In 1976, I did badly on one of my A-level papers. I was fortunate to attend a school widely admired as one of the best in Manchester, one set up by the Catholic church to turn scruffs from Wythenshawe and Stockport into the future leaders of the country. Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr recalled “masters” parading in gowns and even mortar boards “as though it was Oxford in the 1940s and not actually Manchester in the 1970s”.

The school shared my disappointment but there was never any doubt it was my failure, I should have worked harder and not let everyone down. Despite my 100 per cent attendance, the idea that teachers or the school might be even partly responsible was laughable. How times have changed!

We now take it for granted that student performance and student attendance is a measure of teacher performance. Indeed we often go further and almost absolve grown-up students of responsibility for failing or not doing as well as they should or could.

For the last two decades at Bedford, we have had a success guarantee that provides recompense if you show very high attendance, do the work set, and fail. In that time we’ve had 200,000 students and paid out only once. The intention is to be clear that if you do as we ask and you fail, we feel responsible. But it also signals to the 20,000 students who did not achieve due to their low attendance and diligence that they bear a clear responsibility, too.

Information: How schools can appeal GCSE and A-level results 2020

Background: 

Exclusive: Teacher grades ignored in most GCSE results

I raise this because I think it lies behind the inaccurate A-level and GCSE assessment of students by teachers this year.  We have blown an opportunity to show that professionals can be trusted to deliver a fair alternative system to the bureaucracy and cost of awarding bodies and regulators. Exams and regulation have been shown to be absolutely necessary to ensure students are properly assessed and to provide confidence in the overall awards.

It isn’t a problem confined to the UK. In the absence of an equivalent to Ofqual, 92 per cent of French students were assessed as passing the Baccalaureate this year compared with 78 per cent last. In the Netherlands, a third of secondaries saw all final year students graduate, five times higher than in the past.

In the UK, regulators have stepped in to moderate teacher assessments. In Scotland, 26 per cent of grades were adjusted, almost all downwards – although it was announced today that this will be reversed. In England, Ofqual reported that, had they allowed teacher estimates to stand without adjustment, results would have improved by 12 per cent, similar to the experience in France.

The way the emergency system was set up invited gaming on a grand scale. There was little downside to predicting higher grades than was likely, and if you had a weaker cohort than last year it was highly likely you could estimate grades consistent with that good year because historic school/college data played a key role in the moderation stage.

Indeed, even if you saw your results adjusted downwards, parents and students would probably still applaud your efforts on their behalf and blame awarding bodies and Ofqual for their misfortune.

The trouble with optimism

Personally, I think the inaccuracy of assessment matters. A few years ago, we identified poor forecasting of A-level grades in our sixth form. What was striking was that optimistic forecasts correlated closely to poor results; where staff were found to be slightly pessimistic though, results were exceptionally good. Teacher optimism was very bad for students, perhaps making them over-confident and less hard-working.

But there is another, more philosophical, concern. If you see the performance of “your” students as an extension of your own performance, you will want to give them every advantage you can. You will want your students to do better than others because you feel a greater responsibility to them than you do to the integrity of the overall system. If you think others will be taking the same approach, you will feel the need to game the system even more.

This behaviour could be described as professional but only in the sense of a professional foul, a deliberate move to achieve a result for “your” side. 

If the expectation of a professional in this year’s special arrangements was that they should support the overall integrity of the awards to all students, the evidence suggests that was not achieved, and the distance and objectivity provided by awarding bodies and Ofqual has been crucial in 2020.

Covid-19 has shown it is useful to have approaches to awarding that involve teacher assessment, but we need to be much better in its application. Perhaps if we stop holding teachers responsible for the low attendance and diligence of some grown-up students, we might reduce the incentive to be optimistic. If not, exams and regulation will be the only winner, and trust in teacher assessment will fall further.

Ian Pryce is principal and CEO of the Bedford College Group