As a maths teacher, former Head of Maths, Director of Studies, Deputy Head and now Headmaster, I have used data every day of my nearly 30 year teaching career. I enjoy nothing more than manipulating externally provided data (!) and have even been known to generate some of my own (much to my colleagues’ delight). Numbers and other data are always my first port of call when faced with problems to be solved. I use data to help me understand patterns in school – be it educational, financial or marketing data, the more numbers for me, the better. Occasionally, in my early days of teaching, I let myself get carried away with academic data and rushed to data driven conclusions which on closer scrutiny made absolutely no sense; I lost sight of the individual student.
Two guiding principles have subsequently served me well wherever I have worked:
- If it doesn’t affect students positively, don’t do it and in particular, don’t waste time talking about it.
- If data produces absurd results when applied to an individual, don’t waste time trying to make it make sense.
Consequently, making individual GCSE predictions on the basis of a test sat aged 11 has never appealed to me, far less any greater extrapolation. Predicting A level outcomes from GCSE results likewise is fraught with difficulty – there is insufficient correlation for meaningful results on an individual basis. That Ofqual sought to award individual students’ A level grades on the basis of historic centre performance really does beggar belief; it was unbelievably crass. Problems at the individual level would have been easy to spot in advance; changes to the algorithm should have been made.
As a school with relatively smaller numbers entered for individual exams, despite a drop of 34% of our teacher assessed grades, there is no doubt that the Dixie Grammar School initially escaped lightly compared to other schools. Whilst downgrading for the Dixie as a whole can be accepted, injustice at individual candidate level is grossly unfair and has been impossible to explain. Rank ordering caused some students to be penalised for the low results of others over the last three years.
In recent times there have been students at the Dixie who we have held on to through disastrous personal circumstances. Other schools might have removed them from entry, but we prioritise care of individuals over the school’s external data. As a direct result, one particular candidate this year was predicted a grade C in Mathematics but this was downgraded to a U, removing any and all chance of university entry for her this year. She secured grades A and B in her other A levels. This was just one example affecting Dixie students – it did feel that in an effort to make the overall statistics work the individual had been totally disregarded.
Typically, the student in question got the bit between her teeth, advertised her appalling treatment at the hands of the algorithm and caught the attention of both BBC and ITV journalists. Not only did she stand up for what was right, but by doing so in front of the national media she represented students up and down the country. We are hugely impressed by her – she is a real example of Dixie Fortitude and the Dixie Difference!
Richard Lynn 18 August 2020
Headmaster @ Dixie Blog 