The School Exam Result Conundrum

 So, we have anger over the way exam results have been decided and I’m sure some pupils have indeed been adversely affected. Certainly, those who didn’t put in enough work for their mock exams but who would have knuckled-down and got at least one grade higher in the real exam may feel aggrieved.

However, whether you assume that the mock exam grade is the best that child could attain, or you assume that each child would have put extra effort in and got a higher grade, you have the same problem.
An assumption is being made and there is no way of proving that it's correct.

I guess they could take the mock exam results for each school for the last 3 years and see how often a better grade was attained in the real exam (particularly for those who didn’t get a passing grade in the mocks). Then somehow try and apply that.

But let’s say that on average over the last 3 years, 50% of pupils who failed their mock got a passing grade in the real exam. Who decides which pupils get given a pass and which remain a fail? It’s an impossible thing to do fairly. (Very easy to do unfairly of course!).

There are those on social media who claim that the teacher assessed grade should just have been used with no other factors taken into account.

However, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that this would have resulted in a massive inflation of grades.

It would take a very brave teacher to give a poor grade, particularly a FAIL grade, knowing that they would be confronted by hundreds of parents claiming ‘you hate my child’; ‘you’ve ruined my child’s life prospects’ etc etc. You could even envisage threats of violence and 'we know where you live'.

And that’s before the pressure put on teachers by their senior leadership team to be generous because the Head doesn’t want all the aggro from complaining parents and the bad-mouthing and petitions on social media etc.

Finally, even if a teacher IS brave enough to give a true and poor grade, they know that a lot of other teachers around the country will be inflating for the reasons given above. So, by NOT inflating your own pupils, you are knowingly disadvantaging them!

So, what would I do? Well, there’s no perfect answer, that’s for sure.
  
Within that context, I would take the mock result and, if the teacher assessment was the same or one grade higher, I’d stick with that. I simply would not allow any more than a single grade inflation from the mock result. 

Importantly, you would not announce that this is how you’re doing it until after the teacher assessments had been received, otherwise they would all just put each pupil up one grade from the mock automatically (because why wouldn’t you?).

Not perfect as I said but would be acceptable to the vast majority as it is in a general sense ‘fair & reasonable’, I suggest; some may even say 'generous'! There would be some grade inflation but it would at least be contained.

And when you have a method which seems ‘fair & reasonable’ to the majority, it makes it much easier to stand firm against the minority of complainants as well as showing you in a generally good light.

What do you think?