If your face fits … continuous assessment
I feel so upset for those kids waiting for their GCSE and A level results by continuous assessment. I think it’s inexcusably wrong and I’m going to say why with lots of personal examples. This may be a rant, or even a whine.
My face never fitted at my grammar school, Bournemouth School for Boys. I hated the place for seven years. Every year I meet for a long tapas lunch followed by a music quiz at my house, with my peers from the third year, and a qualification for being invited is your face not having fitted. Many of them didn’t take A levels in spite of being at one of the most selective schools in the country … it took a lower percentage of boys than almost anywhere else. Partly that’s because Bournemouth Secondary Modern schools all had a GCE stream in those days, so in spite of having grammar schools, it was a semi-comprehensive system. They also had a safety net, in that at age thirteen, at the end of the second year, some kids were switched between secondary modern and grammar school.
In my baby boomer year, there were six classes of thirty. They were streamed, and the school was only interested in the top two streams, the X stream (GCE in four years instead of five) and the L stream (they did Latin for five years to GCE, thus enabling entry to Oxford, Cambridge and London universities in those days). I was usually in #4 of the six classes. Now when you’re taking a tiny percentage of the male eleven year olds, all six streams should have been university material. Some towns put over 20% into grammar schools, many times more than Bournemouth did. I think in general, the school served classes #3 to #6 poorly. Stream #3 did Latin, while #4 did chemistry instead – a choice on your future that you made at age twelve. The upper streams did both (being able to cover the same ground in four lessons a week that we lesser intellects needed five lessons for).
The system also favoured all-rounders. In some subjects, they would place our exam results out of the year … so out of 180 kids. In History and Geography, I’d always be in the top four or five. In sciences I fear I was at the opposite end. I loved physics and chemistry but simply couldn’t do the maths. Algebra and Trigonometry still pass me by,
I was never a prefect, nor held any similar position of responsibility. Nor did Karen, and nor did any of our three kids. I wasn’t even trusted to clean the blackboard. We are all square pegs in the system.
When I was at Hull University, we had a sit in. I was an active and vociferous participant. I just kept quiet about one area … protests about the exam system, which was held by some students to encourage competitive capitalism. Actually, any grading system whatsoever would encourage competition for achievement.
I believe exams favour kids from working class or lower middle-class backgrounds, or rather they help to level the playing field for them. It doesn’t matter if your face doesn’t fit. It doesn’t matter if you have silver studs in your tongue, a strong regional accent or an unusual hairstyle.
Continuous assessment favours kids with clean neatly pressed uniforms, educated parents, books at home, quiet places to do homework, freedom from chores like looking after siblings. In early 60s Bournemouth a ‘nice’ accent rather than an ‘Ampshire accent helped too. (Bournemouth was “moved” from Hampshire to Dorset in 1971)
Our own kids were hugely advantaged in books. As we are professional authors, our kids had access to a large library at home. ‘You’re studying the Vikings? I’ll get a couple of books.’ In languages, I get angry because schools loan books for a year, then take them back in. So in Year Five you only have Book 5 of a linear course, which is probably useless for revision. So we bought the language textbook for each year for our kids to keep.
When my daughter was studying Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for A level, we had old films on video. We taped the TV series, watched it with her and discussed it. We were going to the USA a lot, and she worked out that while teachers knew British “pass note” books backwards, they wouldn’t be acquainted with American pass notes so off she went to Barnes & Noble. She got an A at A level. Years later she confessed she’d never read the book.
There was a girl in her class who was younger but had been pushed ahead. She got an A in every essay. She was the only child of highly educated older parents. Once my daughter had been off sick, and borrowed the girl’s essay to catch up. She showed it to me. I’d rate it as third year undergraduate, upper second or first class degree level. Not a single grammar or spelling error either (unlike third year undergraduates). She was fifteen. Was she a genius? Possibly, but as she had confessed to my daughter, her mother dictated her essays to her or at least discussed the subject and suggested interpretations then corrected grammar. OK, you might say, a good teacher should have spotted that a mile away, and if it had been me teaching the class, I’d have asked the parents to see me, and explained that it was unfair to other kids, highly detrimental to their own daughter’s motivation, as well as preventing her from learning on her own or in feeling any personal pride in her results. I guess her teacher was just relieved to be able to read without convoluted grammar and inventive spelling.
That was years before modern access to Wikipedia, let alone paid essay writers. Of course, continuous assessment also favours kids with good computers and fast broadband at home.
The above are reasons enough why continuous assessment is not fair.
What about If your face fits …
I’ve told this tale before. Our Headmaster (who taught German) was thought to have been an interrogator of German spies in World War II. He was elitist, strict, terrifying.
