I do not for one second question that all parts of the education sector – including organisations such as Ofqual – have been doing their best during the pandemic. But I cannot help but feel that what this crisis has demonstrated once again is that colleges are still too commonly the victims of policy decisions that are not tailored towards their needs – or indeed their potential.
Ofqual’s plans for the assessment of GCSE students is a case in point here. Today, we reported on the challenges colleges are facing in this process, which requires them to rank their often thousands of GCSE resit students.
News: The challenge of ranking thousands of students
Background: Disadvantaged students will lose out over assessment
Student perspective: should we ban all future exams?
'Staff power and staff hours'
Leeds City College, for example, has around 6,000 students across English and maths. And while principal and deputy chief executive Bill Jones stresses that Ofqual has done its “best under very difficult circumstances”, he says the initial guidance by the regulator did not properly consider the challenge for large colleges. “We have had to find our own solutions,” he says, adding that devising their own validation process had taken a lot of staff power and staff hours.
This is no surprise – even to someone like me with absolutely no marking experience. The idea that you could rank hundreds of students, most of whom are fighting for that crucial grade 4 rather than being truly spread out across the whole spectrum of achievement in term of grades, seems daunting, to say the least. And even the clarification from AQA that students could be ranked in groups of 10 will still have proven challenging to many.
It also seems inevitable that any issues with the process of teacher assessment in place of this year’s summer exam diet will be amplified in a college setting. In April, the University and College Union warned that disadvantaged students could be the big losers under new assessment plans following the cancellation of exams this summer, because they are more likely to have under-predicted grades. At colleges, which provide crucial pathways to so many students from the most deprived backgrounds, this will be a serious concern to teachers and students. In today’s article, teachers talk of sleepless nights and worry over the fairness of the process.
Additionally, it is not at all clear what impact the assessment process will have on the teacher-student relationship, as many resit students will have to return to take the qualification again next year and will be aware their teachers had a role in their assessment. Visiting a college on resits results day last autumn, what struck me most was not the positive atmosphere of an event that involved most students finding out they had fallen short of the grade required, but the sheer number of young people who stayed on to speak to their teachers and seek their support and guidance. Making sure students still feel they can trust and rely on their teachers will be crucial, especially considering that many of FE’s resit students enter college with a lack of confidence and belief in their ability to pass an exam.
The sector will find a way, it will cope. Because it always does. FE teachers and GCSE coordinators have told Tes of the steps their institutions have taken to avoid bias, and ways have been found to make sure colleges meet the assessment deadline, regardless of the size of the cohort.
But at a time when everyone had to wait five days for specific guidance on how to approach a reopening to more students, it is important not to forget that this is a sector that has had to face significant challenges as a result of the pandemic. There is no denying that colleges can be a central driver in economic recovery post-Covid-19. But to be able to do that, their challenges need to be seen and their potential fostered. The continued burden the GCSE resit policy creates is only one example of this. Unless these matters get addressed, many colleges will struggle to do any more than simply “cope”.
