Read on Twitter
A thread on creating a fair qualifications system this year. Important to start from a recognition that there is a tension between two ideas of fairness this year.
First concept: a qualifications system is fair if it awards accurately based on what someone knows and can do. Second: a qualification system is fair if it accurately assesses someone’s capability/ability to succeed at the next stage.
Both ideas of fairness (and ‘merit’) are important and often well aligned, but always in tension: if you faced multiple disadvantages you may be more able to succeed at next stage than someone advantaged who knows more today. Hence, universities make contextual offers every year.
In 2021, these two ideas of fairness are not merely in tension but at odds. Vastly more than in any other year, students’ opportunities to do well have been enhanced or reduced by circumstances (school and home) beyond their control.
What a student understands now may be a much less accurate guide than normal to how well they will do in the future. So grading solely on that basis wd create radical unfairness: your grades and destination wd reflect little of your capability and a lot of your circumstances.
This seems to be the reason why the PM cancelled exams: ‘they can’t be taken fairly’. So, it is extraordinary – to my mind – that the DfE proposes in its consultation that this should be the basis of awarding:
Taken literally, this suggests that teachers would judge students on a pre-2020 standard. We know that substantial learning has been lost on average so this would lead to a much worse grade profile than 2019 or any recent year.
I know no-one who argues that this would meet acceptable standards of fairness for the cohort as a whole. It would also not compensate for differential lost learning – which seemed to be the motivation for cancelling exams.
Equally though, we cannot know with anything like sufficient accuracy at the individual level ‘what a student would have got without the pandemic’. Nor would it be fair in principle to try to. That would disregard what has actually happened (e.g. how hard have they worked?)
So this year we have to attempt a pragmatic ‘satisficing’ approach – where we balance these competing ideas of fairness and try to meet both standards ‘well enough’. If we ignore either, we end up with something indefensible.
Having grades which pay no attention to what young people know and can do would be meaningless, leave students on the wrong courses and be unfair to preceding generations.
Having grades which take no account of lost learning would entrench disadvantage, leaving those who have suffered the most in the last 12 months with a life-long handicap in the labour market.
Having no grades at all, a different grading system or a system of ‘asterisks’ for lost learning would be at least as bad: tarnishing the entire cohort.
So the aim should be a system which we do not pretend is identical to the past, but which is generous in a reasonable way, does a decent job of compensating for lost learning and is as fair as it can be between schools.
