Confidence lost in GCSE and A level marking.

Some facts and figures have just been published about the amount of appeals and remarks that have been requested this year by schools for GCSE and A Level candidates.

The Telegraphs sums up the basics quite nicely here - Telegraph - appeals

I was staggered to see that 305 400 GCSE papers were asked to be remarked - a 50% increase on last year.

Let's just let those numbers sink in for a moment....

Each Year 11 has about half a million students in.  It seems about 60% of these students had a result appealed on.  That shows a huge lack of confidence in the exam system.  In an average school of 200 students in year 11, 120 of them are having one GCSE grade challenged.

In addition, appeals cost money.  The amount an appeal cost varies from exam board to exam board but a fee of £25 would be on the conservative side.

Across the country, 305 400 appeals costing £25 totals just over £7.5 million....

Around 20% of these appeals resulted in the grade being changed and the cost of the appeal is refunded to whomever paid it but the time and admin cost to the school is not repaid.

At A level there is a similar picture, with 145 000 grades being challenged.  These generally seem a little bit more expensive to appeal so let's assume £30 (which is definitely on the conservative side).   145 000 appeals at £30 a time gives a total cost of £4.3 million.

So, in total, from one exam season, schools have spent well over £10 million on appeals allowing for the refunds on successful appeals.   This money should be spent in so many more fruitful ways and I am surprised this information has caused such small ripples in the media in our times of austerity.

So, what are the solutions?

1.  Schools need to be clear on their appeals process.  The process is expensive and schools have a responsibility to only appeal where there is a good chance of a grade change.

2.  The exam board needs to mark to a far higher standard.  The checks on markers need to be more rigorous and regular.  In addition, schools need to be made aware of this process of checking so that they become less likely to appeal.

3.  With more and more subjects now being examined in the summer, the pressure on exam boards to turn around results in time for results day is only going to increase.  Exam boards need to up their game.

4.  Finally, the key solution would for an exam board to promise to return all exam papers to the school as part of the fee paid to enter students.  This would give teachers the opportunity to see exactly how their students had performed and to use this to inform their future teaching.  I know it would then cost a bit more to enter students but would probably save money in the long run for schools as appeals would become less likely.

It would just take one exam board to promise it in one subject for it to take off.....

There have to be better ways of spending £12 million pounds...

Mr Cameron sends in the "hit squad".....

This week, Mr Cameron made an interesting announcement about education.  The Prime Minister has announced that rescue teams will be sent into failing schools.

Cameron to send hit squads to failing schools

I’m sure we will see more of these headline grabbing press releases in the run up to the next election in May 2015.

But, who would have thought that such a simple speech,  which is no doubt appealing policy to certain sections of society, could be wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, I’m so disappointed that we are still branding schools as “failing” based solely on such a narrow criteria.  Schools that are below the national average for the proportion of students attaining a C or above in both English and maths GCSE are at risk of being labelled as “failing”.   I’m sure we all agree that attainment in English and maths is important but I would also hope that we would agree that education is about so much more than simply attaining a C or above in 2 subjects.

So, I am hopeful that the new measure of Progress 8 (where schools will be measured on the progress of students across 8 subjects with English and maths counting as double) will start to address my concerns.  The government does have some potentially good ideas.  The way to understand Progress 8 is that English and maths will each be worth 20% of the progress 8 measure with the other 6 subjects being worth 10% each.

Back to the “hit squads”……

There are probably a small number of secondary schools in the country where chaos has descended and the only solution is a completely fresh start with a completely new Senior Leadership Team.    A “hit squad” is probably the only way the students in those schools will get any chance of academic achievement.

However, Mr Cameron has mentioned that there are 500 schools who are at risk of the “hit squads”.  I don’t believe there are this many failing schools and am not personally aware of any school that needs a “hit squad” or know any teachers who would say this about their place of work. 

On the other hand, I welcomed regional school commissioners, with a hope that collaboration would become the way in which all schools could improve attainment.   But, it seems Mr Cameron thinks the “regional school commissioners” are the army generals who decide where the hit squads go next.

