The period of time before your exams is a stressful one, so it is important to look after yourself. Everything I am going to say is just common sense, but it is amazing how many people don’t put it into action!
Eat Well
Eat regular meals – including breakfast – making sure you have plenty of fruit and vegetables. Drink lots of water to keep hydrated. Avoid excessive consumption of fizzy drinks, fatty and sugary foods. This is particularly important in the time immediately before your exam.
Rest Well
Take regular breaks from your work and school commitments. Try and make sure you have fun and do the things which make you feel good.
Get plenty of sleep. Going to bed and getting up at regular times is proven to have a positive impact on mental health.
Get help
If you feel overwhelmed, stressed or worried about the exams (or anything else), it is important to talk to someone about it. Talking to your friends is a good start. Letting your parents or another adult in your life know how you feel is really important. Just telling someone about your feelings can help put them into perspective.
If you would like more structured or professional advice, you can go and see your school counsellor or contact one of the many charities or agencies that can give advice and support.
Young Minds is a charity dedicated to helping young people with mental health issues. You can find out more here.
The Princes Trust website has a good list of places where you can find help: to check that out click here.
Remember – exams may seem like the most important thing in the world right now, but life is varied and surprising and has much more to offer than good exam grades. You will be great, whatever happens!
This is the last in my series on How to Revise, but you can see the others here.
There are hundreds of articles, blogs and posts about the best ways to revise. I won’t repeat all of the different ideas here. I will just put down some general guidelines.
Reading your notes is not useful enough!
You only have a short amount of time revising each topic. Don’t waste it by just reading through your notes. It would be better to do a question (similar to one you have done in class or might do in the exam) and refer to your notes while you are trying to answer the question.
The point is to process, use and apply the information you need, rather than just look at it and hope some of it will stick.
Think about your work while you are doing something else
Recalling and reviewing information and ideas is really helpful. You can do this in the shower, as you walk to school, while you wash up or do a run. And if you aren’t able to recall the subject as you had hoped, then you can go back and review it in your notes when you get a chance.
Know your exam
Knowing how the exam paper is laid out, what the questions are really asking you, and how exactly to answer them, is crucial in preparing for your exams. Checking the mark scheme is also useful.
Practice your timings
As you get closer to the exam date, practice doing the questions in the amount of time you will have on the day. You don’t always need to do the whole paper, but taking twenty minutes to do a certain question will get you in the habit of working, thinking and writing quickly.
Group work
Working with friends can be really helpful. You can help each other understand topics, teach each other (which helps teacher and listener), test each other, or just have a companion to spend those lonely hours with. Be careful not to just chat or get distracted, however. That is really easy to do! A combination of working with others and by yourself might be best, but do what works for you. (What works for you is not what feels the nicest, but what gets the best results!)
Test Yourself
Plan in regular tests of facts and figures as well as longer essay questions. Regularly recalling information helps it stick!
Teach it!
To be able to explain a topic to someone else, you must understand it very well yourself. Try and find a friend or relative who doesn’t mind you teaching them about your school work. While trying to explain something tricky to someone else, you will find out if you need to go back to study it more yourself!
If in doubt, ask your teachers for advice and talk to your friends about what they are doing. Try different things and see what works for you.
This is the forth in a series of short pieces on How to Revise. Click here to see the first on Motivation and here to see the second on Finding a Time and Place. Click here to see the third on Writing a Timetable. Watch this space for more!
I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to make a good revision timetable. It is worth spending quite a bit of time on this, because it could mean the difference between being successful and not.
Find out how many subjects you have to study.
Work out how many slots you have available to study a week. (Factor in your commitments and be realistic!)
Find out how many weeks you have until your exams.
Assign a subject to a slot each week, or each fortnight, depending on how many subjects and slots you have.
You may want to bear in mind that you are weaker in some subjects than others, and therefore give yourself more slots in those, but try to be as equal as you can otherwise.
Next work out which topics within the subjects you need to revise. The truth is, you won’t have time for every single topic in every subject, so choose things that will definitely be on the exam, that you need most to work on, and that use skills and knowledge that are transferrable to other parts of the exam.
