The summer exams in Wales have now taken place and, apart from a few bumps - which are unfortunately inevitable in a system as complex as public examinations - things have gone broadly well.
I have spoken to several school and college leaders over recent weeks and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. They have appreciated the return to more normal arrangements, and, in particular, the fact that a consistent and objective standard is once again being applied to all learners.
They’ve also welcomed the space to focus on their core purpose of teaching and learning, rather than the distraction of deciding centre-determined grades.
School and college leaders also confirm that learners have been grateful for a return to more normal arrangements. We know that anxieties are heightened this year, probably more than any other, for a variety of reasons:
- Post-16 learners have not taken public exams before so will be more anxious than normal.
- All learners (and, indeed, teachers) will be anxious about the impact of a disrupted education on their final grades.
Those learners who have provided us with feedback - and they are only a small, self-selecting sample - have been concerned that this year’s papers have been more difficult than usual. There may be many reasons why this is the case, and it is worth taking a moment to reflect on them.
First, we must remember that this is a return to unseen question papers taken under examination conditions - a situation that will be new to many of this year’s learners. Also, AS- and A-level learners won’t have built up the resilience that learners acquire when they do GCSEs.
GCSEs and A levels 2022: the return of exams in Wales
Now, resilience is not something that the qualifications system sets out to build, but it is a by-product, and one headteacher described it to me as ”exam stamina”, building resilience and character.
It may also be the case that learners are making comparisons with past papers from before the last round of GCSE, AS- and A-level reforms, which were assessed for the first time between 2017 and 2019. So, for some subjects there’s only one past paper as a valid reference point.
Another driver for this concern may stem from our pre-announced position of ”generous grading”. This aim will be achieved through the adaptations and the approach to grading, but some may have interpreted this aim as meaning easier question papers. This was never the case, but if this is misunderstood then there could be a mismatch with expectations.
Whatever is driving this sense of difficulty, the system is used to identifying whether a question paper is systemically more difficult than a predecessor. Exam boards design question papers to have an equal level of demand so that they are comparable over time, but this is a difficult art and sometimes a question paper will be more demanding than intended.
If this is the case, then grade boundaries are used to manage the impact on grades and provide fair outcomes for learners over time - a harder paper will lead to slightly lower grade boundaries. If the demand isn’t quite right in any subject this year, then this will be reflected in the overall level of difficulty, as seen in learner performance and that same mechanism will kick in.
I would like to take this opportunity to say “well done” to learners who have done their best to demonstrate what they know in difficult circumstances, to teachers and lecturers who have done their best to prepare learners for their assessments, and to everyone in the wider education and qualifications system who has worked tirelessly and diligently to support them. The recovery of normal arrangements was never going to be easy, which is why this is very much a transition year.
As part of that move back to regular arrangements, adaptations were made to ease the assessment burden and we have announced a transitional approach to standards.
We said earlier this year that we would require WJEC - the awarding body for Wales - to award grades so that they are broadly midway between 2019 and 2021. This gives us a transition between the two approaches and a stepping stone to returning to the “established performance standard”.
So, what’s next? Now that the exams themselves are over, the work to get to grades is very much “behind the scenes” for most. Exam boards will be busy getting scripts marked by examiners, who are all practising, recently practising or retired teachers.
Once the marking is complete, the next step is to set the grade boundaries. This involves looking at a basket of evidence, including completed exam papers and detailed statistics on how learners and individual question papers have performed. Importantly, the process also involves the judgement of senior examiners who know the expected performance standards and context for this year’s awards. As the regulator for Wales, it is our role to monitor this process throughout.
The next visible step for learners will be results days in August, and I’m sure that people will then make their own minds up on whether the system is fair or not. We must remember that fairness does not tend to be a construct that can be measured absolutely - we often think of something being fairer than something else.
Considering the options, the context and the demands placed on the system for measuring attainment, I am confident that this year we have taken the best possible path - the alternatives would have led to too many inconsistencies, too much work for teachers and lecturers, and too many issues of relational fairness.
Ultimately, the system that was put in place last year held public confidence because there was no viable alternative. That position has now changed.
I hope that everyone gets the grades that they need to progress as they intend, but students should not despair if they don’t. There are lots of options that they can take - and there will be lots more information about preparing for results days from ourselves and other across the education system in the coming weeks.
Philip Blaker is chief executive of Qualifications Wales