Sensibly, most regional school commissioners have accumulated a group of successful head teachers to work in their area at supporting the schools that are supposed to be failing.  Sadly, in my area, all of these head teachers come from schools that are in affluent areas.  Not one head teacher from an inner city school or deprived area is represented.

So, is every inner city school failing or could there be other factors at play here?

Well, there are hugely successful inner city schools out there – we will just never recognise them whilst comparing them with schools in affluent areas.

Am I just being “unaspirational” then?  (If I would be allowed to make up my own words!)  Well, no.

If a student has 100% attendance at a school then they are in lessons for just 13% of a calendar year.  

Assuming students sleep for 8 hours a day, which would be 33% of the calendar year, they are still left with 54% of the calendar year.  This 54% is the part that parents and local communities control.

Having worked in an affluent school, which got 3 “outstandings” in a row from Ofsted and worked in 3 inner city / deprived area schools which have never got above a “satisfactory” or “requires improvement” I feel qualified to judge.

Many of the parents in the affluent area know instinctively what the benefits of education are.  Students arrive in year 7 assuming they are going to go to university.  The parents value homework, take a huge interest in the education of the whole child and make the 54% of time they have valuable.

It would be very simple and guileless to say that inner city schools have the exact opposite.  They don’t.  There are plenty of parents in affluent areas who don’t support the school with aspirational expectations for their children.  However, these parents are in the minority.  In some cases, these students coast and get grades at a mediocre level for them but in many cases the peers of these students drag them up and teach them to value education.

However, there are more parents in inner city and deprived areas who either don’t value education or don’t know how to support their children.  We have a heartbreakingly high proportion of students who have never left the city, let alone experienced a beach, or the moors or even a train journey.

I am proud of the school I work in and we work very hard at engaging with the whole community and spend a huge amount of time showing parents how they can / should be helping their children.  This type of school need the best, most creative teachers but this type of announcement from Mr Cameron will just make it less likely that good staff will want to work in schools like this.

For example, I took a phone call this week from a parent who was deeply annoyed at his son’s maths teacher for setting homework.  The homework was not done and, after waiting a day or two for it to be handed in late, the teacher phoned home to ask for support.  The father announced that he had told his son not to do the homework as when the son leaves school then that time is his own to do as he pleases.

This was on top of a phone call last week in which a different year 7 parent told me that his son would not be doing a detention for continuously disrupting a lesson because I hadn’t proved that it had effected the learning of others and if he wanted to misbehave, and the teacher couldn’t control him, then why should the parent be punished? 

(It turns out that this year 7 lad is required to pick up his younger brother from the local primary school on his way home and if we detained him then the parents may have to turn off “4 in a bed” and go and pick their own kid from the local primary school.)

The boy in the first phone call now does his homework after school in his teacher’s classroom and the year 7 lad did his detention…after the Principal told his parents that he either did the detention or found a different school to go to.  The amount of time this took up has obviously lowered the amount of academic progress these students have met but it was the right thing for the school to do but Ofsted won’t care that we face additional challenges.

Now, I am proud to work in a school that meets these challenges head on and they are two extreme examples.  However, in the school which served an affluent area, I would have parents phoning in asking me to recommend private tutors or asking for extra exam papers. 

The league tables register none of this.

I have no doubt that there are students in affluent areas whose parents let them down but they are few and far between.  Equally, there are significant numbers of parents in my current school who are eager to support their child and have positive aspirations for them.  Sadly, there is a large number of parents who either take no interest in their child’s education or simply don’t value it as  “I never had an education and I’ve done alright”.

So, my hope for the “regional commissioners”?  Well, I hope that they understand the context a school finds themselves in and understand that some schools need a longer journey to reach the same destination as some other schools.  It would be wonderful for the mantra to be collaboration, collaboration, collaboration not “judgement, hit squads and failure”.