Assign a topic to each of the subjects for each of the weeks you have left before the exam.
Key things to remember are:
Don’t put more on your timetable than you are able or willing to do (you will just feel disheartened when you can’t keep up, which will affect your ability to keep motivated).
Always be willing to amend your timetable, depending on changes in your life, your study needs and how well or badly you are doing with each subject.
Put the timetable somewhere you will see it often. Refer to it frequently and use it a tool to organise yourself.
A typical timetable might look like this:
Week 1
After school 4pm
After tea 8pm
Monday
Maths – Probability
Tuesday
French – sports
Wednesday
English – Macbeth
Thursday
DT – practical
History – Tudors
Friday
Morning
Afternoon
Saturday
Physics – waves
Art – practical
Sunday
Week 2
After school 4pm
After tea 8pm
Monday
Chemistry – Atomic Structure and the periodic table
Tuesday
Wednesday
Biology – Cell biology
Thursday
Maths – Algebra
History – USA
Friday
Morning
Afternoon
Saturday
English – Language and structure question Paper 1
Art – practical
Sunday
Search online for lots of different examples of how to organise your timetable.
This is the third in a series of short pieces on How to Revise. Click here to see the first on Motivation and here to see the second on Finding a Time and Place. Watch this space for more!
Last time we talked about how to motivate yourself. This time we will consider the importance of finding the right time and place to revise.
Finding a good place
However spontaneous you are, we are all creatures of habit. To work well, it is a good idea to find a place which, when you go there, suggests the idea of successfully, quietly studying.
The qualities of your ‘good place’
You should be away from distractions – find somewhere where you won’t be tempted to leave your studies and do something else. Some people like a busy place, like the kitchen table, where life can go on around them. Some people like a quiet place, like their room, where they can be alone. If you are very easily distractable, a good tip would be to use a place where you can’t easily do anything else but study, like a school or public library. Find out what suits you. What suits you is not what you find most pleasant – it is where you do most work!
You should be comfortable – A good chair, a desk with enough room to work, these things probably make it easier to study. But whatever you feel comfortable with will help you stay working for longer.
You should be consistent – It’s a good idea, if possible, to use the same place each time. It will create the link in your mind between the place and the activity, which will make it easier to get on with your work.
I appreciate that each of these things is dependant on the privilege of having a stable and appropriate environment and not everyone has access to that. If you are struggling to find a good place to study, a public library is a good option. If there isn’t one available near you, then your school should have facilities where it is possible to study. Ask someone (your teacher, your parents) if you can’t see an easy solution.
Finding a good time
Making study a habit is the key to being successful. So, studying at the same time in the day is a good idea if you can manage it. There should, if possible, be a trigger that reminds you it is time to study. For example, you could study straight away when you get home from school, or as soon as you have finished your evening meal, or when you have finished walking your dog.
Whatever you choose, bear these things in mind:
Be consistent – try not to make exceptions to your rule. The more you stick to your study time, the more you are likely to stick to it in the future.
Be realistic – there is no point in telling yourself you will study every evening when you get in from school if you are always exhausted and starving. You would be better to eat and rest, then study.
Be aware of your existing commitments – there is no point telling yourself you will study for two hours every night if you have badminton on a Monday, swimming on a Tuesday and always meet your friends for a coffee on a Thursday. Plan your study sessions around your commitments.
The key is to find a time and a place that suit you and stick with it.
This is the second in a series of short pieces on How to Revise. Click here to see the first and watch this space for more.
Like it or not, this is the moment when you must start your revision for your exams, if you haven’t started already. Spending time planning how, what and when to revise is not wasted time. It will save you time in the end.
Here are a few suggestions. Anything that works – use it! Anything that doesn’t – ditch it! Everyone is different. Different things work for different people.
Motivating yourself
Before you can even start, you need to believe that you need to. And you need to sustain that feeling throughout the next few months. This is much, much trickier than you might think.
What motivates you?
The thought that you will do well and be able to go on to the course, job or apprenticeship you want to do next year?
The fear that you won’t?
The desire to please your parents and teachers?
