"Student progress is a key priority because exam results often dictate future opportunities for young people". This is from our local secondary school and is used to justified their educational approach. Sounds good? Here's the problem.1/
It is not possible for everyone to do well in exams. GCSEs are graded by taking all the scores and dividing them up. Top scorers get the best grades, bottom scorers get the worst. Not matter how high or low those scores are. It's a ranking system.2/
What getting 'top grades' or 'excellent exam results' really means is 'doing better than everyone else'. It's not surprising that this is a good predictor of later success. It's true that future opportunities are often dependent on doing better than everyone else. 3/
The problem is that by definition everyone cannot 'do better than the others'. 50% of young people are going to get scores below the average, no matter how hard they work. That is what 'average' means. Half will do better than this and half will do worse. 4/
If everyone does exceptionally well, the pass mark will rise and the number who get each grade will stay more or less the same. 5/
Not every exam is like this.The Driving test, for example, is one which everyone can pass if they drive well enough.Failure means you have to improve & take it again. No one is going to take your first attempt and let it dictate your future(luckily for me, I failed 3 times). 6/
Young people mostly don't know this.Their parents often don't know this. It's rarely acknowledged that our exam system means it is impossible for everyone to 'do well'. We award opportunities to those who are seen as 'the best' & pretend that this could be the case for all.7/
When I was at school we sat an exam which was too hard for us. We all did badly. I got 47%. I got an A. Because whilst I did badly, mostly people did worse, and that was what counted. 8/
This competition at the heart of the system is hidden. This prevents us from asking difficult questions, like, if half of YP are always going to be 'below average', what can we offer them so they don't lose hope? Or, how can we stop these exam results dictating opportunities? 9/
Instead we locate the problem in YP and tell them they must work harder and make more progress and we don't tell them there is simply no way for everyone to be 'the best'. Even if one school raises results for all, that just means that in another school more YP have failed. 10/
What's the problem, you might say? Isn't this just high expectations and isn't that good thing? The problems is that these are expectations based on competition. Everyone cannot win, and we need to work so that the winning isn't the only worthwhile outcome of an education. 11/
We need to acknowledge this in our education system right from the start. We need to think about how education would look if we refused to accept that competitive exam results at 16 should dictate our YP future. We need to fight for better opportunities for all. 12/
Of course good exam results AKA 'winning' is related to all sorts of positive outcomes. The problem is that education shouldn't be a race because it's too important. We provide opportunities for all, rather than telling YP than winning the race is everything. 13/
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