I believe the mantra of “collaboration, collaboration, collaboration” will mean that education will become better for all…sadly, I feel I am in a minority….

2014 Maths Levels of progress (KS2 to GCSE)

National Levels of Progress – GCSE Maths 2014

So, it is that time of year again.

Each year, around late October early November, the proportion of students making 3+ and 4+ levels of progress nationally are released and schools are able to analyse how their old Year 11 students have done compared with national averages.  Whilst statistics can never tell you the whole story the data can often offer up questions that benefit future cohorts of students if schools take time to answer them seriously.

The official figures haven’t been released yet but they have been freely available on twitter for several days now.

So, what are they?

Well, as always in education there isn’t a simple answer.  This year’s performance tables will report the attainment of student’s first attempt after November 2013 provided it is better, or the same as any attainment taken before November 2013.  You may remember that Mr Gove decided that only a student’s first attempt should count in performance tables but introduced this after many students had already taken their first attempt at GCSE maths at the end of their year 10.  Thus, there was a bit of a fudge this year.

But, here are the levels of progress for student’s first attempt as explained above.

2014 Maths Levels of Progress

Level 5 – 83%  (81% in 2013)

Level 4 – 64%  (75% in 2013)

Level 3 – 26%  (44% in 2013)

Those of you with a good memory will recall that Ofsted, most of the right wing press, heads of Grammar schools etc. decried the use of early entry as it hindered the attainment of students.  

Apparently, students achieved a C in Maths and didn’t improve upon it.  Well, whilst this might well have been a nice philosophical position to take this year’s results have blown that out of the water.

At Level 5, there has been little change.  The vast majority of students make 3 or more levels of progress.  It is nice to see consistency from year to year.

But, at level 4, there is an 11 percentage point drop.  2014 was not a good year to be 16 and a level 4 student on entry.  Aside from all the politics, this is the really sad indictment of the current education policy.  There are thousands of students now in Year 12, who had they been a year older, would have attained a C in maths and now be studying their chosen course.  Due to political interfering, these students, who would have got a C in 2013, attained a D in 2014. 

Additionally, level 3 students have also had a raw deal.  The percentage of these students who made 3 levels of progress dropped by 18 percentage points. 

Can anyone explain to me, let alone the students, how this can possibly be fair?

I’m all for standards and expectations to rise but please do it at the start of the course, not 6 months from the end.

Finally, the “best” level of progress data is also available.  This data ignores how many times the student has taken the exam and just looks for their best grade.  Again, the figures are low.

Best attainment  for levels of progress.

Level 5 – 86%

Level 4 – 68%

Level 3 – 28%

So, what has caused this significant drop in attainment?

Well, there is a one in a million chance that this year group was particularly weak academically.  We all know that this isn’t true.  Individual schools might get weaker and stronger cohorts but the national picture should remain constant.

The government might want to run down the GCSE so that the new GCSE coming in can be welcomed by teachers.  But, the new GCSE is already coming in so they have won that argument.

The only logical answer is that the government refused to listen to those of us who warned of the unintended consequences of the removal of their early entry policy.  By removing entries from most schools (I believe the number of students entered early this year dropped by 90%) the raw scores in the exam became highly skewed, panic followed and grade boundaries were set broadly in line with previous years.

Let me try and explain what happened.

Imagine there are only 10 bog standard comprehensives in the country and for some reason they have only ever entered their top and bottom set for GCSE Maths.

For those of you not paying full attention the “top set” represents Year 11 students and the “bottom set” represents the Year 10 students.

Year after year they do this and the C+% sits at 60%.

One year all the schools decide to only enter their top set e.g. Year 10 aren’t entered.  The government decides to keep the C+% at 60%.  There will be a lot of upset students at the bottom end of the top set.

In a nutshell, this is what has happened.

Not fair is it…..

Things I wish I had known as an NQT - Parent's Evenings.

Things I wish I had known as an NQT

Parents’ Evenings.