The head of history is a legend, so much so that a Bournemouth punk band named themselves after him: Jasper Dodds. He was old (probably as old as twenty years younger than I am now), wore an academic gown, dripped snot continuously. His main concern in class was that we sat with straight backs. He would walk along the aisles, and had a great fondness for entwining his hand in our hair and checking the position of our extreme lower spine by hand. In retrospect it’s all highly suspect behaviour and I don’t think he’d last five minutes nowadays without the police turning up and confiscating home computers. He would measure our writing. No upright letters or backward slants were allowed. He insisted on blue-black ink, and the Quink brand.
My dad was a sales rep in the motor industry. He liked a splashy Stephens brand Radiant Blue ink signature and that’s what we had at home. I had an essay torn up in front of me unread when I was seventeen. The offence? Radiant blue ink, used only by the vulgar and common.
‘My dad uses it …’
‘I see. That explains a great deal, Viney.’
He should have been put out to pasture years earlier. He taught from a dusty file of notes from his own university days. The paper was yellowed with age. He wrote on the board and we copied. He was racist. He shared racist insults with many of his colleagues. I won’t repeat them, but any behaviour he disliked was likened to that of people of different ethnicities.
I knew even when I was twelve that Jasper (as we called him) was an inept teacher. Fortunately, I only had him one year out of five GCE years. In our fourth year a younger and very good history teacher did a Churchill exchange with a Mr Haubrich from North Hills High School in Pittsburgh. Mr Haubrich created my love of American history and American literature. He is the reason I did American Studies at university. He was in a different league to our British teachers in every way. When we did the 1848 Revolutions in Europe, he wrote off to the Russian Embassy and issued each of us with a Communist Manifesto- the original source material. He was a staunch Nixon-supporting Republican, I suspect – that wasn’t the point. (And several Bournemouth parents complained to the school). He knew how to teach history and how to encourage opinions.
So I opted for History A level. As Head of History, Jasper would teach the European paper, and Mr Lenton would teach British history. Mr Lenton was a first rate history teacher. Jasper continued just as he had at younger levels … straight backs, no backward slanting writing and only blue-black ink.
Apart from the radiant blue ink, I had a couple of run ins. Hair length … he sent me to the headmaster who told me to go out, get it cut and report back. Then I used to ride a Vespa scooter to school in the Sixth form. He saw us all parking our scooters and was outraged. We weren’t wearing school caps because we were wearing crash helmets. Crash helmets were instantly banned! Not for long. One scooter rider’s dad was a police inspector. His short, extremely sharp interview with the headmaster was reported to us the next day, when crash helmets were also made compulsory. Apparently the headmaster looked as if he were about to have a stroke when told his Head of History was a ‘cretin’ by a uniformed police officer.
Another run in was luminous socks. Then I was caught selling tickets for my teen garage band’s youth club dance. My sixth form suit, which was supposed to be charcoal grey, was a daily offence because it had a very faint stripe. Against the rules. My dad declined to buy another saying it was near enough. It was remarked on in every History lesson for two years.
My face did not fit.
So on to mock A levels. Like this year’s kids, we did mocks in January. The trouble with Mocks is they are marked within the school NOT externally. External markers are absolutely essential. So back then in the winter of 65, I got a pleasing A in British History, and Fail in European History. I took my European History paper to the British History teacher, Mr Lenton, and said I could not understand the grade. He took the paper home and asked to see me the next day. He explained that Mr Dodds was his boss so this was a private conversation which could go no further than my parents. He said the European paper was a clear A grade. He also said it displayed originality, which is why Mr Dodds had failed it. He told me to do exactly the same in my A level exams. I did. I got an A.
So with continuous assessment, plus Mock Exams with internal markers, I would have failed History. No BA … no MA. The exam system gave me an unprejudiced marker (and I thank Mr Lenton to this day).
Karen said much the same. She was at Bournemouth School For Girls, in a very small History group. She was one of the only girls not invited to Sunday tea by the teacher. She got an A in History too, and when she collected the results, her teacher said, ‘So what did you get?’ She really hadn’t even bothered to look.
On the face not fitting, grammar school entry was a combination of exam and head teacher’s recommendation. Karen had arrived from Belfast towards the end of primary school with a strong (almost incomprehensible, she says) Northern Irish accent. Head teacher’s choice. So she started at a secondary modern, and by the time she was thirteen had lost the accent entirely, and after the second year exams, was transferred to grammar school.
I could go on. My daughter’s A level Geography teacher was very good, but was upset that she was the only girl who declined to go on a Geography trip to France. He told me sadly that missing out would impact severely on her Geography A level. Not really. She got an A.
