As many of the UK’s teachers drifted into a heat-induced slumber late last night, the government decided once again that it was time to give them a quick update on exams.
It had already been a day of some turmoil, with the Scottish government announcing that it would be allowing teacher-assessed grades (CAGs) to override lowered marks, which had already been released to students.
Many wondered whether the UK government would follow suit. But few predicted what was actually announced: instead of reverting to potentially inflated centre-assessed grades (CAGs), students’ grades could now be based upon mock exam grades.
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Some of the headlines were, of course, slightly misleading, with the real story being that some students can request an appeal to replace their awarded grade with a “valid” mock exam grade, if the mock grade is higher.
This information, which would have already informed part of the CAG, something teachers spent days working on, was somehow to be deemed more significant than the word of the teacher alone.
Results 2020: Issues with mock exam grades
But there are a number of reasons why mocks are problematic, and indeed this will be why schools didn’t simply transfer these grades across when Ofqual requested them to allocate grades back in May.
1. Mocks are different in each school
First, mocks will be different in a huge number of ways, school to school. Schools will have used different papers, different exam boards, different questions, even stripping them back where units may not have been fully covered or where a question didn’t quite fit what they needed to test within their cohort. This means drawing comparisons across schools is, quite frankly, impossible - before we even start to unpick the other aspects.
2. Mocks aren’t one-off events
The meaning of the word “mock” has drifted significantly in schools over the years. What used to mean an intense block of exams, taking place under tightly controlled conditions, now comes in many forms. Some schools have even stopped referring to these as “mocks” and instead hold a series of “pre-public examinations” (PPEs), which again can run in a number of ways.
For instance, in my last school, students sat a mock before the October half-term in English language, paper 2 only; a literature partial mock, paper 1, in November; a full language mock in December; and then undertook a full paper 2 mock in February. These were undertaken in the hall under exam conditions, but in some other subjects mocks took place in the classroom.
Students who were absent were left to be mopped up by individual teachers and departments and often wound up doing the same “mocks” while sitting in the back of a room or in an office near a classroom to be monitored whilst other teaching took place.
Other schools will have run things differently: having one clear set of mocks which took place in exactly the same conditions as would be expected in the main exam.
3. Mocks are not secure exams
We then need to be aware that not all past papers are secure and students themselves could access these, plus their mark schemes, ahead of time, purely by chance - unless schools only use the secured ones (and even these might have been used already by tutors or by students who have teachers as parents). This is increasingly unlikely, with the number of mocks taking place.
4. Mocks aren’t always marked the same
Even if the papers were comparable and the conditions the same throughout all schools, now we get to the can of worms that is the marking of the assessment.
Some schools will stick strictly to the mark schemes, standardising before the exam, moderating carefully afterwards and allocating scripts randomly across a team to ensure that bias doesn’t creep in. Some will even have used exam marking systems to check accuracy. But other schools will have used the exams more formatively, with light-touch moderation activities.
5. Mocks don’t have set grade boundaries
Now we get on to the issue of grade boundaries. These exist for whole papers, for whole cohorts, having been developed by the exam board, but, of course, don’t apply for partial papers, modified papers or papers that the teacher has had to make up because the existing ones didn’t quite fit the bill.
I have sat in a number of meetings where we tried to work out how to award a grade based on existing boundaries, but for an exam that didn’t cover everything. I have also sat in meetings where we have explored different boundaries (the best case, the worst case and the one that the exam board used) and what impact using these would have on the big picture for the cohort.
Again, things will vary from schools to school. Even if schools used the same papers, they could decide to use different boundaries to suit the needs of their cohorts at that time. A worst-case scenario grade could be devastating, or it could be uplifting. But it is yet another significant variable.
6. Teacher influence has a role to play
I am not for one minute suggesting that teachers teach directly to the test, but we still need to consider how knowledge of the test may have shaped teaching in the run-up to mocks.
How far can we really be sure that we are not inadvertently dropping hints, focusing on a specific topic in a lesson or two before the mock, or directing students to focus on a particular area for revision? My students liked to play the game of trying to work out which poem might be on the paper and would run through the list to see if they could detect a twitch in my demeanour which would give it away. My poker face is good, but I’m not sure it’s always been perfect.
Why we can’t rely on mocks
I am sure there are many other points which I could have included in this list of reasons why a mock exam grade is unlikely to be a reliable source of information. However, it all comes back to the fact that teacher assessments are being considered as less reliable than a one-off mock grade, generated for a completely different purpose.
Schools worked hard to ensure clarity, reliability and fairness for their students in allocating CAGs, and whilst Ofqual moderation of this information would not have provided us with a perfect solution, it was one we had all been looking towards since April.
I would say that 10.30pm, nearly a week after universities had been given grades provisionally, a day before data could be downloaded by the schools and two days before students would be opening their results envelopes, is not the best time to throw something new into the game.
Hopefully, as further clarity emerges, we will see that sense can once again prevail and teachers, schools and their students will not face further pressures as a result of this.
Zoe Enser is an English adviser in Kent. Her first book, Generative Learning in Action, is out soon