Now, before I start I had an admission to make.  Over the years I must have done several dozen of these evenings but have never known whether I have attended Parent’s Evenings or Parents’ Evenings.  Any answers in the comment’s box below would be very grateful.

Some staff are naturally good when meeting parents.  Having watched these staff over years I have honed a list of strategies that I keep religiously to now to ensure I work as successfully as I can with parents to ensure we both do our best for the students.

 Thank them for coming

This might seem a stupid thing to say but always show your appreciation that they have chosen to come and see you.  The parents may have had to take time off work or arrange childcare for a younger child so bear that in mind.  Of course, parents should take an interest in their child’s education but a simple thank you goes a long way to getting the conversation off to a good start.

Additionally, you are likely to be running late so apologise for this!

Introduce yourself.

Don’t assume the child will have told the parents your name.  If you are lucky they will know you are their child’s maths teacher.  I always let the parents know my first name and surname as I would find it strange an adult calling me “Sir”. 

Make sure you know who the child is.

I am terrible at names so have to make a concerted effort to learn each student’s name and then test myself on their names regularly.  A level of difficulty is added to this when you meet parents in the evening as students often don’t wear school uniform and you will not believe how different students look in their normal clothes!

I always ensure I have the parent’s name written down on my appointment sheet (I normally have to track them down from the school computer system) to ensure I get their name correct.

Start off with positive news

You must ensure you are able to share some positive news with the parent about each child you teach.  With some students it will be harder than others but you must ensure you can share good news with each parent.

Look at your data - refer to homework.

It is important to be organised.  I always ensure I have my planner up to date and I always refer to the student’s attendance at this point.  Also, I refer to the student’s success with homework.  Homework can lead to quite heated discussions so it is important to control the conversation.

If the student has done little or no homework since the start of September some parents will ask you, “Why am I just finding out now?”  This is a good question so if you see patterns of homework not being completed either follow the department policy, which is hopefully a centrally coordinated letter sent home, or if not simply phone home to pass on your concerns.

If homework is an issue, make sure you have a solution up your sleeve.  The most effectives ones I have found are for you to say

a.       I am happy to email a copy of the homework to you each week.

b.       I am more than happy to be available every week on a Tuesday after school to help with  homework.

These solutions will give this part of the conversation a positive outcome.

Raise any issues

Now, and only now, I will raise any concerns I may have.   If you raise the concerns any earlier you may not have the parent on your side but if you have followed my checklist you should find that the parent is happy to work with you.

Don’t personalise any behaviour concerns.  E.g. Don’t share, “His behaviour is poor and he often shouts out / talks over me” etc. 

 Link it into learning and say,

“He has a habit of shouting out / talking over me which prevents the rest of the class, and him, from hearing what I have to save.  I know you are not a selfish person but this can look like quite selfish behaviour.  All you have to do is put your hand up and I will be more than happy to call on your at the appropriate time.  If we can’t nip this in the bud I am worried about the effect it will have of everyone’s progress”.

You will normally then get a positive conversation with the parent.

The other phrase I tend to use is…

“I don’t know if you see this at home but…”

I tend to use this for more serious incidents of behaviour.  For example,

“I don’t know if you see this at home but I find he tends to answer me back sarcastically quite a lot and this hinders his learning”.   I have never had a parent contradict me at this point.  If a student is being rude at school, their parents will have seen the behaviour at home.

Try not to dwell on the negative though.  Raise it, and move on.

 Academic steps

For students who misbehave regularly their academic progress will be enhanced by behaving.  However, you will see many parents whose students behave appropriately.  Make sure you have an academic suggestion as to how they can move forward.  It may be something very simple as learning their multiplication tables thoroughly or mastering a particular topic they found difficult on a recent test.  Highlight any online support the student can access and say they are welcome to come and see you after school to go through it.

Target grades

      It is very important that you know what grade the student is currently working at and what their forecast grade is. Whether this is for the end of the year or the end of the GCSE course will probably be determined by school policy.  More importantly, you should be able to point to work the student can complete to raise their attainment.  This is probably the most important part of your conversation so make sure you know what each student needs to do next to move forward.  Ideally, you should also give them a structure in which they can achieve it e.g. using online resources etc.