This is turning into a tale of my family’s A grades (sorry). My younger son did Maths, Physics and Chemistry. He changed schools for Sixth Form. He had never played rugby or cricket at his previous school. He just didn’t get on there. After the Mock, his Physics teacher told me it was barely worth him taking the exam. Result? He got three A grades. (A * didn’t exist then).
The thing is, me, plus my children thrive on exams. We’re good at revising fast. We’re good at working under pressure. These are important real life skills.
Opponents of exams will say how much relies on a performance on a single day. You might be ill. I know the feeling, I sat every summer exam with streaming hay fever, and you could take an anti-histamine, but that made you drowsy. People have pointed out that exams could avoid both the hay fever season and the main flu season. A neighbour told us she always wrote to the school on the day of her daughters’ hardest exams to say it was the first day of their periods. For her son, it was starting influenza. Thus people try to manipulate the system.
If you are relying on exams, you must build in a second shot. A single repeat. Doctors, drivers and lawyers can go on re-taking an exam until they eventually pass. For most of the world it is a single event. That can be changed.
Let’s compare universities. I did my BA at Hull, and my MA at East Anglia. They were chalk and cheese. All my teachers at Hull were good on their feet in delivering lectures as well as giving seminars. Professor Geoffrey Moore was adept at finding visiting American literature and history specialists from the USA and luring them up to Hull to give lectures. For me at East Anglia, it was all quiet voices and seminars. I never saw my MA tutor, Malcom Bradbury, give a lecture. Even when I saw him at a literary festival years later he sat with a group of two or three people and had a gentle civilized discussion. I base my own teaching on Hull.
At Hull, we had four Part One exams in the second year. Five Finals in the third year. No continuous assessment.
My friends at East Anglia were mainly third year undergraduates, and I thought the element of continuous assessment caused issues. While there were exams too, every essay counted. Falling asleep in a seminar or being too hungover to attend one counted against you.
At Hull, I could spend most of a term directing a play, knowing that I could catch up on the other subjects later and pick up in the exam. They didn’t have that latitude. They also felt a need to be liked, or at least tolerated, by staff.
Then opponents say an exam relies on having a good memory (in some subjects at least). People will quote the lawyer who was asked about his £200 bill for thirty minutes when all he did was look in a book. ‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘£10 is for looking in the book. £190 is for having the books and knowing which book to look in.” So memory wasn’t important for him. Exam opponents will also say in 2020, why do you need to remember which plays John Webster wrote? Just tap “John Webster” into your phone.’
There’s a way round that too. My MA was by thesis, but I also had to take an exam and it was directed at an assumed academic career and testing research skills. I had to list my special subjects at undergraduate level, as well as a list of the set books in American Literature at Hull. Then Malcolm Bradbury prepared an exam just for me. I was given a list of three (?) topic areas and a small exercise book. I had to choose one topic area and they were all topics I had not studied before. I could make notes in the exercise book, and then I had a supervised four hour written essay exam seven days later … I said it was civilized. I recall I could choose when to stop for fifteen minutes and have a coffee from a thermos. I didn’t. I had to hand in the exercise book with the essay. I chose “The Second World War Novel.” I wish I’d thought in advance that they were all very long books, but never mind, I researched it, stayed up all night and read the books, made the notes (rather than using memory) then wrote the essay … and I had no idea what the precise question would be in advance, and there wasn’t a choice. I’d rate it as a very good test of research skills under pressure.
The above, all of it, is why I feel so strongly about the kids having their A levels and GCSE’s graded by continuous assessment.
I’m not even counting in ambitious teachers wanting to boost their results, nepotism (parents are friends or relatives of the teacher), private schools needing good results to advertise next year, or failing schools trying to hide the depths of their problems. I know some results can be re-assessed on appeal, and that also someone is casting a beady eye on Bash Street Secondary Modern going from an average of four GCSEs last year to seven this year. Let alone Toff College in the home counties finding that most of their A level candidates got A*.
Let’s add (BBC News 7 August):
With exams cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, A-level results on 13 August and GCSE results a week later are being calculated by combining teachers’ estimates for individual pupils with a statistical model based on their school’s past results.
Basically that means that if the evidence suggests a school has been a little too generous in how it thinks if pupils would have performed that school’s results will be adjusted downwards.
Some head teachers had criticised the “narrow” right of appeal that was initially in place. That stated that schools could only challenge the results if there had been a technical error in calculating a particular grade.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green said that system risked “baking in inequality” if results are based on a “computer algorithm” rather than “merit”.
When Scottish pupils received their results on Tuesday, there were warnings of a “deluge” of appeals after 125,000 grades were lowered – a quarter of the total – while only about 9,000 were adjusted up.