Some parents offer rewards of money or a new phone or some other material reward in order to spark some enthusiasm to work. This may work for some, but is the least effective of all the motivation techniques. However, all of these will help a little. Nevertheless, on a day to day basis it is easy to lose sight of the overall goal. What can you do to motivate yourself to work today?
Remind yourself of your overall goal.
Promise yourself a little reward for doing some work (watching a film, seeing a friend, eating some ice cream or whatever you like best).
Break your work down into smaller chunks with rests between them.
The best advice I can give, though, is to make working a habit, like cleaning your teeth or having a shower. It’s just something you do. Make a time to study, say 4pm after school for an hour, and once you have done it a few times, it will become normal.
This is the first in a series of short pieces about How to Revise. Watch this space for more!
Students often say that either they can’t or they don’t know how to revise for their English Language GCSE. Of course, your teachers will all be telling you that you can, and showing you how. I thought I could add a few words of my own.
These are things that you can be doing all the time:
Read regularly – a quality newspaper, a short story, a comic, instructions, a novel, a blog. You couldn’t expect to run a marathon if you hadn’t been running for 2 years, and you can’t expect to read and understand your English paper if you don’t practice reading.
Think critically about what you read and watch. When you read a book for pleasure, or watch a TV programme or film, think about what you have read or watched and talk about it with your friends and family. What did you think of the characters? Did the plot add up? Was it exciting? What made the ending good? If you can think in these terms about the stories you see every day, then it will make the questions you come up against in the exam seem less unfamiliar.
Talk to those around you. Learn how to recount what has happened to you that day, what you learnt in a lesson or what you found annoying about what you watched on TV. The better you are at explaining, discussing and recounting, the better your writing will be.
Write things down – lists, explanations, descriptions, a diary, a story. The more familiar you are with writing, the better you get at it.
To specifically prepare for your exam:
Go through exercises in revision books like Edexcel’s Revision Workbook or Target 5/9 English Language Writing.
Watch videos on Youtube about how to do certain questions. There are some excellent ones. Just make sure the one you find refers to your exam board.
Do past paper questions. The best way to do this is to take one of the questions on the paper and do that. The first few times give yourself as long as you need. Then work towards timing yourself to do it in the time required. Work up to doing full exam papers only just before the exam or occasionally to test your timings. (You can get past papers from the exam websites, as long as you are sure which exam board you’re taking.)
Know the exam paper. The questions are of the same type every year. Learn what is expected of you from each question, how long to spend on each one and how many marks are awarded for each one.
Read exemplars – work done by previous students – to get a feel for how to improve and what you can avoid doing as well. (You can see these on the website for the exam boards too.)
Look at the mark scheme. If you know what the marker is looking for, you will have a better chance of producing it.
If possible, get your practice work marked. Learning from your mistakes is key!
General advice:
Get to know your own strengths and weaknesses. Knowing your strengths should give you a boost, realising that there are lots of things you do well! Knowing your weaknesses can help you know what to work on. For example, do you struggle with understanding the text? Do you find it hard to develop your answer when you’re analysing the language and structure of a text? Do you find it difficult to write description in your creative writing? Think about what you find tricky, then practice that!
Practice little and often. Better 30 minutes every week than 2 hours every month.
Remember – this is a skill you’re learning. You can’t cram a skill! You must practice it! Read, write and practice the key skills of analysis, evaluation, comparison, creative writing and transactional writing.
Of all the nonsense that we go through as teenagers, and of all the things that strangely hang on into adulthood, the concept of being cool is the most pervasive, and one of the most destructive. It’s hard to define what ‘cool’ is. It’s easier to see what it is not. And this comment on ‘cool’ will depend on my definition, as many will say that undeniably good things are cool, and that it is not the word or the concept’s fault if people take it the wrong way. But herein lies the problem. Cool can be defined as anything good – from stylish to popular, from confident to successful. Cool is what you think it is. And so in a closed society, cool is simply what the most powerful people in the room believe it to be. The only way to break this hold is to disagree and risk being hurt by the powerful ones who have a vested interest in their definition being upheld.