Thank the parents.

Thank the parents for coming and ask if they have anything they want to raise.  It is important to try and keep on time as you will have more appointments waiting so try to avoid too much pointless chit chat.  I have found, occasionally hat I have had to stand up and say “Thanks for coming”.  Most parents get the hint at this point….

The aggressive parents

Very, very occasionally, you get parents who just want an argument.  For whatever reason their child has managed to convince the parent that you are useless and the child has been very hard done by and it is all your fault.

As you gain experience you will be able to solve most of these issues on your own by sticking to the checklist above.  However, as soon as you see this coming explain to the parents that you would like to get the HoD or someone senior to sit in on the discussion to be able to deal with their complaints directly.

Obviously, the senior person is being invited to the meeting for your support and they should be able to lead the meeting to a satisfactory conclusion.

Best of luck and let me know how it goes!

Websites all students and maths teachers should be aware of...

The internet is a massive resource with a good amount of rubbish on it.  However, now and then you come across some truly excellent maths websites.  I intend to review them and keep them on a separate page so come back regularly to see the updates Here!!!

Feel free to suggest pages that need to go on the list - especially if they are currently under used or unheard of.

First up is the excellent Corbett Maths.  If you haven't heard of them yet then you are missing out.  It seems that this website is currently relatively unknown given that it has 167 twitter followers and 74 shares on Facebook.  It is time to change that.

What a fab website this is!

This website contains a fantastic amount of brilliant, and free, resources, for students, teachers and parents.

On the one hand you have videos aimed at those working for the top grades in GCSE, or just starting A Level (see below)

On the other, you have video solutions to the fantastic 5 a day worksheet that allows students to revise bite size chunks of the GCSE curriculum as they go along.

As well as videos, there are worksheets, revision tips and a blog to keep you up to date with current events.

If you haven't shown this website to your students yet then it is a job for the first week back.

Edexcel GCSE Foundation Grade Boundaries (Updated 2014)

Here are the historic grade boundaries for the past few years for the GCSE Maths Edexcel Foundation course.

The y-axis is out of 200 which is the maximum score you can have over the two papers.

.
Grade C

A tiny drop on last year but still significantly above the average.  I think it is becoming more and more accepted that students who are capable of a C should be entered for the Higher paper.  Trying to achieve 70%+ on the Foundation paper gives you very little wriggle room in you make an error or two or come across a topic you haven't studied.

Grade D

 Just like the grade boundaries on the Higher tier, this grade boundary is still creeping upwards and is way above its average.  I don't know about you but I haven't noticed that the papers have been getting easier...

Grade E

And the pattern continues...another step upwards...

Grade F

Another jump...but wait until you see Grade G....

Grade G

Staggering...a jump of over 10%.  How does this grade boundary jump by so much?

I have to admit that I am starting to lose faith in Edexcel and their ability to maintain standards.

What do you think?

Things I wish I had known as an NQT - marking!

Marking

Whether you are a primary or secondary school teacher, marking is going to become a key part of your job.  It will take up a lot of your time and it is important that this time is used for the maximum benefit of the students.

Most schools now have a marking policy which you must follow.  Consistency in feedback for students across subjects is hugely under rated in my opinion.  However, many marking policies are on purposefully vague to allow teachers to use their professional judgement.  Indeed in some schools you will still not find a marking policy.

So, what should you mark?

Firstly, you will never be able to mark every piece of work a student completes.  You might be able to keep it up for a few weeks but you will be working to midnight every night and will eventually go off sick for a few weeks with exhaustion.  You are no use to your students when you are off sick so I hope we all agree you can’t mark everything.

Secondly, the marking needs to be purposeful.  The days of “tick and flick” are long behind us, thankfully so!  Students need to understand the marking which must inform them how they can move forward with this piece of work.

