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November 3, 2021 - 7:00am
The exams watchdog Ofqual has just announced a new consultation on producing more accessible assessments by removing ‘complex language’ such as sarcasm, idioms, metaphors, homonyms and abstract nouns. The idea is to make questions ‘accessible, clear and plain’ for students who may be disadvantaged by ‘irrelevant features’ in exams, as well as mitigate the ‘psychological impact of difficult questions’ which may ‘demotivate learners.’
No matter the subject, level or exam board, people have always considered ‘today’s exams’ much easier than the ones they did in their youth. However, never before have examiners been so explicit, and so short-sighted, about making exams easier for students.
There may be an argument for ensuring instructions are unambiguous, or for removing questions that rely on unnecessary cultural context and capital. For example in 2019, an AQA German GCSE question asked students to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of a skiing holiday, which some teachers argued unfairly tested their experiences rather than their vocabulary.
However, the idea of removing ‘uncommon words’, ‘negative words’ or ‘figurative language’ is undeniably reductive. Another suggestion is to avoid words that have more than one meaning, such as ‘present’, ‘read’ and ‘sound’. Yet this is also ridiculous: homonyms, homophones and homographs are covered in the primary school curriculum from Year 2 onwards. Understanding sophisticated language, abstract concepts and nuance in tone and meaning is an important marker of intelligence, and should be tested accordingly.
This is far from the only example of the devaluation of the exams system. Just last week Qualifications Wales confirmed that Biology, Chemistry and Physics will no longer be offered as separate GCSE subjects from 2025, and instead will be offered as one integrated science award that will inevitably have less depth. We also already know that grades will be inflated again next year and pupils will be given exam aids, a choice of topics and advance notice of what to revise in certain subjects.
While we need to compensate for Covid disruption, exam boards have found themselves in a situation where the least prepared students continue to get the best grades: this year 44.8% of A-level grades were A* or A (compared with 25.5% in 2019), and 3606 pupils achieved all 9s (the highest grade) at GCSE (compared with 837 in 2019). Students sitting their A-levels next year will have the double bonus of high teacher-assessed GCSE grades in 2020 and more exam inflation in 2022, despite being the most affected cohort of the pandemic.
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SubscribeThere’s already a problem with young people being far too literal. Many believe that words are ‘literally’ violence, that figurative language is the same as a physical attack. Ofqual is making the problem worse. I really fear for the future – we’re creating an idiocracy.
I will be plagiarising the term “idiocracy” – thanks
I didn’t invent it as much as I’d like to claim credit!
The term originates with a satirical film of that name.
Complexity of language allows us to experience complexity of thought. To do the opposite is the very essence of Orwellianism.
Yes, why not go the whole hog and simply teach and assess using Newspeak? Grading would be simpler too as any decent pass would be double plus good,
or texting shorthand ?
“And when memory failed and written records were falsified-when that happened,
the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted,
because there did not exist any standard against which it could be tested.”
–George Orwell “1984”
The Darwin-denying pace of human development continues its amazing upward trajectory lol. In N Ireland, currently, over 50% of all A’ level students received grade As. 50%! In my day, in the ’80s, in NI, it was around 3 – 5%, depending on subject. Have people become ten times more intelligent in a generation?
The rot set in from the early ’90s. About a decade after I left grammar school, I picked up an ex’s younger sister’s French textbook. She was doing her O’ levels. I like French, and leafed through her text book. It obviously was a text book from her junior, pre O’ level years, but I remember being surprised at how simplistic it was compared to what I did in years 1 to 3 at grammar school. Compared to my junior school text books (small text, full-fat, in-yer-face grammatical complexities and no pictures), my friend’s sister’s book read like an airport guide to learning a language – big text, numerous excisions of complexities and lots of pictures.
Imagine my shock when it turned out that the book was not from her easier junior years – it was in fact her O’ level course book!
This wasn’t just a lowering of standards, it was a collapse in standards.
I have a good poker face and moved the conversation on, rather than saying something which would dent anyone’s confidence as they were preparing for exams.
I still remember my shock though.
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From a report in 2010:
The researchers concluded that a grade B in a maths paper from the 2010s was equivalent to an E in the 1960s, but no different from the 1990s. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘”A-level maths is much easier now than it was fifty years ago. It has had to adjust to what the candidates can do. Very few took the exam in the 1960s and they were almost all grammar school pupils. A much wider range now take the exam and the exam has been simplified so that there is an acceptable pass rate.”