My short-hand for cool, in a school setting, is to take everything a parent would want a child to be and provide the reverse. Hardworking, kind to the vulnerable, thoughtful, independent, individual, respectful of others, respectful of both the law and the rules – cool is the antithesis of this. No parent should hope their child is cool. They will be more likely to be bailing their offspring out of difficult situations (too much drink, drugs and sex), more likely to be called in to the Head’s office, more likely to watch their kids do badly in their academic studies. We may hope our children are popular, but it seems to me that this is a very high price to pay.
However cool or uncool you are now or ever were, in the end we all hope we find people who will care about us because of who we are – who we really are – instead of having to put on an act to seem on top of things, confident and poised at all times. No one can sustain this, and the effort of doing so can be almost too much to bear.
The lesson coolness at school teaches is that being what others want of you is more important than being yourself and being seen as strong and confident is more important than showing your weaknesses. At a time when young people are forming their personalities, learning strategies which will keep them well and safe throughout their lives, they are trying to squash themselves into the tiny box that the current version of cool has allowed them. Forget loving ‘70s glam rock, enjoying playing the violin, knitting characters from Doctor Who or getting into birdwatching. If it isn’t football, current pop and Love Island (or substitute any sport, music or TV programme here) then it isn’t acceptable. And this is the point. It isn’t that there is anything wrong with any of the things that are cool; they are just arbitrary choices from the myriads of options available. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about cool or uncool things. The problem is that someone else has chosen it for you. It isn’t what you would want, or may not be if you gave yourself the time and freedom to choose.
I won’t even focus too much on how trying to be cool can give people serious issues with body shape, warp their sense of self to a damaging degree, and give power to people unfitted to deal with it while leaving others alone with rock-bottom self-esteem. I won’t even focus on the cruelty, bullying and nastiness it provokes in the cool and the miserable exclusion it provokes in those labelled uncool. I am not even going to talk about the terrible fate of those who try to be cool but can never be, rejecting people who could be true friends to chase after a group of people who will never accept them. But what I will say is that it is another facet of the terrible double edged sword of belonging. We will do almost anything to belong, including making sure that the others outside the circle suffer. Racism, sexism, xenophobia are all part of the same disease. It is the attitude that as long as we have what we want, what we need, we don’t care if others don’t have it. We can be cruel to the spotty boy trying to practise his French horn for the school play because we crave to be part of the inner circle and fear the cruelty of others. We can be cruel to refugees in a boat off our coast because we fear being the outsider, fear that what we have will be taken from us and long to belong with the powerful, long to be one of them.
The sooner we can teach children that to be yourself (with all the odd quirks, hobbies and interests) is the only way to be happy, the sooner we can eradicate the awful disease of coolness and foster love of diversity, love of difference, and acceptance of others. That’s how you build good human beings.
Those who hang on to their coolness once they have left school are like the 40 year old at the club, drinking too much and spending all their money on nights out. Understandable behaviour for the young, but something we ought to grow out of. It would be even better if we had not been enticed by the idea of cool in the first place. Try being you. As someone once said, everyone else is taken.
Work and fun- they seem like opposites, don’t they? The way we think separates these two into mutually exclusive poles. I know that if we scratch the surface even a little bit, we find that it isn’t true. We know that you can enjoy working, and the luckiest of us love our jobs, and we know that loving something that is good for you is the best option, but, even then, we want it to be one thing or the other. Either, it’s not really work because you enjoy it – ‘I never worked a day in my life! I love my job too much!’ Or enjoying something is a way of getting the useful thing done – ‘If the children enjoy learning, then in every lesson they will behave and will progress.’ But why do we need to think like this?
The truth is, everything worth doing, that makes our lives mean something, takes effort and is pleasurable. If we want to sip the pleasure without making the effort, we will never achieve the value. If we believe we can only reach the goal by hard, serious work without loving what we do, then, not only will the joy of life be diminished, but it is likely that the result will not be as worthwhile. I’m sure we can all think of examples of both.
