A headteacher whose school uses the International Baccalaureate has described the grading process this year as an “algorithm” that “defies logic”.
The IB has opted for a “dual” process for grading this year, where some schools will sit exams while others will be awarded grades based on their last three years of data, discounting the grades in 2020.
In the UK, all IB exams were cancelled last week, as the IB said it was “very unlikely” that exams would be able to go ahead owing to ongoing disruption from the Covid pandemic.
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But Stuart McWilliams, head of the King Fahad Academy in London, said that this will limit the performance of students under the non-exam route, tying them to grades achieved by their peers in previous years.
“The sting in the tail is that schools will be allocated the grades...based on the last three years of data,” he said.
“Essentially this is the same principle that caused so much distress with last year’s GCSEs and A levels; limiting current cohorts based on irrelevant previous pupils’ performance and allowing for not progress by schools.
International Baccalaureate: Grades ‘based on outdated and unconnected historical data’
“The reason it makes it difficult for the current pupils is that they are being limited by previous candidates from previous years with the only link happening to be the school that they were taught in.
“Schools are not being asked to allocate a genuine predicted grade that the teachers who have taught the child would give. Instead, they are being asked to allocate a grade from a pre-allocated list of grades which have been sent to the school by the IB based on outdated and unconnected historical data.”
He added that this would mean that if no students over the past three years in a school had achieved a grade 7 in their IB results, no students this year would be able to achieve this grade.
“It will be an algorithm of some kind,” he said. “It’s a nonsense. It defies logic.
“It is exactly the same principle that led to the GCSE and A-level fiasco last year, which ended up in a U-turn from the DfE [Department for Education] as they realised the flawed approach in applying the formula. The IB have not learned this lesson, unfortunately.”
An IB spokesperson said: “The use of historical data is only as part of a generous guide for teachers to help them assign accurate grade predictions. If teachers do not believe this guide reflects their students’ abilities, we will work with them to see if it needs to be adapted.
“Similarly, every other process in the system we have developed for the non-exam route is informed by human judgement and in constant conversations with schools. We used an almost identical model in the November 2020 series and it was welcomed by the schools that took part.”
