When Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for UK\u2019s Education, announced that year 11s and 13s would receive teacher assessed grades, I was quite relaxed. But as the summer came, Year 12s were in a state of inconsistency up until this February when he announced the current year would be receiving them too.<\/p>\n
The mock exams make up a percentage of the final grade, along with possible grades from assessments (done in typical exam conditions in the classroom). Teacher-assessed grades help those who have extra time and those who struggle under exam conditions. Stereotypically one exam, filled with content from 2 years before, determines your overall grade and if you\u2019re having a rough day, week, or month, you\u2019re limiting your prospects of achieving your target grade. This is the largest positive of teacher-assessed grades that one final exam doesn\u2019t determine your final career prospects.<\/p>\n
However, there are other reasons why students want to sit the final exam. It\u2019s a feeling of deferred gratification; that all their work has finally paid off. For some, they work better under stress and their final grade may be better than their target grade. Some pupils prefer the idea of more organised education and other students may also prefer the exam situation. Additionally, there is the benefit that students can appeal to the exam boards if they feel the result doesn\u2019t reflect the work they did, however, I think they should be also allowed to re-sit in person when COVID restrictions are lessened. The possible unevenness between those that will sit exams in the future and those that don\u2019t now is significant. There shouldn\u2019t just be a temporary change now, it needs to be a consistent decision.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, there are still concerns about teacher-assessed grades. According to the TES website, \u2018the vast majority of GCSE results and 60% of A-Level results in large-entry subjects\u2019 were \u2018based entirely on statistical modelling.\u2019 In simple terms, a lot of the grades last year were fed into an algorithm with some arguing the outcome even went on your area and social class. Additionally, who\u2019s to say teachers don\u2019t have biases? This was evident by Becker\u2019s ideal pupil study where teachers subconsciously labelled students as \u2018ideal\u2019 if they fitted their stereotype of a hardworking pupil. These were often middle-class. As humans, we have biases, subconsciously or not and there\u2019s not a physical way you can prevent this.<\/p>\n
There are also worries that the results don\u2019t quite reflect the student as a whole. For the last year, a vast majority of pupils had to learn online whereas I know most would have preferred to be in the classroom. We, as pupils before COVID, were learning in an environment that is made for exactly that purpose. Maybe at home, we had distractions but it\u2019s also important to remember how much we\u2019ve lost and the difference in our home situations and mental health. Some people live in areas with better WIFI and have better access to electronics within families. A whole year of online learning and students are asked to perform to the same ability as they were doing at the start of the year, face to face. How can that be possible when we\u2019ve lost a whole year to online work?<\/p>\n
In my personal opinion, coursework and teacher-assessed grades work out for me but they may not work for others. The student chooses the coursework topic, writes a 3500-word essay using sources and analysis, handing it on a specific deadline. Work in real life is the same \u2013 workers are taught to adapt to what their work requires, by taking work assessments or not. Coursework mimics real-life presentations for businesses \u2013 a skill encouraged by most teachers that prefer applicable work skills.<\/p>\n
Instead of being graded by one final grade, I\u2019d favour a system where we choose how to be graded. An education system that isn\u2019t based on grades but emphasises employability. A grade only determines what you were taught and forced to repeat out under exam conditions. It\u2019s a process of memorisation and knowledge for a set of letters, rather than how much you excelled as a student and a person.<\/p>\n
Article by a Young Reporter<\/strong> When Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for UK\u2019s Education, announced that year 11s and 13s would receive teacher assessed grades, I was quite relaxed. But as the summer came, Year 12s were in a state of inconsistency up until this February when he announced the current year would be receiving them too. The mock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"xn-wppe-expiration":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-action":[],"xn-wppe-expiration-prefix":[],"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[369,11],"tags":[626],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3cThd-5Pn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22405"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22407,"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22405\/revisions\/22407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanel.org.uk\/va\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFirst appeared in Grimsby Telegraph 4th May 2021<\/em><\/p>\n\n