GCSEs and Athletics

Each year British athletes compete at the British Athletics Championships. There are a fixed number of medals available which doesn’t change year on year. Does this mean that British athletics (as a whole) can’t improve year on year? Absolutely not. The issue would be trying to measure the strength of British athletics using the number of medals awarded.

Hopefully, you can see the parallel with the rhetoric around tomorrow’s GCSE results. For most GCSEs tomorrow, the number of different grades is essentially fixed. This isn’t a problem, it’s just a way of setting a standard for the new grades. In following years, the proportions of students at each grade will be similar. Many claim this means we can’t improve or at least show improvement.

Yes and no. We can’t use GCSE results to measure national improvement in the same way counting the number of medals at the British athletics Championships would be a poor way of measuring improvements in athletics.

The problem is with the interpretation not with the awards themselves.

This also doesn’t mean that a particular club can’t measure its own improvement. If they win more golds in 2018 than a 2017 we may assume they have done better and that they would consider this an improvement. But this is just one measure, they may have actually run slower in 2018 than 2017 but this time won a medal. Another club, in contrast, may run faster in 2018 than 2017 but not won a medal.

The important thing is that the number of medals shouldn’t be the only measure used to measure improvement. It doesn’t capture everything you might be interested in. In this same way, a school may achieve better grades in 2019 than 2018, this would represent improvement against their peers but not necessarily absolute improvement over their own previous cohort. (Ofqual do a bit more work to ensure there is some compatibility between years, but that would be for another post).

Again, not very much change over time. National samples aren’t expected to change very much over time so we wouldn’t expect to see huge variations year on year. It is also worth noting that this is why comparable outcomes is viable. Comparable outcomes does not force cohorts to be the same every year. Cohorts are similar year on year so comparable outcomes works.

Secondly, the number of athletes not achieving a medal is also fixed. Is this problem? I think the answer is philosophical, adding more medals or more grades doesn’t actually change the achievement but it may affect how people feel about the achievement. Personally, having marked some of the GCSE physics papers, I don’t have a problem with assigning some of them as a fail but I also wouldn’t have a problem if everyone at the athletics championships was given a medal for participation.

Lastly, does it matter that a medal only represents what you have acheived against your peers in that year? Not really as in most cases when applying for colleges/universities/courses you will be applying against those same peers. You may also be compared against those from recent years before and after, this is why ofqual works to ensure comparability against different years. (As a flippant analogy, would we want everyone who runs 100m faster than 12.2s, the first winning time, to be awarded a gold medal?). What about changes to qualifications? I achieved four As at A-Level (casual brag), in comparison to this year’s cohort who achieved A*’s my results look worse, but A*’s weren’t available when I sat mine. A direct comparison isn’t useful and I would expect employers and universities to know that not claim that it’s 'too complicated’.

So how can we measure improvements in British athletics? International competitions or measures against set criterion; not how many medals are awarded at the British Athletics Championships.

I don’t claim that the current assessment system is perfect (I don’t think there is one) but I think the biggest issue at present are the incorrect interpretations of results. I may sound like a broken record but while people continue to make bogus claims, I’ll continue to point out the facts.

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