Kingdom was disadvantaged by not doing the same; Scottish universities that at one time might have had space places suddenly became more than full by their decision and this had a knock-on effect on the universities of the other home nations.
Frankly, this cohort across the country deserved a bit of luck. If that is what the government’s U-turn has achieved, few can mind!
Claremont Fan Court School is a co-educational, independent school for pupils aged 2 ½ - 18 situated in Esher, Surrey.