And look at this. In Scotland:
The Higher pass rate for pupils from the most deprived backgrounds was reduced by 15.2% points from teacher’s estimates, compared to 6.9 percentage points for the wealthiest pupils.
I see. That looks like Bash Street Secondary 0 Toff College 3 to me. “Adjusting all the results downward” to me is the same as the headmaster saying “If no one owns up to inscribing “Jasper is a c*nt” in the road dust on Mr Dodds’ car – this was an actual incident – the whole year will have one hour’s detention.” So, why should an individual, who might have given a brilliant performance in an exam, be “adjusted downward” with the whole school? Isn’t that like saying “You went to Bash Street Secondary on the council estate. That means you can’t be any good.”
Very interesting, for a BS old boy [1965-1972]! You’ve done well: congratulations! Cheers, Jon.
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Mercifully, my time at Bournemouth School was only from 1962 to 1966 when a move of home took me to Devizes Grammar School which was less than half the size of Bournemouth; it was also co-ed, and the staff, although not without some mild eccentricities, were enthusiastic and effective teachers.
I was never taught by Jasper Dodds, although he did once stand in during a double period which should have been taken by the art teacher, “Nimbo” Neame. Much as one avoids amateur psychology, it’s difficult to view Dodds as anything but a psychotic bully who compensated for his own inadequacy by terrorising adolescent boys.
Other names :-
“Jammy” James, who taught, I think, physics and maths. He threw board-rubbers at boys and was reputed (I never saw this) to chew chalk in fits of temper.
McCabe, a language teacher who played the piano in assembly. He apparently slapped a boy around the head, rendering him unconscious, for which, if I remember correctly, he was suspended from teaching duties for a while.
My own worst experience was with a teacher whose name I’ve forgotten; if not on the PT staff, he certainly took PT classes, chasing boys around the gym with a brass-buckled army webbing belt. As the least athletic of boys, I can testify how much that hurt. When, one Monday morning, the Head announced in assembly that the guy had been killed in a climbing accident, I doubt I was alone in rejoicing.
As an aside, when attending the school I lived on East Avenue in Talbot Woods. Dodds lived in a flat on the other side of the road only 100 yards or so away.
Some time in 1962, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies also rented a flat on East Avenue; what a delicious irony it would be if it were the same house as Dodds’.
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The young PE teacher’s name was Howard (“Howie”) Sellars. He had a reputation as a good rugby player when he came to teach at BS, and we in the rugby teams were looking forward to the prospect of some good coaching. As I recall, he died soon after taking up the appointment (within a year, I think). I clearly remember the Monday morning assembly when the Head (Bennett) announced Sellars’ death in a cliff climbing accident on the Dorset coast. He had just descended to the bottom of the cliff and removed his harness when a freak wave took him. I knew nothing of his sadistic tendencies in PE class, however.
In my day Neame was affectionately known as “Nunky”. Funny how some of the staff nicknames seemed to change with time. I knew the English teacher Mr. Smith as “Smudge”, which apparently morphed to “Lodge” a couple of years after I left the school, according to some accounts on this thread.
Ray Thompson (1957-1964)
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I don’t think I ran across that one. The one who once tied boys to wall bars and beat them with a climbing rope was ‘Paddy’ something and was head PE teacher. I remember a teacher who participated in rugby (though I don’t think he was a PE teacher). He was bullying one small lad who was afraid of the ball, so demonstrated a flying tackle on him and broke the boy’s shoulder – he was a hefty bloke. The next week he was getting his head down demonstrating a scrum, and everyone deliberately collapsed it on him and one “fell”on his head so he couldn’t see, then everyone booted him hard and dispersed. There was a row about that one. I think he was quite badly injured.
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Having lived In Elgin Road, backing on to East Avenue with the railway line between, I’m trying to visualize Mandy Rice-Davies (who I saw in a play years later) with Jasper Dodds. Probably post A-level, or just before. I recall a class with Dodds when he was moaning on as usual about ink colour and slant of letters, and one exasperated lad behind me said clearly and audibly, ‘Oh, just fuck off.’ At Bournemouth School, this would have been a capital offence, probably hanging, drawing and quartering too. Dodds froze for about ten seconds staring at him in disbelief then very rapidly went back to the history bit. No mention, no repercussions. That was indeed a psychopathic bully with his bluff called and he had no idea what to do. I realized in that moment he was far more scared of us than we were of him.
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Having lived in Elgin Road, do you remember a lad called Christopher Riley? His father was, I think, a doctor and drove a two-tone RM series Riley, a car I’ve coveted for about fifty years
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Sorry, no. We lived there in the late 1980s / early 1990s. I too have always wanted a classic Riley!
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