Can focusing on grades be a barrier to learning? Or is it a motivator?

The impact of assessment, and grading.....is it really a measure of learning? How can we teach without grading?

What a wonderful feeling for a parent once their son or daughter receives the their report - an A or B grade, 90% to 100%?. This provides reassurance that their child is on track in their learning. A feeling of elation.

However, the reality is that many parents will not receive this message as when tested against international benchmarks, and international examinations a large percentage of students to not succeed in examinations.?

In a recent report Sir Martin Taylor, chair of the Royal Society’s Advisory Committee on Mathematical Education, told MPs in the UK that pupils who fail to pass their GCSE are “doomed to this cycle of redoing resits again and again with only about one in four ever getting there”.

In August 2022 it was reported that almost a third of students failed to achieve a standard pass in English and Maths at?GCSE compounding concerns that many pupils in the UK are leaving school without the basics to get on in life.

In an independent study it was reported that "A fifth of all students in England, or around 100,000 pupils each year, do not achieve the grade 4 pass grade in both English language and maths"

“The forgotten fifth of pupils leaving school lacking basic English and maths skills is one of education’s biggest scandals,” Professor Lee Elliot Major, co-author of the research paper, said.

High Stakes

Examinations at 16 and 18 years old still carry high stakes and still they are used to determine a learners future.??

Suddenly, when during the Covid pandemic – exams were cancelled and teachers had to find a way of assessing and provide a grade.? And they did so.

The question up for debate is do single, high-stakes exams constructively and comprehensively measure genuine learning???And what value do they add?

Or are there ways to better determine if students have demonstrated ‘deep’ and meaningful learning???

Still, in 2023 many examination boards expect students to sit two to three hour sit-down, written examinations where students are not allowed to access notes, texts or any sources of information.

Still and invariably this measures how much the student has retained, memorised information and also how able they are, under stress, to recall or even apply factual information.??

Still, evidence suggests that most examinations are narrowly focused, asking students to list, describe, identify or explain.??

Grade boundaries

And more-so, only a certain percentage are actually allowed to get top grades - in 2023, it is more difficult to get a top grade than in 2019!

When teachers assessed their own children, their grades were higher.

Benchmarks

These benchmarks force teachers to - teach to the exam, to get a higher grade. Because they need to play the system for the benefit of their students.

Benchmark examinations in schools do not provide authentic opportunities for genuine creative problem-solving, analytic thought or evaluation of concepts - in a real life situation, although the skills may be used superficially on provided texts, under timed situations which depends on high literacy ability. But it is what is happening at the moment and will continue for the immediate future.

Success in examinations

For many years there is evidence that many students do master the skills of how to pass exams and really do demonstrate a real aptitude for doing so.??

Does this measure real capability and how much of what they memorised for the exam can they be applied to real-world situations??

What is learning all about?

The learning process in schools, is to inspire and give guidance to students about their learning to help them improve.

The role of the teacher is to provide a valuable, relevant learning environment in which students are fully engaged in their learning.?

There is probably not a teacher in the world that would dispute this.

And whatever the method of assessment used to assess learning it should provide students with constructive feedback about their progress and help them improve.

What are your views on using single, high-stakes exams in fulfilling such a role for all learners?

Examinations are summative and do not provide learners the chance to improve, or learn from their mistakes unless of course schools use the examination process to as a true part of the teaching and learning process intertwined with formative learning. ??

This issue is that exam boards, do not return examination papers so summative really means summative.

Forty-eight per cent of US teachers say the grades they give reflect effort more than achievement (Hubbard, 2019).

But even if awarded solely for achievement, grades are poor indicators of where students are in their long-term learning progress.

This is because grades are always specific to a particular piece of work or a particular course of learning.??

They identify students as successfully demonstrating expected learning, and often measured against students demonstrating more than others.?

For the vast majority of students, grades indicate a level of success on year-level learning expectations, leaving parents to infer that their children are on track and ready for the next year’s curriculum.??

So parents are provided with the impression is that everything is fine, and they need to do anything differently.

• The problem is that learning is not like this.
• It is a continuous, ongoing process.

Grades are based on an assumption that students make a fresh start in their learning every year – that all commence on an equal footing and that the grades they receive reflect only their efforts and achievements during that particular year.??

Personalising learning

As teachers and educators we all know that students begin each year at widely different start points which strongly influence the grades they receive.

