Grade expectations: students’ perceptions of national examinations in England

Recommendations to foreground the human side of assessment in policy narratives in order to change views of what education means.

Exam results matter – they provide currency for key aspects of our lives after school, whether that is employment, further study and/or training. But they come at a cost to the personal well-being of students who take them, and nationally, to the view of our education system as a means of schooling for test taking which means the focus rests on results.

School success: more than a grade?

For those who research assessment, national exam results days for A levels and GCSEs in August 2023 revealed what had been feared, a tougher anchoring of the grade boundaries to bring them back to normal – comparative to the outcomes in 2019.

The decisions made by the exam board makers are not undertaken lightly and grade awarding for our national tests takes into account a range of variables as decisions are made about what a pass, a B, or a 41, will look like in any year.

The decisions made about awarding are undoubtedly underpinned with a goal of fairness and maintaining a national standard, but there are always students who lose out, repeatedly and who can do nothing about this inequity because it is not related to variables within their control – they are students from low socio-economic backgrounds who attend schools in the poorest areas of the country (Sutton Trust, 2023).

Once such losses happen, they are not fleeting and they can stick with individuals and impact not only access to further and higher education, but can shape an individual’s view of themselves as a learner (Nevill et al, 2023: Richardson, 2022; Torrance, 2017) and it is not a usually a positive view.

Current narratives

Professor Mary Richardson's recent research has focused on understanding assessment in public life, and specifically how testing outcomes are shaping education systems globally. In the twenty-first century we seem to believe that schooling and further phases of education are shaped entirely by a small number of assessments, and that assessment can only be characterised by exam results. The idea that grades can accurately describe the aims and outcomes of education is unfair, but it remains a persistent and persuasive discourse.

Measures of educational success globally are dominated by a focus on test outcomes and, yet there is copious research to demonstrate that other forms of assessment can and do provide valid and trusted ways to show what students can do and understand. Of course, some measures of educational outcomes are required in order to understand how students engage with learning at individual and national levels. However, the emphasis and preoccupation with a relatively small number of examinations as a means to summarise an entire educational history is unhealthy and it impacts the health of our whole education system.

Key findings

Impacts on policy makers

A recent seminar presentation to Qualifications Wales found Board members “overwhelmed at the size of making key changes in assessment practice”, but open to discussion and raising questions such as: 

• How can schools ensure a balance between good preparation and causing students to be anxious? 
• What role do schools have in supporting parental understanding of high stakes tests and the extent to which they pressurise students (e.g. GCSEs)? 
• What do policymakers need to do to improve and promote assessment literacy? It needs to come from the top to ensure schools take it on board too? 

And further questions about adaptations to national assessments and what schools can do to support students in lessening their anxiety-led preoccupation with test outcomes.

Impacts on students

Research with 193 students in England who took A levels in 2022 and who have just finished their first year of university found that 143 students said they were stressed and anxious about how fair their results would be (Richardson & Correia, British Educational Research Association 2023 conference).

The same students left comments relating to (a) feelings of loss and anguish at not being able to take GCSEs,

“my year has been the most disadvantaged [because] we did not sit GCSEs and the last exams we set were SATS. No one really knows how to revise now (S142) 

And (b) feeling unprepared and disadvantaged in taking A levels and wanting the government to use COVID as a means to consider changing national assessments: 

“Exams are an unreliable way of seeing what a person knows. It all depends upon the day and how the person is feeling (S83)

Recommendations

Policy makers and examination boards should seriously consider a fundamental change in the way that students are assessed using the Covid pandemic as evidence of possible alternatives. 

In their last three years in education, students appeared preoccupied with how well (or not) they might do in national tests.  

“You are killing students with this exam structure that makes them base their entire worth and future on exam results. (S172)

Whilst the pandemic is a unique event, researchers have learned things that should be of concern to us all: notably that basing a national assessment system almost entirely on examinations leaves no means to adapt in a crisis. The sense of concern spread into public life and damaged trust in the examinations system – this will take time to repair but it is possible.  

The knowledge and research to create better systems to assess learning exists but it requires a long-term commitment to challenging what is meant by assessment in order to generate public support and understanding. To initiate such changes, Professor Richardson proposes working with a range of stakeholders to generate collaborative engagement.

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Credit: Monkey Business / Adobe Stock Standard License.