You could take this as a maxim for relationships, for work, for education. If you want only fun and don’t expect and accept difficult times and hard work in a long-term relationship, be that with a partner, a parent, a child or a friend, then your relationship is going to fail. If there is only an earnest ethic of work in your learning, it will be hard to persevere. As this is a reading and education blog, I will focus of educational examples, but I think it could be said to be true in all aspects of life. If a student wants to have fun, and exclusively do that, then they will not develop as they should academically. If a teacher focuses too hard on the work and not hard enough on the enjoyment, then no one will want to even begin to learn.
Normally, when we are talking about our own activities we want to have as much fun as possible. But there is an inescapable idea, in all walks of life, but particularly in education, that without miserable and stony-faced hard work, the results are not worth having. There is also an insidious idea that pleasure is the route to all things, and if only we can make things fun, all is achievable. It may be boring and middle of the road, but there needs to be balance in all things, this included. I have sat in meetings listening to the theory that behaviour problems in the classroom stem almost exclusively from the lack of ‘engagement’ provided in the lessons. ‘Engagement’ here means fun. Nonsense, obviously. As an NQT, that made me feel a failure – ‘Not only am I unable to control my class, but I’m boring too!’. But I hope we all know that behaviour management is as much about school based structures, school-led expectations, personal relationships with students, routines, environment and a host of other things, as much as it is about ‘engagement’. Fun is not the answer to everything. On the other end of the scale, once out of primary, teachers feel they can’t read to classes, have library lessons, take time to do book reviews or talk about reading in class, except as a ‘fun’ lesson which has no true value in the great scheme of things. Activities which develop relationships between students, improve group work, develop confidence, give a sense of belonging – these are not given space in our schools. They are seen as frivolous and must take a poor second place to slogging through the SQI/PEE paragraphs or learning your times-tables. All this is because playing games, listening to students debate and giving time to work that does not lead to exam excellence is seen as ‘fun’ not serious work.
I’m probably preaching to the choir here. You’re probably thinking, ‘This is obvious, surely!’ But sadly, in everyday ways, in schools throughout the country, we are alternately relying too heavily on ‘fun’ to trick the students into doing their work, like the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, or we are excluding meaningful and valuable parts of learning because they have no countable value and so are frivolous. Is it completely fanciful to imagine that we can encourage students to value their work, not hiding that it can be hard sometimes, but add an element of enjoyment into the proceedings? In fact, it shouldn’t need to be added, because, if we can but be induced to admit it, work can be fun. Intrinsically. Not an added piece of ‘sugar’ to coat the bitter pill, but because work and fun are fundamentally linked.
I have had cause to think some more about what people are reading and confront again that knotty issue of whether some books, plays and poetry are more ‘worthy’ of being read than others. There has been a recent survey suggesting that children have read more books with higher reading ages during lockdown than in previous years. Unsurprising, I would say, since children have had more time at home, and potentially less time at various clubs, playing with friends, and travelling to and from school. But this raises the question of the importance of reading books with higher reading ages.
I wish we lived in a world where you could read what you enjoyed, and didn’t worry if the book was difficult or easy, worthy or unworthy. I believe that then, children and adults alike would read more, enjoy it more, and so get better at it, opening up worlds of books previously unreachable. Unfortunately we live in a world where, if children cannot reach a reading age of at least 16 (by the time they are around 15) then GCSE becomes a struggle. So, teachers around the country are trying to force children into progressing from Tom Gates, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The World of Norm to Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare within a few short years. Even if I agreed that this was a suitable aim for our education system, I would not accept that we are going about it in the right way.
Increasingly, children are being taught classic literature at younger and younger ages. I do not see the point of this. It only alienates the majority of children while squashing beautiful and complex works into consumable nuggets for children who cannot cope with the original. Why are we doing this? I taught Year 7 The Tempest a couple of years ago. How ridiculous! There was barely a nod to the original text, so we taught a very strange story, missing out any interpretations the use of power, different forms of love, corruption, aging and death, to students who were too young to understand a play for adults. I am not saying the students didn’t learn anything. I just wonder if a play they could really relate to, act, and understand would have been a better use of time. If Shakespeare wasn’t on the GCSE curriculum, this would never have been even thought of. Animal Farm is probably slightly more understandable as a Year 7 text, as it can be understood on a purely basic level. But it grates that the children who could not possibly understand the political ideology and historical situation it was written to satirise are missing the key reasons why Orwell wrote it in the first place. It does not follow that if students study ‘classic’ texts in early Key Stage 3, they will be able to understand them better in late Key Stage 4. Even then, Shakespeare is pushing the limits of most teenagers’ abilities. All we do, is create a generation of children who feel that books, plays and literature in general are opaque, not for them, and divorced from anything they have experienced themselves. That sense of alienation rolls into disaffection, and disengagement.
