Changing goal posts

Last week I blogged about the way that the A level results are reported in the media. How difficult it must be for the students to be told that the exams are easier now than ten years ago and that somehow the exam boards have dumbed down the qualifications. Just imagine how this feels for those students that haven't done very well. 

Today I awoke to the news that teachers and teachers leaders had announced in the Times Education Supplement (TES) that the English GCSE exam grade boundaries seem to have changed to make it harder to get a higher grade. If true this means that students this year achieving the same % in the exam as last year could potentially achieve a lower exam grade.


This doesn't seem fair to me, not to the students or to the schools who have their own targets to achieve, some of which if missed have grave consequences. I would presume that a certain % would be a certain grade and that would be the same year after year after year.

According to the BBC website the main indicators 5 A*-C and A*-A are both lower than last year. This and the reported news about the English levels have caused so much consternation that Mr Gove, the education secretary, felt he had to go on national television to defend the government; to qualify that there was indeed no political meddling with the exam system. I am sceptical. I can see that the government has a lot to gain by manipulating the exam system.

Whatever, the people who are really affected by any changes in grade boundaries are the students, their families and their teachers, all who worked incredibly hard to achieve the best they could and who may well have been treated badly.

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