Snapshot: When national examinations in England were canceled during the Covid-19 pandemic, policy makers were tasked with deciding the fairest way to allocate student grades in their place. This case explores the ethical trade-offs involved in that process and how the ensuing debate between students, teachers, parents, and politicians played out on a national stage. Ultimately, the case asks what current and future ethical assessment and accountability systems could look like, in the UK and beyond.
Case Description: School assessments have different purposes. They give students an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. They facilitate education providers and employers’ choosing candidates. They allow the state to compare teachers and schools. Usually, knowing the specific purpose of an assessment helps us to determine whether that assessment seems fair. But when one assessment has multiple purposes, determining which is the most important can become an ethical quagmire.
This case study documents how the competing purposes of national assessments in England provoked competing ethical and practical considerations for policy when examinations were canceled during Covid-19. For some, ensuring that the grades were not inflated and thus retained their value compared to previous years was of the utmost importance. For others, accounting for differential learning loss between schools and students during periods of school closure was the only just approach. When the consistent value of the grades was prioritized in 2020, the public outcry led to a government u-turn. Yet when schools were given more discretion in 2021, many questioned whether all schools would play fair.
"A Qualified Disaster" grapples with issues surrounding standardized assessment and grade inflation. As a non-fiction case study, it exposes which of the practical and ethical considerations became most prominent in public debate when a sudden change in assessment policy was implemented across England. It may be of interest to school leaders, national policy makers, and those seeking to discuss whether there remains a place for national assessments in public education systems today.
Additional Resources:
- This short video shows an interview with an A Level student who missed their university offer due to the algorithm-assigned grades in 2020.
-
In this article, A Level and GCSE students give their verdict on the grade assignment policy from 2021.
-
In this article, an ex-government education policy advisor explains why they believe that national examinations are an important part of the English education system.