Finally, it must be done by the teacher.  I am all for peer marking and self-marking but there comes a time when a teacher needs to give formal feedback.  When you have work to mark I advise you to hide away at school and get it done.  I speak from experience that if I take home 45 mins of marking I am able to make it last 2 or 3 hours.  Additionally, I can easily socialise away an hour at school with other teachers when I could have got my marking done.  When you have marking to do, hide yourself away and get your head down and get it done!

Here is what I do.

My school has a vague marking policy.  So, at the start of September I explain to my students how and when their work will be marked.  I do this and encourage them to hold me to account to this as I hold them to account with their homework etc.

Our students have maths for 4 hours a week and I typically teach 4 groups, although I used the same idea when I was an NQT teaching 22 hours a week.

I mark on a 2 week cycle.  For us this is 8 lessons. 

I explain to the students that in lessons 1, 2 and 3 they will learn about a new objective or two.  For simplicity sake let’s say this is working out how to do long division and long multiplication.  The three lessons will have a range of tasks, peer marking, self assessment etc.  At the end of lesson 3 they will get a homework that is due in on lesson 5.  (The hope being the can ask for a bit of help in lesson 4 if they got stuck).

I always offer additional homework online (e.g. www.mymaths.co.uk) but always provide a worksheet for homework.  This worksheet is also emailed to the student's school email account so they can print a spare out if they have lost the original.

In lesson 5 I collect the homework in and give each question a simple tick or cross.  I normally give a score e.g. 8 / 10.  

In lesson 6 the students are challenged to figure out where they went wrong whilst working with a partner.  If they scored 10 / 10 I have extension work available.  In some of these lessons I have to re-teach some aspects of the objective again.  Often, in lesson 6, I spend a lot of time extending the topic.

In lesson 7 they have a formal 30 minute assessment that I have written.  It is a bit of work in the first year but once you have the tests they will always be useful!  Ideally, the whole department would join in and help you write them.  We have 60 min lessons and I would spend the first 30 mins revising.  This gives the students some experience at how to revise which becomes so important for their A Levels.

After lesson 7 this piece of work is formally marked.  I have found that the more able students prefer to do this assessment in a separate book and the lower ability students prefer doing it on the sheet.

My formal marking gives them a score or percentage.  I am not comfortable giving them a GCSE grade or KS3 Band at this point but will let them know what grade the objective examines.

When the student gets their assessment back I have done the following.

1.       They get a mark / percentage.

      2.    They get an effort number for the past 7 lessons (1 is rubbish, 5 is excellent.  You can't get a 5 without          good, on time, homework).

      3.    I pick out something they have done well either on the test or in the previous 2 weeks.  (E.g. you have          asked some very probing questions recently)

      4.      I highlight what they need to do next to get better at this topic (E.g. your long multiplication is great but         you need to now practise multiplying with decimals).

Lesson 8 is my key lesson as each student will have a different target (number 4 above).  However, I have found that because I fortnightly assess, the class will only have 2 or 3 different targets between them.  Lesson 8 is spent giving the students the opportunity to reflect on their test and give them the opportunity to go back over some learning and demonstrate they can do the objectives they got wrong.

Lesson 8 can be quite difficult to plan but www.mymaths.co.uk can be very useful here as you can set different students different work which allows you to give attention to smaller groups as and when they need it.  

For the last 20 minutes of the lesson students are to re-do the test questions they got wrong (in silence).  I project the answers at the end for them to self-mark or copy down.  By the end of lesson 8 every student has a copy of the correct answers for the test.  

Those who still find it a complete mystery are encouraged to come and see me after school to sort out the issues.   I will also phone a couple of parents whose youngsters have impressed me during the past 2 weeks at this time.

Obviously, I stagger it at the start of term so that my classes don’t all get to lesson 7 on the same day as this would be a lot of marking and planning in one evening!

My marking system isn’t perfect but I think it works quite well for the students and I feel it is a good use of my marking time. 

Let me know what you intend to do and whether it works!