Is it impossible to inspire students with a love of books and of reading? I don’t think so! I think we can, if we allow the child to choose the things they like and give them time and encouragement to read, and to help them feel they are not being judged. I have, in my time as a librarian, come across children who felt judged for reading something that was, frankly, too easy for them. And children who felt judged for trying to read something too difficult for them. This judgement is unhelpful and unnecessary. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t guide people to find books that will suit their interests and ability level, but we all need some sense of security, and pushing people to their outer limits all the time is counter productive. Furthermore, insisting a book is too hard – rather than letting the child find that out for themselves – is a way of saying, these things are not for you! You are too young, too stupid, too working class, too whatever… The child will fill in the blanks.
This is all so obvious, I wonder that it needs saying. Schools are so focused on exam results rather than actual achievement, enjoyment and preparation for life, that creating literate individuals who will carry on learning and reading for their whole lives is less of a priority than getting those teenagers a 4 in their English Language and Literature. I don’t blame individual teachers who all long for their students to love and appreciate the books, plays and poetry they are taught. I don’t even blame schools for focusing their attention on exams rather than long-term educational goals, but the system is so skewed that, however good your intentions, students continue to struggle with classic texts and unfortunately learn that they are not for them in the process. My aim would be to open up all literature to everyone. I just fear we are not going about it in the right way.
I have thought about blogging during this terribly stressful time of A level and GCSE results and the chaos that surrounds that, but every time I put pen to paper (metaphorically) I stop myself. Either what I have to say has been said before, and often by more skilful and knowledgeable people than I am, or I have been so incandescently angry that I would be unable to maintain the balanced, polite and positive attitude that I try to preserve on this blog. And, it can’t be denied, I have been angrier than I have ever been during the results fiasco. It is brought closer to home for me because, this year, I not only have students who I have helped prepare for exams, but my own son would have been taking his A levels. As a result, I have felt first-hand the uncertainty, anxiety and tension every parent has felt in this period, and I have witnessed first-hand the same stress, anxiety and concern that every student has experienced. I acknowledge that for many the stress is not over. For many, hopes of future jobs and courses have had to be put on hold with no prospect of a way forward. Many people have been disappointed twice over, once on receiving their results and the second time when their CAG (Centre Assessed Grades) could not be accepted by universities who had already allocated their place to someone else. For me, however, I have found calmer waters, and can now begin to think more clearly about all that has passed.
The thought which most readily springs to mind is, how could we have avoided this? The answer to that is political, so I won’t follow that thought to its conclusion. The other idea, which is more significant educationally, is what use are qualifications at all? I mean, why do we do them? I don’t mean to suggest that we stop. I just would like to consider our purpose.
Primarily, it seems, A levels at least, have become a way for students to find a place at university. Universities here are tiered. We know that Oxford and Cambridge are at the top. Then we have Durham, St Andrews, Bristol, Imperial, LSE then Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and so on until we arrive at smaller institutions which used to be colleges under the protection of local universities. The higher your grade, the higher up the tree you can go. (I won’t even start to discuss the unfairness of this and how different universities excel at different kinds of courses, but I think you must agree that this is how most people see the system in Britain.) Is this the best way to finish our compulsory secondary education – with a test which is essentially an entrance exam for higher education? I would like to think that advanced level studies have a worth in their own right, and there are certainly plenty of students who decide not to continue with education after A level but opt for a work route instead.
