Grade expectations: students’ perceptions of national examinations in England

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,

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: 

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.  

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.

Policy actions

• A national ‘assessment literacy programme’ campaign (funded by government and led locally by LAs/MAT Principals etc.) should be established to re-evaluate the aims of public education with the goal of demonstrating why learning should be prioritised as a means of enriching our lives and why a range of approaches to assessment will support this goal. 
  
  Students, when asked, feel that their progress and achievements in school are not well characterised by exam results; leaving them powerless in something that it integral to their futures and susceptible to poor mental health, all of which has a public cost. Invoking a national change of the aims of education (and its outcomes) would provide a way to change how students see their identity as learners and better understand the value of lifelong approaches to learning as a means of continuous self-development.
   
• A commitment from Government to providing time and funding for continuing professional development for teachers at all stages of their careers, guided by expertise in Teacher Education Institutions and funded by the DfE, that focuses on assessment practice, leading to assessment literacy.
  
  Ensuring that time and funds are set aside to engage with this kind of CPD will enhance its value and demonstrate a commitment to improving assessment literacy. This would improve teachers’ confidence as assessors and would improve public trust in their decisions. Enhanced assessment literacy among teachers would facilitate major changes to national systems of assessment – shifting from externally set examinations to a combination of external assessments and teacher assessments to better show the progress and potential of individuals. 

Professor Mary Richardson
Department of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

References

1. Nevill, Savage, G. C., & Forsey, M. (2023). It’s a diagnosis for the rich: disability, advocacy and the micro-practices of social reproduction. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 44(2), 239–258.  

2. Richardson, M. (2022) Rebuilding public confidence in educational assessment. London: UCL Press.

3. Richardson, M. (2023) Assessment dysmorphia: students and assessment identity. Invited presentation to the Executive Board of Qualifications Wales.  

4. Richardson, M. and Correia, C. (2023) Where’s my exam? Assessment and anguish – the loss of test taking experiences in the pandemic. Paper at BERA, 13th September 2023, Aston University, UK.

5. Sutton Trust. (2023). Response to Results Day in 2023.

6. Torrance, H. (2017). Blaming the victim: assessment, examinations, and the responsibilisation of students and teachers in neo-liberal governance. Discourse, 38(1), 83–96.

Image

Credit: Monkey Business / Adobe Stock Standard License.