Star comment: Pointless tinkering with GCSE marks
With the GCSE results out today, here is an exam question to test your mettle.
Declan has achieved three straight grade 1s. Bertha has got two 9s, and an 8. Who has done better?
If you are of a certain age and remember the old O-Level scoring system, you will find the answer easy. Why, Declan, of course, with all those top grades.
Wrong. Bertha is our 2017 champion. A new system has come in which happens to be an inverse mirror image of O-Levels. Grade 9 is the top grade under this new system, which replaces the previous system, which ran from A* to G.
If that is all clear to you, hold on, because you haven't heard the half of it.
Only three subjects, English language, English literature, and maths, currently are graded using the new system. More subjects will come into line next year, and more still in 2019.
During the transition, students will get a mix of letter and number grades.
That is not all. Shropshire students will have one system. But just over the border in Mid Wales they will have another system, because the changes only apply to England.
Melanie Hooson, who is the head of Shrewsbury Academy, says as the new system beds in we can expect a lot of confusion for a lot of people.
Her view is that the Government should look at other priorities in its attempts to raise standards, rather than messing about with the grading system.
So why has it been introduced? It is, the Government says, to signal that GCSEs have been reformed, and to better differentiate between students of different abilities.
But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ask anybody what they think is a top grade, and they will probably choose a 1, or an A, as they are intuitively the correct answer. Nobody, unless they are already familiar with the new system, will say 9.
Employers face two years of numerical and alphabetical grade soup. They will feel they need an exam just to be able to assess the capabilities of the candidates, based on their grades - some old system, some new system, and some transition era.
That's the carping. Now let's move to the benefits of the new system. Government ministers will need to go on television and radio to educate us about these and convince us all that the change is not pointless political tinkering which is an irrelevant distraction in the fight to raise standards, in which what really matters is the quality of teaching.
