Tasking teachers with accurately predicting student's grades "near impossible"

11 August 2020, 16:34

Tasking teachers with predicting student's grades "a near impossible task"

Studies have shown that teachers predict grades a lot higher than they actually turn out, according to this education expert.

Dr. Jake Anders told Andrew Castle that "teachers tend to over predict the A-Level grades," of their students amid news that Scotland is overturning over 100,000 exam results to be graded by teachers instead.

The associate Professor and Deputy Director of UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities told Andrew that based on his studies, 75% of teacher predictions are over the grade their student goes on to get.

He admitted that even statistical analytics cannot predict much better than teachers, however

"It's a near impossible task that we're asking teachers to do," he warned.

Professor Anders reminded Andrew that we are in fact in unprecedented times, and "it's not the system anyone wanted to be doing," but it is all that can be done at this stage of the pandemic.

The education expert reiterated that there is no easy fix to the situation, telling Andrew that people in less privileged backgrounds are effected more.

Andrew "what's gonna happen on Thursday," as Welsh and English students receive their results. He asked Professor Anders if he could see those results also being "vastly taken down and reinstated again?"

"That is a real risk," he warned. He repeated however that "reinstating the teacher's predictions presents its own problems," but concluded that both methods prove to have issues.