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And again:
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“In 1985 around 9% of students obtained ‘A’ grades in their A-level exams. Since then, the percentage has increased every year and in 2010 the result was 27%. Is that because students are working harder and teachers are teaching smarter? Well, I can’t answer that question for every subject, but for physics the answer is an unequivocal ‘No’. I can say this with certainty because the experience has been mournfully recounted to me by many teachers. And this month the anecdotal evidence was confirmed in an interesting paper by Professor Peter Barham published in Physics Education. Since 1975 the entire student intake to the physics course at Bristol University has taken essentially the same Prior Knowledge Test (PKT). Professor Barham published an analysis of these results and I have summarised one aspect of his analysis in the graph at the head of the page. It shows that scores testing prior knowledge of physics have declined by around 25% and are still falling.
Summarising, our national exam structure is reporting continuous improvement, but in reality students can achieve less and less.”
https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/a-level-standards-a-national-disgrace/
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If it’s now OK for plodders to be deemed A-grade; then why not go the whole hog and have a spoof “woke Olympics” so that fat people can also get in among the medals:
– light-sabre hurdles for fat people
– non-contact boxing for delicate types
– cherry-pickers allowed in the pole vault
– equal points for belly flops and bum-first dives in the high diving
(extra marks for big splashes)
– e-bikes and skateboards allowed in the marathon, to “level things up a bit”
Etc
Teaching unions……Its like employing shop lifters as security at Walmart, they have different goals to the ones stated.
There is no point in me saying anything because I would use sarcasm, litotes and even an idiom or two. Makes life boring if you don’t use them.
I confess: I had to look “litotes” up.
Yes, ‘litotes’ is not the most common word used.
‘not the most commonly used word’
Using Google to look up the meaning of litotes was not a little beneficial …
good one.
It wasn’t bad, was it.
We used to determine the grades statistically, with set percentages getting the top grades downward. This makes sense because those being examined are competing against their cohort for jobs, apprenticeships and university places.
Endless grade inflation helps no one and just destroys the whole point of exams in the first place.
But it does help cover up abysmal teaching standards which is really the point
This middle ground of watering down exams may seem well-intentioned,….
Why? It doesn’t seem “well-intentioned” to me; it seems evil.
Let’s think about why these things are happening–even worse in the US–and posit a hypothesis (apologies for big words, complex thoughts [if any], kindly stay with me): is it because that statistically a certain group does better than another group, and therefore this is not “equitable,” meaning yielding an equal outcome?
Yes, my good man (non-woman), I think I’m onto something!
What I dislike about this–again far worse in the US–is that we have a teacher who is, apparently, somewhat sympathetic to the “woke,” but only protests when it gets COMPLETELY crazy (i.e. there aren’t two genders, but more than 100), and accepts and even furthers the smaller points, because she is “well-intentioned.” I suspect that the author of this piece would subscribe to the theory that Yes, there is a problem, and we must find a solution. By defining something as a problem, it sort of calls for a solution. If the “problem” is unequal outcomes, maybe the problem is societal. Maybe some groups work too hard and encourage and revere education too much. This must stop! Seriously, across the pond, many have advocated for the elimination of “gifted and talented” (or whatever is in common use now) programs, because they are “discriminatory.” Is it possible that bad optics has something to do with this–i.e. the kids in these classes do not look like the desired demographic?
I have a problem with tolerating people who accept and even champion wokeness to a point. Examples include Bari Weiss, Kathy Stock, Julie Bindel, Dave Chappelle, Jim Jeffries (though back when he used to be funny, he made some epic points on this topic). They jumped off the woke train only when it threatened to run over them, and are far from shining examples of true freedom. As I have posted on other articles, we, the non-woke, may have a temporary alliance with Bari, and Kathy, and Julie, and Dave and Jim, but they are not with us. They are against us, and let’s not forget this. This is the temporary alliance that French Resistance Fighters forged with the communists to defeat the Nazis, the communist Chinese working with the anti-communists to defeat Japan, but it won’t last.
