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This article this morning made interesting reading following the vote in the House of Commons to prevent the publication of correspondence between the Department of Education and Ofqual in relation to the exams fiasco and Ofqual backtracking on promises to publish such material in their evidence to the Education Select Committee last week.
Quoting large parts of the article.
"A contingency planning document sent to the government on March 16 sets out numerous risks associated with using the controversial approach which ignited last month’s exams grading fiasco
When listing disadvantages associated with the system Ofqual warned “while it may be possible to achieve an overall statistical fit between the estimated grade, rank order and other evidence, individual students may feel that their final grade is not that which they should be awarded.
“Ofqual and exam boards may be subject to legal challenge over this approach.”
It also stated: “It will be challenging, if not impossible, to attempt to moderate estimates in a way that is fair for all this year’s students.”
The document further predicted teacher estimates “will inevitably include some conscious or unconscious bias” and “will not be able to take account of students who, had they taken their exams, would have done much worse, or much better, than their teachers predicted.”
Ofqual also warns “evidence suggests that particular social and ethnic groups are unfairly disadvantaged in estimates”.
During A-level results day in August it was discovered poorer pupils were more likely to have had their centre-assessed A-level grades lowered during the standardisation process.
Just four days later the government announced both A-level and GCSEs students would be awarded their teacher-assessment grades before standardisation in a major U-turn.
Elsewhere the planning document said the “credibility of any estimated grades may be questioned, particularly in cases where students’ grades are much worse (or better) than expected.”
Ofqual listed just one advantage for the option, recognising it is “far from ideal” but that it would allows students to have grades “which could be used to determine progression to the next stage of education or employment, and therefore mitigates the risk that substantial numbers of students receive no qualifications, which would put them at a disadvantage in future.”
The watchdog states “in order to make sure the data is collected and checked for completeness , exam boards will need to send instructions to schools by 25 March”.
In practice schools did not receive this guidance until more than a week after this deadline – on April 3."
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