And unless personalised, the year’s curriculum may be unrelated to the? previous year’s curriculum.??

So imagine a scenario where students understand what they can do and provide you with the evidence that despite the years curriculum ahead, they already have mastery of it.

Or indeed a personalised curriculum based on authentic evidence of learning where students demonstrate readiness for what they will learn next.?

Indeed imagine a visible learning journey - a curriculum in student language - so visible that parents can see and really appreciate the progress their child is making in an area of learning becoming effective partners in their child’s learning, and even providing stretch challenges connected to real life?

But exams prevent cheating!

One argument is that perhaps exams prevent plagiarism, working together, communication – cheating.

But is it really cheating when a student tries to improve by asking others. Or asking AI to improve their understanding?

Is this not collaboration, thinking out of the box?

Examination papers given in advance?

There have been developments in recent years, particularly in the arts, where students are given exam questions and being asked to provide a portfolio of evidence.

However, even in these cases, they are provided with a time restraint, and very fixed criteria, often stifling creativity, rather than support to research sources and provide a more comprehensive response which is graded according to learner talents.?

Can one teach without grades??

The transition to teaching without grades is no small task, as it requires rejecting an established model that has dominated education since its inception.

Most teachers are bound by long-standing policy and depend on grades.?

Students still have the mindset that grades demonstrate learning because their teachers tell them this.

Parents operate under this same delusion, and they struggle to comprehend a class that is not graded.

Colleges and universities still expect grades for admissions even though the profession agrees helping students grow to value learning for the sake of learning is more important than a grade.??

Some teachers are beginning to use digital portfolio tools, collecting student evidence of learning however much of their enthusiasm disappears when there is a demand for grading.??

The paradigm of removing grading needs to be based on clear objectives and visible evidence.???

“I hope none of you ever goes to a professional learning session to learn about another app, another resource, another teaching method. I could not care less about how you teach! I care about the impact of your teaching and about how you think about your teaching.?"

Watch the video to find out how John Hattie and his team help teachers to use the evidence in their schools.?

There is an argument perhaps that students are motivated to work for grades, but in reality, most are motivated by fear of a bad grade.

If they receive a low mark, their parents will punish them, or they won’t be allowed to play in football, or they might not be admitted ideal university.??

In reality when students are curious about a new concept or skill, and when they see activities as enjoyable, they’ll always participate.

The mindset at the moment, is unless I get a good grade, I will not do it.?

Moving away from traditional grades, assessment becomes different.???

Benefits

• You’ll begin to converse with students about their strategies, their successes and their failures.
• You develop write meaningful narrative feedback.
• Observation,?inspiration, critical thinking and feedback take up the bulk of teachers’ time.
• Students will start to use creativity, videos and audios to personal learning portfolio.
• Students will start to record their own work and collaboration, too, and add it to their individual portfolios.
• Students will have the ability to ‘grade themselves’.
• In a successful no-grades classroom, they become the best judges of their learning.

In fact, you’ll find that learners are typically much tougher critics of their own learning than teachers against learning objectives.

What no grades?

One of the most hotly debated questions in education is the role of grades and the fear of how do teachers effectively assess student learning, and how do schools gauge progress in fair and adequate ways???

Research has shown that grading is a solid predictor of student-success outcomes, but it is not always an accurate representation of what students actually know.

Though educators have played with alternative forms of assessment for decades, schools, individual teachers, students often focus on earning a good grade at the expense of learning.

Competency-based learning, for which students earn credit for mastering learning at their own speed, has also been gaining ground.??

No grades movement

The goal of the no-grades movement is to steer students away from passive learning and into a more active role in their schooling.

The focus is on the learning process rather than the score, the pressure of performance replaced by an environment where students feel free to make mistakes, continuously self-evaluate, and develop deeper understanding.

It also champions increased parent involvement and teacher feedback.

Way forward

The answer for the best route to assessment is not easy. But the paradigm can change in the classroom....

As more schools and teachers think about assessment in broader terms, there’s clear recognition that test scales used to measure learning? are not the only way, or perhaps the best, to measure what students know.?

We can, in the classroom, lead by inspiring real learning and authentic evidence rather than using the exam as a threat ... to force learning.

I would be keen to hear your views or success stories.

Thanks for sharing the following inspirational TEDTalk - why the system fails a lot of our children.

Dr. Tassos Anastasiades