By Gavin Mackintosh-
Ofqual boss has suggested a traffic light rating system for lost learning of pupils due to the pandemic, given school closures that have taken place during the first and second lockdown.
The Traffic Light in education terms is a fast diagnostic tool that can be used to check how effective students feel they are in applying what they have been taught. Where there are barriers to the learning system of child, an effective school or education system adjusts their finding in an attempt to fill in the gap.
Pupils in a number of UK schools are behind in their expected academic standards, due to having to self isolate due to positive COVID-19 tests that have on occasions seen entire schools close down. The effects to children vary widely. with Ofcom’s chief highlighting that some children who have lost a parent to the deadly coronavirus, or those who have had to look after their siblings because their mother is a key worker.
Concerns have been expressed that many pupils sitting G.C.S.E and A level exams next year could easily be affected by the lost learning caused by the pandemic, especially involving school closures or self isolation of teachers which affects pupil’s learning.
There are also separate concerns from observing analysts that too much weight could be attached to the effect of lost pupil’s time, that pupils become more complacent in the belief they will be awarded ‘fake grades’ to compensate the effects of the pandemic. Ofqual is so far adopting a balanced and fair approach to address the potential. problem.
Under the new scheme, teacher ratings of students’ lost learning could be issued alongside grades next year to help level up the playing field for those who have been worst-hit by the pandemic, Ofqual’s chief has told ministers.
Speaking to the education select committee today, Ofqual’s interim chief regulator Dame Glenys Stacey said the rating system could be a traffic light red-green-amber rating system – but should not be “imported” into a pupil’s grade, nor sit on their qualification certificate.
The British government has revealed measures to make exams more fair next year, including awarding more generous grades as a result of those most affected by the effects of COVID-19. A professional body has been set up to examine this closely.
Stacey said one solution, which Ofqual has suggested to ministers, is for teachers in individual subjects to “make some evaluation of that. It would need to be kept straight forward in order to be doable… [you] might be able to rate that in some way, RAG [red-amber-green] rate it or something”.
RAG ratings are generally used to summarise indicator values, where green usually means ‘favourable’, red ‘unfavourable’ and amber means ‘neutral’.
Stacey added that could “sit alongside a qualification grade: the qualification grade could tell the user what knowledge and understanding on the subject that student had so that grade serves its purpose. Alongside it there could be another measure of differential lost learning.”
She said this should not appear on the grading certificate, though, because some students “wouldn’t want their certificate to reflect that.
“And also there’s a debate to be had about whether that’s simply days lost to school as there will be students who’ve had few days lost, but will have lost a mother to Covid or looking after siblings because their mother is a key worker on shift.,” Stacey added. “There’s a question over whether more qualitative information could be played in some way.”
But she said it was not “appropriate at all to try and compensate for that in the grading results… If we try to import that into the grading it would distort and confuse what the grade is about” because users wouldn’t be able to “know what the student didn’t know”.
“We’re trying to protect the purpose of the qualification and the grade, but also absolutely recognise that more needs to be done to reflect the lost learning of this generation.”
She added this was a “big job” for the expert group set to find a solution, as well as higher and further education providers in “recognising the unique experience that each student is having here, but we do need to protect what an examination and qualification is about”.