I’m very surprised you, as a teacher, believe you “cannot ...make impartial decisions”. In other words, suspend your feelings about particular pupils in order to ensure grades you are responsible for are fair.
As for the bolder bit, I’m confused. Disadvantaged in what regard? Kids from homes where schooling isn’t considered as important as those from homes where it is? Kids with low attainment because of learning difficulties? And why does “advantaged” seem to mean less likely to make good that advantage in an exam-based assessment, when compared with “disadvantaged”?
On the face of it, you seem to be on Gove’s side, arguing that more exams make grading fairer. If I haven’t misconstrued your post, I most definitely disagree. Pupils from homes that value schooling highly, and are supportive of the school, in my experience always do better than those without that home support - whether in school based assessment, or via public exams.
Trust in teachers is at the very core of a successful state education system. Moreover, one of the biggest bugbears for people who decide teaching is their vocation is the inevitable changes to the system brought about by professional (and inevitably super-ambitious) politicians passing through DES on their way up the greasy pole. To make their mark, they need to implement change - and it’s usually change for changes sake.
Yes, the problem here is that your experience is simply wrong. Anecdote is not the same as evidence. You can disagree, but it doesn’t stop you being wrong.
The evidence is that disadvantaged students do best in exams compared to any other form of assessment.
By disadvantaged, in education we refer to IDACI funding, ie the financial deprivation of an area kids come from. We also look at those who have free schools meals.
Now, deprived kids do indeed do worse in exams that advantaged kids. But that gap is closer than in continuous assessment, non examined assessments or course work. Disadvantaged kids don’t get the support form home to help them in these non examined tasks. They are also more likely to have the “soft skills” to help (a reason why we ought to get rid of university interviews. Disadvantaged kids are also more likely to be harshly by teachers graded than their middle class peers. Boys are also more likely to be graded more harshly than girls.
Teachers are inherently biased in their grading, trust us? Hell yes, but we are human, and these subconscious biases.
Trust us to teach and assess usefully? Absolutely.
Trust us to pluck a grade out of our arses and be free of bias? Absolutely not.
And even without bias, what makes a kid a grade 9? There is no descriptor that says x, y and z is a 9. We can say who our best kid is, our worst kid, and rank them in order, and we can do this pretty well and would be very similar to another colleague in another school. But in terms of plucking a grade out of the air? Well it’s no more than a guess, and one teacher’s guess will be very different to another teacher’s guess in a different school.
And we shouldn’t be plucking a grade out of the air, because we shouldn’t be asking teachers to guess.
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