I suppose it’s ironic–or just plain stupid–that these people, mostly TERFs, were thrown off the woke train because of transgender issues, but it had to be something. Perhaps the next area will be “trans-racial” identities, Rachel Dolezal and others, passing for black or brown. And before I am called out for it, I apologize unreservedly for not using her new name, Nkechinyere, a Nigerian phrase meaning “gift of god,” given to this American woman of Czech background by a Nigerian elder.
Trans-racial is the new trans-gender!
Well you may object, but with my programmers hat on, this is a godsend. Do you have any idea how difficult sarcasms, idioms, metaphors, homonyms and abstract nouns are to model and process in algorithms??
I propose we rename the entire human race to ‘Borg’ (after the unimaginative but unbeatable Swedish tennis metronome of course), and ban by statute all sarcasms, idioms, metaphors, homonyms and abstract nouns from our languages.
You will comply.
Resistance is futile.
There, that wasn’t so difficult to understand was it?
“Do you mind if I call you Bruce ?”
(Sorry – couldn’t help the Python reference)
I first came across the word litotes in the Monty Python sketch of the Pirhana Brothers, which was a send up of the gangster Kray twins. The torture of other villains consisted of the use of ‘sarcasm, dramatic irony, satire, and litotes’.
That’s my kind of counter-quip – thank you.
The critical thing here is context. Is the complexity of the language in a question relevant to the assessment objectives of that question or not? A paper should have some questions with less & others with more complexity according to the target grade being assessed. My observation over a lifetime of teaching is that this is a lot easier in the sciences (my area of expertise) than in the humanities and languages. Also a lot harder in subjects with small entries as fewer teachers to give feedback.
At my college all assignments and course programs have to be ADA (American Disabilities Act) compliant. This means no colored text, no pictures, all documents designed according to ADA standards. This has resulted in teachers removing or reducing content to the bare minimum so as to meet ADA-compliance measuring software. It really is a question of the tail wagging the dog here.
Edit: I should add you can put pictures and complex documents up, but it’s almost impossible to get them 100% compliant which is what my college is aiming for. As a result professors simply don’t bother.
Ofqual, I’m a teacher. This ruling is utterly stupid. Thank goodness I only teach international qualifications.
If exams are dumbed down how can you identify the candidates with the aptitude to pursue that subject in greater depth? If exams are dumbed down the teaching will be dumbed down and there will be no one equipped to pursue that subject in greater depth. What will be the point in having the exam?
if education gets dumbed down maybe you end up with lots of people believing really stupid things err a bit like now really..
This is absolutely right. I teach postgraduate students at Oxford, and it is profoundly depressing to see how poorly many U.K. graduates have been taught to write essays.
It seems to me that this is the fault of the GCSE and A level curricula, which ask candidates to demonstrate specific skills and competences rather than to engage with evidence and to advance confident arguments of their own.
There are also widespread problems of grammar – for example, confusion of genitives and plurals – which get in the way of the sense of the essays. Depressingly, German-origin students in Oxford often seem to perform better in terms of these basic skills than some U.K.-origin students.
It does not help that many students coming from non-Oxbridge universities in the U.K. have had little experience of writing formative essays during their undergraduate courses, and so have received very little feedback to help them get beyond the depressing A-level norm.
The U.K. needs to reconsider the purposes of education- which (in the humanities at least) should be much more about teaching people to assess evidence and argue cogently than about jumping through assessment-obsessed hoops.
The has long been a Campaign for Real Ale. How about a Campaign for Real Education?
I used to know a History postgrad who didn’t know whether the French Revolution happened before or after the American Civil War.
The advantage of reducing examination standards is that it reduces the number of students whose success has been deferred. Meanwhile in the real world I would hope that standards of examination for such occupations as commercial airline pilot, captain of a large passenger ship and those engaged in surgery have been maintained.
English Literature. The woke issue with texts isn’t the only problem. The demands of the courses are already risibly low. Teachers with limited degrees doling out ways to get a grade addressing dumbed down grade criteria. Very little wide reading of whole texts. A Level students often disastrously ignorant of whole areas.
I weep for those who will be ruled by the grossly uninformed. Things are already very bad but it seems the course is being determinedly set for them to get even worse.
Seems like a sensible idea for STEM subjects that aren’t primarily verbal in nature.
The point of exams is to test people on their understanding of the education they have received. To bemoan the standards of examinations, is, perhaps, to misunderstand the problem.