If we start to doubt the reason why we give the grades we do at A level, we might also start to doubt what is taught, how it is taught and how it is assessed. Why was there so much horror expressed at the idea that students might get higher results than in previous years if given their CAGs instead of the moderated grades? Why, I thought, would that be such a bad thing? If results are to indicate the learning and the potential of a student, then why aren’t we glad if the results are better? Who are the results for? If they are for the school, for universities, for the government, for the country, then, yes, these things have an impact. But if they are for the individual, what is the issue? The problem is that exam results are not just for the individual student. They are used as a way to assess students’ ability to go on to higher education. They are used as a measure for institutions and for government departments and for the country as a whole. What is more important to the Department for Education, I am driven to wonder? Is it their own reputation or the happiness and success of individual students throughout the country?
However, I can see that companies and institutions have to compare results across year groups and so it is important that there is a standard which must be reached to receive an A or a B at A level. It is clear, however, that comparing across cohorts is not what the education system focuses on. Instead of there being a definitive standard, grade boundaries are always moved to make sure that a certain percentage of each year group gets each of the grades. Here we are not comparing like with like. We don’t take into account fluctuations across different year groups.
We don’t want students to get needlessly inflated grades either, though. An A has to mean something. And so does a U. But what, in a system which relies entirely on exams, do these grades actually mean? They favour students who have, what my parents call a ‘big match temperament’; they can rise to the occasion, using the nerves to improve their performance, pulling out ideas and applying knowledge even better than usual, knowing that this is the moment which counts. Many students, as we all know, are successful, intelligent, thoughtful students but can not function that way. Instead, they are blocked by terror, forgetting all that normally would be at the tips of their fingers. Do we want results to measure this ability – to remember and apply knowledge under pressure – more than any other? When exactly is this going to be needed again? The answer is, at university. At work it is much more likely that a steady, consistent understanding and application of ideas is required. Should our final exams exist simply as a way to see if people are suited to further study?
People have complained that the CAGs are higher than the moderated grades, and the grades which students normally get, and therefore students are getting gifts of grades instead of what they have worked for. One reason for that may well be the usual exam nerves which defeat so many young people. Another of the reasons the grades are not so good normally is that the students haven’t had to fight through the vagaries of life to receive their result. No one has had to sit and try and work while having a cold, hay fever, sickness or whatever other illness may have struck on the day in question. No one had to concentrate after hearing bad news, suffering from bereavement, coping with the after-effects of an argument at home or a break-up with a girl or boyfriend. No one found it too hot or too cold, no one found it hard to concentrate with someone chewing their pen in the next aisle and so on and so on. These marks were what students could achieve, on average, over months of work, rather than the usual exam results which record a moment in time. Why would we feel that a system which builds in such factors as luck and temperament is fairer than teachers assigning a grade which is decided on based on two years’ worth of work and effort?
I think (at least) two ideas stand between us and accepting teacher assessment as a final grade. One is that we had to go through exams, so why shouldn’t others. That, I have to say, is the worst reason to do anything. Perpetuating unfair and detrimental systems because we had to suffer through them is unthinking cruelty. The other more solid reason is the general lack of trust both the government and the public have for teachers’ professional judgement. That subject is worth a blog on its own. I have experienced it personally, as has every teacher, I dare say. Putting aside the lack of public trust for the moment, I would suggest that if the government doesn’t trust its teachers it should look again at the training and management of its education providers. Perhaps politicians know how untrustworthy they are and so can not trust anyone else. But to put our nation’s youth into the hands of a body of people you don’t trust does not seem wise on any level. I believe they are trustworthy. If others don’t, they should do something to recruit teachers they can trust rather than setting up a system that assumes teachers can not and will not treat students equitably.
In effect, what I am saying is that treating A levels simply as an entrance exam for university is too narrow, and trusting simply to exams is too unfair. Teacher assessed grades might help combat both these issues, not just this year, but from now on. As so many people have been saying, if we don’t overhaul an unfair, outdated system now, when will we ever do it? I don’t believe the only reason to assess students at the end of school is so that we can see which university, apprenticeship or job they go to. First, we should ponder why we should assess students at all, then try and devise a system which takes those purposes into account. Will we have the courage to take the opportunity to do it?
Enjoy English 