Introduction
Despite much anticipation of a far better new year, 2021 has started with that déjà vu feeling. In many countries, teachers welcomed pupils in early January but as the COVID 19 virus regained its grip, globally, that situation soon changed. The result is all too familiar, pupils are once again expected to continue their learning on-line, remotely and at home. University learners are similarly affected, with many forced to stay in splendid isolation in partially empty accommodation halls with little space and minimal contact with their peers or family. Leaders at all levels are again facing the prospect of more uncertainty and disruption to learning and teaching.
Studying at home through an on-line environment can be particularly challenging for young people. A recent study found that a quarter of the pupils they surveyed found the new way of learning on-line stressful (Huber and Helm Citation2020). These are brutal times for all learners but particularly those facing critical points in their learning journey. Through no fault of their own, young people, in so many countries, are finding their journey to qualifications, training, careers and employment significantly interrupted.
The toll on young people and the mental stress of such disruption has been well documented. SahlbergFootnote1 has highlighted how the mental health of children is negatively affected by spending hours on their digital devices. Researchers have found ‘a directional association between screen time and poor performance on development screening tests among very young children’ (Madigan et al. Citation2019, 1).
It is also clear that pupils’ response to on-line learning is uneven and variable. Huber and Helm (Citation2020) found that eight per cent of pupils they surveyed did not have a computer, laptop, or tablet to help them with their work at home. While this figure may at first glance appear relatively low, it is often young people in the most deprived areas who are disproportionately hit the hardest. This digital divide is ‘disadvantaging the already disadvantaged’Footnote2 by routinely and systemically withdrawing opportunities to learn from those who are already marginalised and disadvantaged by their socio-economic circumstances (Harris and Jones Citation2020).
Without question, COVID-19 has placed a spotlight on the educational inequities associated with learning on-line. Technological exclusion, however, is far from a new phenomenon. In Citation2008, Glied and Lleras-Muney speculated about the experience of innovation globally proposing that:
improvements in health technologies tend to cause disparities in health across education groups because education enhances the ability to exploit technological advances. The most educated make the best use of this new information and adopt newer technologies first.
Alternative assessments
In the perfect storm created by COVID 19 the leadership solutions are inevitably imperfect. The decision to cancel formal assessments and examinations in many education systems in 2020, including all those in the UK, placed additional burdens and responsibilities upon school leaders and their teachers. For young people anticipating formal examinations in 2020, the reality was as far from normal as it could conceivably be. School leaders and teachers across the UK worked tirelessly to ensure fair, reliable, and evidence-based decisions about individual performance. Considerable time, effort, and resource was devoted to the assessment of pupils’ work.
In all parts of the UK, grades were released to young people in the summer of 2020. In the four jurisdictions, the subsequent intervention of the respective qualification authorities resulted in widespread downgrading.Footnote4 For many young people, the consequences were severe, a University place was lost, a future career was in jeopardy, a second or third choice of University became the only choice. For school leaders and their teachers, all the hard work seemed to be in vain.
Across the UK, young peopleFootnote5 took to the streets to plead for justice and fairness, the net result was a quick succession of political U turnsFootnote6 restoring the original grades based on school/teacher/centre assessments. For many young people, however, this was too little, too late, as many had been forced to make choices based on the lower grades.
Learning forward
Undoubtedly, much can be learned from the experiences of 2020 and the intention here is not to revisit the extensive evidence contained in the many independent reviews, analyses and commentaries that followed the events of last summer in the UK. Instead, in this editorial, as in the many others we have written over the years, the core aim is to consider the consequences for school leaders and to also rehearse some of the implications for researchers and policy makers.
For those leading schools, the burden of assessment in 2021 will once again fall on the shoulders of busy professionals. School leaders and teachers continue to work incredibly long hours to ensure continuity of learning for all students. Through the second wave of this pandemic, the threats to the well-being of young people are more acute, more intense, more debilitating.
As school leaders, in many education systems, once again take on responsibility for the assessment processes leading to qualifications they must be wondering if the same cycle will simply repeat itself. If ultimately, grades will be overturned again at the last moment. The pressure on school leaders and teachers is already significant, it will be essential therefore, that they are reassured that 2021 will not simply be a re-run of 2020. The importance of trusting the profession has never been so important or critical as now.
While the argument that school leaders and teachers cannot be impartial in the assessment of their own pupils is frequently rolled out to undermine school/teacher/centre-based assessments, given a real opportunity without interference, the exact opposite might in fact be true. Teachers assess students every day, they are involved in moderation processes, they mark for exam boards, they engage in subject based associations, networks, and groups. It is entirely possible therefore that teacher/school or centre assessments may prove to be a fairer and more reliable way of allocating grades than a standardisation process driven by an algorithm. Ironically, it has taken a global crisis to test this out and to think differently about alternative assessment route or routes to qualifications.
Implications
The implications for policy makers and researchers are clear. For policy makers, it is time to trust school leaders and teachers and let them get on with the assessment tasks in the coming weeks and months. School leaders also need to be trusted to guide the new assessment processes and to uphold teachers’ judgments on grading in ways that are valid and transparent. For researchers, there is the opportunity to collect evidence about alternative assessment processes that are being employed in different countries right now, and to explore the school leadership practices that support such approaches and enable them to work most effectively.
For school leaders, the responsibility to learners is understandably daunting. The lives and life chances of so many young people rely on sound, reliable school/teacher/centre assessments that give them the grade they truly deserve. Yet, if school leaders and teachers are fully supported and trusted to get this right, the over-reliance on examinations might simply be overturned, not just in times of disruption but ultimately, long term.
Notes
References
- Glied, S., and A. Lleras-Muney. 2008. “Technological Innovation and Inequality in Health.” Demography 45 (3): 741–761.
- Harris, A, and M S Jones. 2020. System Recall: Leading for Equity and Excellence in Education. Corwin.
- Huber, S. G., and C. Helm. 2020. “COVID-19 and Schooling: Evaluation, Assessment and Accountability in Times of Crises—Reacting Quickly to Explore Key Issues for Policy, Practice and Research with the School Barometer.” Education Assessment Evaluation and Accountability 32: 237–270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-020-09322-y.
- Madigan, S., D. Browne, N. Racine, C. Mori, and S. Tough. 2019. “Association Between Screen Time and Children’s Performance on a Developmental Screening Test.” JAMA Pediatrics 173 (3): 244–250.