When ICP gathered in Shanghai for its 2019 Council we made an ambitious declaration about the importance of equity. The first part of it read:
The ICP respects and acknowledges the varied challenges faced by each member in our shared journey to ensuring equity of access and opportunity for the learners and the communities in which we lead. Every member of the ICP acknowledges their personal responsibility to shape, lead and advocate for educational equity at all levels in their own cultural, social and economic context.
The relevance and importance of this declaration has been brought home to me by recent events in the English system.
When the Pandemic hit the country in March, schools in the UK, like many other parts of the world, were forced into a period of partial closure, during which they remained open only for children of key workers and those who were viewed as being vulnerable. In these circumstances the government judged that it was not possible to proceed with pubic examinations for students aged 16 and 18.
With the benefit of hindsight it is now possible to conclude that this decision might have been taken too quickly and that by the time we reached June or July it probably would have been possible for examinations to take place. However, at the time, no one seriously disputed the government’s decision to cancel exams. The question that immediately arose however was what do we put in their place?
Looking back through my archives I see that in April I wrote to parents telling them that the government had decided that all school should produce ‘centre assessed grades’ which were a holistic professional judgement, balancing the different sources of evidence. Teachers and heads of department will have a good understanding of their students’ performance and how they compare to other students within the department/subject this year, and in previous years. All schools in England followed a long process of review and moderation and at the end of submitted both a grade and ranking to the examination board.
It was at the point that the issue started to centre not on teacher judgement but on various interpretations of the word ‘equity’. In the period leading up to the publication of results the government’s examinations regulator, announced that in the interests of fairness to past and future cohorts of students, the grades submitted by schools would be moderated by an ‘algorithm’ which would adjust results so that they were in line with those achieved in previous years. I must admit that when I read the announcement during my summer holiday I did no more than raise an eyebrow. Like everyone else, I had no inkling of the chaos that this quest for fairness was about to unleash.
A-level results for 18 years were published in mid-August and within minutes of receiving them it was clear that something had gone very wrong. The algorithm produced a series of unexpected effects upon the results submitted by schools. For example, it was not uncommon to find that students who had been awarded a C grade by their teachers but given the lowest ranking in the subject would find that their grade had been adjusted to U instead. In many cases the past record of schools was factored into the government algorithm, meaning that bright students in disadvantaged areas found that through no fault of their own A* or A grades awarded by teachers were adjusted to B or C. Many of us remember a Sixth Form student who had lost their university place to read veterinary studies calling a radio phone in and telling the Minister for School Standards ‘You have ruined my life. How can this be fair?’
It then emerged that if a student was taught in a small class, as would be the case with many independent schools, the workings of the algorithm meant that it was much less likely that their grade would be adjusted. It felt as if those who were most disadvantaged were most likely to be penalised by what had been put in place. Ironically, in an attempt to create greater fairness the government had put in place a system that actively increased inequity and unfairness.
Thankfully, in the face of an increasing national outcry, the government abandoned the algorithm and re-instated centre assessed grades for all before the results of GCSEs for 16 year old were published. The impact of all that happened continues to be felt within the English system. Senior civil servants including the head of the examinations regulator resigned and schools are still dealing with a series of complaints and Freedom of Information requests from those who feel that the grades awarded by teachers were not fair or reasonable.
Was this just a complete mess or is there anything that we can actually learn from all that has happened? I would suggest that the main thing to take away is that achieving equity is not an easy or straightforward thing to do. At all stages, the intentions of everyone involved were honourable and designed to promote greater fairness. However, if equity was an easy thing to achieve we would have made greater progress towards it a long time ago. That does not mean that we should simply give up, rather that we should re-double our efforts to achieve an outcome that is challenging but hugely desirable. Perhaps above all the events of summer 2020 in England remind us that in the search for worldwide equity in education, the interests of children and young people need to be put front and centre in all that we do.
