What You Can Learn from Your A Level Results

Often the analysis requires comparisons of this year v last year, girls v boys, FSM v non- FSM, my centre v the rest of the country, my centre v similar institutions, actual grade v minimum target grade so on and so on. Depending on the institution this may be a job for middle managers/ HOD’s but regardless of whose job it is, I would always choose to do this myself.

The extra question to ask yourself is:

How accurate were your predicted grades?

(Not the target grade based on GCSE’s but the grade that you thought your students would get.)

I find this comparison to be one of the most telling as no matter what you think will happen, students results always throw up surprises, both positive and negative. The question then becomes why did the differences occur? There can be a number of answers to this question, and identifying which is correct can be really useful learning tool. In the interests of honesty I was disappointed that I only accurately predicted half of my cohort’s grades this year, the rest were either better or worse than I thought. This was obviously disappointing as I always feel that I have a good grasp on student progress, yet the results suggest otherwise.

To my mind the answer lies in one of the following:

1. Student stress on the day.
2. Tough questions covering content from the more obscure parts of the spec.
3. Inaccurate marking (the scramble to recruit teachers to become examiners means that boards are recruiting inexperienced staff and giving bigger allocation to existing examiners meaning the mark scheme may not have been applied correctly, although clearly this can work both ways).
4. The spec not being covered as thoroughly as you first thought so the base knowledge wasn’t there.
5. Exam technique, the students have the knowledge but can’t get it down on paper
6. Grade inflation/deflation throughout the year as a result of inaccurate assessment. Needless to say, it may be combination of all/ some but once you decide what the issues are, you can set about tackling them.

Now to consider each one in turn.

Student stress

I’ll keep this one brief. If you can get your students to do the basics prior to an exam this will help.

• Sleep well- spending all of the night before cramming won’t help, make sure your students know the value of rest
• Eat breakfast- don’t skip the most important meal of the day, well fuelled means well focused
• Drink water- before and during the exam, make sure you stay hydrated.

Tough questions on the paper

Again, tough one to deal with, but can only be helped with good prep. Past papers and feedback are they key here, remember sociology is geared towards showing skills as well as knowledge, so even if the tough questions comes up (like the po-mo question on SCLY 4 this year, or the 10 marker on year 1 paper 1), students need to remember they can still pickup marks through application and analysis/evaluation. If these skills have been well developed through exam prep, even if they do not know the content inside out, all is not lost.

I try to thread practice questions into lessons throughout the year (yes, even from September) and always link your feedback to the assessment objectives. Many tutors try to pre-empt questions by looking at patterns of each topic appearing, although I am unconvinced of the worth of this, especially in light of the new spec meaning potential for new questions. Having said that, if you have cracked it, feel free to share!

Inaccurate marking

If you think this may be the case, get on to your HOD straight away. Re-marks can be requested after results day so if you think a student is hard done by, go into bat for them and persuade your HOD to stump up the cash for a re-mark.

The advice this year was that these should only be requested if there was a gross error. The reforms mean that the days of requesting a re-mark for a student who was 1 mark of an A have gone so don’t waste your time. This years’ A2 were the last cohort of the old spec, so there may be some value in checking the UMS scores for each paper (especially SCLY 4 this year), however this will probably be the last year of doing so.

It is always wise to examine the UMS scores but it may become futile to request re- marks in future. You can also re-call papers to see what marks were awarded where. I very much recommend this, especially on new spec year 1, as it gives a clear picture of how the scheme was applied, which will help for the following year. A selection of top middle and bottom grades is ideal and as long as the students are happy for them to be used, they can be a great learning tool for the following year too.

Students simply don’t know as much as you thought

This is the big one- If you use the enhanced results analysis (or OCR equivalent) effectively, you can see where your cohort were good, bad and ugly. Patterns here can often be explained by the way it was taught. If the majority of the year made the same mistakes, this may be down to you as a teacher. By working this out you know where to tweak the following year. This year I have already learned that my whole year group were better at methods in context than methods (by over 10%), which struck me as strange as I assumed (error) that if they could apply a method to a context they already knew that method, I was wrong so next year I have included additional time for methods in isolation, before tackling the context (fingers crossed). Now AS exams are gone, or going, this means more teaching time and less time lost in term 3 of year 1 to revision and study leave, hooray! Now I am scaling back exam skills (but not completely) in year 1 to finish the spec sooner in year 2 to then re- visit old ground. The fear with new spec is that there is twice as much to remember so at least dividing up the course this way gives as much time as possible to close any knowledge gaps at the end. During these last few weeks these lessons need to be 100% differentiated. i.e. students are working on the topic they feel they most need to improve. This can be identified through a simple self- assessment sheet where they rate themselves on a Likert scale for each topic. Once you know where they need to improve, away you go. I will admit this is a nightmare for prep, as you need resources for just about everything on the spec, however it usually means you can help every student where they need it most, and they can group up to tackle the same topic together.

Exam technique

‘I know what I mean, but I just can’t explain It in writing’. Heard that one lots of times before. Quite frankly the answer is tough luck, until JCQ approve oral A level exams, you need to learn to write essays. This key here is to breakdown paragraph structure and content. The PEEEL strategy is manna from heaven for this, as is the PERVERT for methods. (If that doesn’t mean anything contact me @SESociology). This year there seems to be a focus on 2 things. 1. current affairs, so it will become useful for students to embed references to everyday goings on, linked to the topic, within their paragraphs as well. 2- threaded evaluation- This is quite a sophisticated skill, however the strongest essays will weave their analysis and evaluation into each paragraph which will aid the coherence of the argument. Having marked year 1 exams in the summer, often students show reasonable knowledge but their writing is clunky. If this is an issue question stems can help to get students linking their paragraphs to make their writing more coherent. In addition, it helps if every student builds their own key terms dictionary over the life of the course so they can utilise appropriate language in their essays.

Grade inflation

I often hear teachers saying ‘all year student X was working at a C grade, then turned in an E in the exam’ (must have been nerves- see point 1), or actually they were a D/E grade all year, but the work wasn’t being assessed accurately. I look back to when I started teaching A level and fondly remember not really being sure how to distinguish a C from a D, the reason for this is because a) it is very hard to do so and as a result b) takes lots of practice before you get the measure of a mark scheme. In a big department this can be remedied with blind double marking and standardisation processes, if you are 1 man or woman band, you may not have the luxury, in which case you have 2 choices 1- refer to staff from other institutions to blind mark a small number of scripts, (emphasis here on the small, for obvious reasons) or 2-kiss goodbye to evenings in June by becoming an examiner. If you are new to A level teaching I would avoid examining for at least 2 years, after which point, sign up. The hours are very long, the pay isn’t great, but if you are serious about your students and their success there is nothing as revealing and informative as marking papers for real.

So in summary, your results will have told you a range of different things but my suggested pot of actions to choose from would be: teach students how to start exam day positively. Focus on skills in every lesson. Utilise the enhanced results analysis, remark and recall services effectively and appropriately, allocate additional time in your scheme for areas in need of extra work and tweak the lessons for this topic/ completely differentiate your revision. Break down paragraph structure and content as much as is necessary for each student. Become an examiner. Simple!