Since being appointed chief regulator of exams watchdog Ofqual from January 1 this year, part of Simon Lebus’ role has involved restoring public confidence in the academic assessment system after the anger and disappointment that stemmed from last summer’s algorithm fiasco.
The controversial standardisation algorithm which was used to award grades in the summer of 2020 saw around 40 per cent of A-Level grades downgraded against teacher estimated grades, in some cases by two whole marks, sparking fury from schools, colleges, pupils and parents alike. Eventually, the government took the decision to U-turn on use of the algorithm and instead switched to teacher assessed grades to determine attainment outcomes at A-Level and GCSE.
As was the case last year, there will be no exams held in the summer of 2021, and so the regulator has had to devise a new system of assessment.
Following on from last year’s controversy, it has been decided that the customary examinations system will make way for an awarding system based on teacher assessed grades in 2021 to guarantee fairness.
Sitting down on The Leaders Council podcast to discuss the new assessments system for 2021, Simon Lebus began by outlining the motivations behind Ofqual’s decision to use teacher assessed grades. Referring to the issues around the use of the standardisation algorithm last year, he stressed that one of Ofqual’s statutory obligations was to maintain public confidence in the examinations system and that following a thorough public consultation process in early 2021, going down the route of teacher assessed grades was believed to be the method that would ensure the fairest possible outcomes for pupils.
Lebus said: “Covid has brought about a significant amount of disruption across education, perhaps most troublingly the high levels of lost learning and the adverse impact on students. This includes school closures, students having to look after relatives, perhaps having periods of ill-health themselves, and not being able to access learning in the normal way. A lot of learning has been moved online, and it has been tough for students and teachers as well. Teachers have had to rapidly adapt to meeting students remotely and take on a lot of additional so there has been disruption all round.
“It has also impacted the exam system once again. The decision was taken this January to not have 2021 exams take place in the normal way, so we have moved over from an exam system to teacher assessment in recognition of the disruption that pupils have faced.
“When the lockdown was called in March 2020 and it was determined exams could not go ahead, a new arrangement had to be put together quickly. One of the major issues with that was the use of an algorithm as a means of regulating or standardising results and that did not command a lot of public acceptance. It deprived students of a sense of agency: they felt something was being done to them which they could not contribute to or influence in a meaningful way. Parents reacted strongly to that, and reasonably enough this year’s approach is very different.
“One of the things we decided to do at the start of the year when it was decided that exams wouldn’t happen was to engage in a large-scale public consultation in partnership with the Department for Education. We had a record level response of over 100,000 individual replies. We asked about this year’s arrangements, what they would potentially look like and how it should be organised, and we had 50,000 students, 25,000 parents, 10,000 teachers and many other interested parties engaging. So, many of the arrangements for this year were informed by a high degree of consultation with the public and those who would be affected. I feel therefore that there has been a much greater sense of agency this year and as such this year’s system will command a greater degree of public confidence as a result.”
While conceding that this year’s method of using teacher assessed grades did leave some room for grade inflation compared to an ordinary exam year, Lebus insisted that higher education institutions and employers would consider awarded grades to be meaningful.
“We have been clear throughout this process that outcomes will look different to how they would in a normal year. We are using teacher assessments and several consequences flow from that. One of those consequences is a benefit of the doubt factor: in a normal year where a teacher has a class of 30 students, they might well expect that five will get a Grade Nine at GCSE, but on the day probably only three would actually achieve that because of variables, such as some pupils revising the topics that didn’t come upon the paper, and all the other things that could go wrong on an exam day. Given the nature of what we are doing, which is using the holistic judgement of teachers to arrive at the final assessed grades, all five of the students in that scenario will get the Grade Nine. This factor will inevitably contribute in an improvement to overall attainment levels, but we just do not know yet what that upward trajectory is likely to look like.
“In spite of that upward pressure on results, I think colleges, universities and employers recognise that that it has been a year of unprecedented disruption to education and that everyone has a responsibility to ensure that students can progress in the most orderly and suitable way. So, I am confident that there will be a good level of support for these results when they are published, and a real recognition of the difficult circumstances students have been forced to work in.”
A central principle on which the 2021 grading system has been formulated is that pupils are only being tested in class to help determine their teacher assessed grades on the content that they have been exposed to, and Lebus believes that this will be an instrument that will help to level the playing field for disadvantaged students who have lost out on more learning time than their peers.
“We are only testing students on what they have been taught and what we would expect them to know. There is no risk of a candidate being asked things that they will not have revised for or have not been exposed to, even if it is on the syllabus.
“This is a content coverage concession where we test students only on content they have been taught. That considers that there will be varied levels of learning for different students of different backgrounds. It is not a perfect instrument, but it provides more of a level playing field and a fair basis on which teacher assessed grades can be determined.”
As part of the 2021 exams framework, exam boards will be carrying out quality assurance checks to guard against excessive grade inflation, considering a range of factors including the performances of previous cohorts of students at educational institutions. When asked about the likelihood of these quality assurance checks leaving room for some teacher assessed grades to be pegged back, Lebus talked down the prospect that it would lead to some students being marked down.
He reassured: “What we ask schools to do when submitting teacher assessed grades to exam boards is to provide a variety of information on the sources of evidence that they have based their judgements on. One thing we have asked is for schools to provide results from previous exam years, so the last normal exam year of 2019 and the outcomes from that will be referred to as a point of context.
“Now, if pupil grades being recommended by a certain school are very much out of kilter with previous exam year performances, there would need to be some explanation as to why that might be. However, this is not to say that pupils will be marked down, because there are several perfectly reasonable explanations even in a normal exam year as to why one year’s set of pupils may significantly outperform their predecessors. Changes of teacher, changes of syllabus and simply having a more gifted cohort of students in a certain year are all factors that make for a high level of variability year on year. So, referring to previous performances is more of a reference point designed for context, it is not intended to be used as an instrument for standardisation as was the case with the algorithm.”
In cases where a pupil feels an unreasonable exercise of academic judgement has led to their grades being marked down, Lebus explained that there would be a robust appeals process in place.
“We remain mindful of maintaining a sense of agency for students, particularly if they feel hard done by. So, we have designed an appeals process for students who feel there has been an unreasonable exercise of academic judgement in the awarding of their final grades.”
