How Teachers Feel About Being Told They Don’t Know How To Grade Their Own Pupils
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Teachers say it will be “heartbreaking” to watch their personal assessments of students overruled by a “biased” computer algorithm that has been found to disproportionately penalise students from poorer backgrounds.
The cancellation of exams due to the coronavirus pandemic has meant this year’s A-levels and GCSEs will be determined by standardisation modelling that relies on grades submitted by teachers and moderates them using a pupil’s past exam results – as well as the school’s past exam performance.
Schools minister Nick Gibb admitted on Wednesday nearly 40% of A-level grade recommendations by teachers are expected to be downgraded.
His comments came after the news that pupils in England would be allowed to use results in mock A-level exams as the basis for an appeal against their grades, after the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) downgraded 124,000 results in what many described as a “disaster” of a week.
The government’s latest U-turn “blows my mind”, said A-level law teacher Naomi. “It clearly shows the lack of understanding [education secretary] Gavin Williamson has for A-levels and how they work.”
Grading a pupil based on their mock exams “is like asking someone to take their driving test after only half the lessons”. “It’s clearly a knee jerk reaction to what we have seen in Scotland,” she told HuffPost UK.
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As a teacher who works at a school in a particularly deprived area in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Naomi’s grades are statistically more likely to be marked down. “It’s upsetting and demoralising, but also does inevitably make you feel angry and incensed – not for myself but for our young people who deserved so much more.”
She also worries how this will impact her pupils and their families. “Some students are going to feel utterly let...
