Comparing Students’ Maths Results To Each Other Rather Than Fixed Criteria Is A Flightpath To Failure
A system that ensures one in three students won’t reach the minimum accepted standards by KS4 can't be right, or fair
- by Wendy Jones
How do we improve national GCSE results? A simple question you might think, but in fact it’s a trick one. Because the answer is that you can’t. At least not as things currently stand. For many years the doorway to success for young people has been a clutch of passes – crucially including maths and English – at a grade C or higher. That’s what employers look for on CVs and it’s the first box to tick in applying to university.
But as things stand, the grade boundaries are actually set so that two-thirds of any given year’s total cohort will get C or higher and one-third get D or lower. This is done by a complicated process which effectively means comparing students with each other rather than with fixed criteria.
It’s known as norm-referencing or, more accurately, cohort-referencing. It’s not like taking the driving test, where, if you are good enough, you pass, regardless of how well others do. Instead, a third of students are inevitably destined to fail – if by ‘fail’ we mean, as we usually do, getting below a C (or, under the new system, less than a 4).
So what’s going on?
Let’s go back nearly 30 years. I remember reporting on the introduction of GCSE exams in 1988. They were hailed as the exam for all, merging the old GCE O-level and CSE exams and offering nearly everyone success at some level on a single scale.
But the new order was soon hijacked by the demands of league tables. The trend in accountability required schools to be measured and compared, and counting passes at A*-C (roughly equivalent to the old O-level) was the way to do it. For a long time, national results improved year-on-year. Many in education thought this was a fair reflection of better teaching and students’ harder work. But the sceptics shouted foul, accusations of dumbing down abounded and politicians got nervous.
The annual improvement in results stalled around six years ago, coinciding with a move to norm-referencing. Some quality assurance was needed and that meant keeping results roughly stable from year to year. Two-thirds is where it had settled at the time and where it now sticks. So, once again this year, a third of kids won’t reach the desired standard. They’ll be at the bottom of the pile for everything that comes afterwards. Those who get close to the boundary will be expected to try again – but the pass rate for resits is much lower than for those taking it first time round.
Some teenagers go on to retake the exam several times, with ever-wilting hopes. This affects all subjects, but it’s a particular issue in maths, where many students fall behind badly in secondary school, where low skills are widespread among adults and where levels of confidence are often dismal.
A real alternative
That’s why National Numeracy is developing proposals – supported by funding from Cambridge Mathematics – for a new benchmark assessment in essential maths, open to everyone from the age of 14. Like a driving test, this would be within the grasp of anyone who’s mastered the necessary theory and practice. Based on the ‘Essentials of Numeracy’ that inform the National Numeracy Challenge for adults, it would set out the sort of realistic maths problems that all students should be able to solve in their future lives – such as deciding whether it’s worth buying a season travel ticket.
This is not an alternative to GCSE – most students would use it as stepping stone towards that qualification. But it would offer an alternative to nothing, which is what an awful lot of teenagers currently get.
Wendy Jones is a freelance writer, former BBC education correspondent and founding trustee of National Numeracy.
