Trivium 21c

In a piece for the TES Bernard Trafford wrote that:

Assessment is linked, of course, to the whole question of reporting. Many parents still love nice, simple effort and attainment grades: they feel they know how their child is getting on. The message that such judgements are both arbitrary and unscientific is only now starting to filter through to them. I hope to see a day when no teacher at the end of November feels obliged (generally an internal, self-generated command) to set every class they teach a test: “otherwise, how can they write their end-of-term reports?

Though I am not sure that attainment and effort grades are entirely arbitrary they are most probably unscientific, though what is meant by ‘unscientific’ is open to a certain amount of interpretation. I take it to mean that the judgement that the teacher makes is rather more subjective than Bernard Trafford would like.

A completely arbitrary effort grade would be drawn out of a hat for each child, most teachers do not do this. They assign a grade through an ‘impression’ they have of what the effort a child might have made. It’s a guess, not arbitrary, but not necessarily accurate. In fact it can’t be accurate as no teacher can ever know the effort a child makes nor how that compares to other children. An attainment grade is also an impression and, though a teacher might have more evidence to base their attainment grade on it is also likely to bear a certain amount of subjectivity in its creation.

Yet, Trafford concedes, parents like them. Why? Well, simplicity is helpful, a report card full of As and 9s for attainment and 1s for effort is better than one that has Fs and 1s for attainment and 9s for effort. This can help, though the 1-9 grades at GCSE offer a certain challenge. If the effort was a top grade and the attainment very low it can also help give a quick impression of how your son or daughter is doing. Low effort, high attainment is a singular problem and could lead to other suggestions around how to challenge a child. So these grades have their uses.

What would you replace them with? Completely objective grades? In some subjects this is unachievable – the arts come to mind, and in others subjectivity will be present in varying degrees, but this might be no bad thing. A subjective grade shows how the child is seen by a certain teacher at a certain time and emphasises that this relationship is important. It puts an onus onto the teacher’s expertise, there should be some expectation that they know what they are doing as a teacher. If they value your child or not could make a difference to the effort being made.

Are written reports a better alternative? Often schools do both, but the day of the ‘honest’ written report is long gone. There are acceptable words and unacceptable words, platitudinous offerings are made and bizarre disconnected targets from word banks might be conjured up, again a pretence of objectivity might be sought but through a most subjective art form. This is certainly no more ‘scientific’ and due to it being a lot more work for a teacher – the information given might be no more or less helpful than the at a glance grades.

A comparative progress grade could be produced, how your child is doing compared to the rest of the class. The effort and the attainment could be put into context by the teacher by mapping out how everyone is doing in the class and assigning the grades accordingly. That this is unscientific could be emphasised on the report card and could be simplified by putting children into four categories for attainment: concern, pass, merit, distinction (rather than focusing the language on the performance of others) and three for effort: below or above expectations and expected. It might be useful to drop the effort grade as it might be too subjective but perhaps information on completion of work might take its place, if a lot of work isn’t completed that might be useful for a parent to know.

The desire to have end of term tests is not, necessarily, helpful. Beginning of term tests seem a much better idea as then the teacher knows more about how knowledge is being retained and can then do something about it, rather than rely on a test that might have been taken over eight weeks ago as a good gauge to where a class is now. The test might also be flawed; much better to give a grade based on a number of insights over a term and/or year.

The assessment that really matters is the day to day commentary that your child gets from her teachers, the report card should be a reflection of those relationships an easy insight into that sometimes difficult to fathom world.

An at a glance subjective graded report card has its place. It is unscientific but not necessarily the worse for that. Lots of parents like them because they are an easy glimpse into something far more complex – the day to day reality of schooling that they often hear about through the day to day reactions or grunts of their child.

If there were real concerns or huge congratulations due to their child one would hope that these would be communicated in other ways by a school at times when parental knowledge and involvement might help and/or be welcome. Again, in both cases not scientific, but, in both cases, welcomely human.

A graded report card as part of the communication between a school and a parent is a help as long as it is not the only communication a parent expects to get.