I'm in Schools Week. This is Why.

I sat outside a pub in Victoria Park on Monday, writing a guide to The Great Gatsby. Jack Dyson, senior reporter at Schools Week emailed me. Did I know JCQ had issued a statement saying:

Please help us make sure students know the limitations of using “predicted” papers they may see on social media. It is important students understand these organisations cannot predict the marks or grades students will receive via their actual awarding body examinations. Effective revision from a range of reliable resources is the best way for students to do well.

What did I think about ‘exam influencers’ making prediction videos? We are teachers, I said, not exam influencers.

We give away free advice that students flock to because their teachers refuse to do the same for them in school.

And what did JCQ think about prediction videos, anyway? Nothing. They make no comment on prediction videos. A media story created by a social media frenzy, fuelled by the oxygen of Twitter. ‘Look-at-me-aren’t-I-marvellous-humble-and-generous’ teachers trying to grow their audience, their book deals, their podcasts by piling on teachers who provide totally free resources to students who then do better in exams.

When JCQ say “Effective revision from a range of reliable resources is the best way for students to do well”, they could easily mean YouTube videos - they are a reliable resource for you to learn more.

So, did I tell Jack to go away, this is a non-story?

No, because this isn’t a non-story. It is a big deal.

Teachers who fail to make predictions for their students are failing their students.

There’s no middle ground - a tiny number of students will revise the whole course. If one school predicts questions, they will get better grades, which means another school will get worse grades.

This is how comparative grading works.

There always have to be about 30% who fail, and there always have to be about 20% who get grades 7 - 9. Them’s the rules. That’s how GCSEs work. We are not allowed to teach better so every student in the country gets a better grade. If we had a magic pill, and every student suddenly became brilliant at English, that would make no difference to results. We would still need 30% to fail, and we would still limit grade 7-9 to about 20%.

What Would Stop Teachers Failing Students?

If teachers sat the 20+ papers their students sat, they wouldn’t bleat about the need to revise thoroughly for every eventuality. If they spent just a week in their students’ shoes, they’d transform what they expect students to do. They would see their jobs very differently.

If they taught English in a way that helped students love books and be brilliant at writing for year 7 to 10, more students might enjoy English. You’ve seen my polls of thousands of students:

By the way, a sample of 1000 people is enough for polling companies to get an accurate view. This comes from 4,400 students. This is massive. The results are shocking. Except, not really.

This is how you know that your lessons are being destroyed by the GCSE exam.

• In year 7, 8 and 9, you only ever write detailed paragraphs, doing lots of language analysis.

• You only read poems in order to write a comparison.

• You only ever write about extracts.

• You never just read the book first, you keep interrupting it with lots more quote analysis.

• You don’t write poems.

• You barely write stories. You have to write lots of descriptions.

• You’ve read fewer than 5 short stories which are 400-800 words long, never mind the 20 that would help you understand how to write really good ones of your own.

• You write persuasively about pointless topics from past exam papers, rather than things which really matter to you.

• You haven’t been taught to use commas, colons and semi-colons with confidence and accuracy.

• You annotate, annotate, annotate.

• Teachers don’t ask you to argue opposing points of view, because they don’t really care about your thoughts, and they don’t want you to learn how to justify your own opinions, not really. Just learn what I tell you.

I could keep writing, but I don’t need to persuade you. Just look at how students opt at A level. A 25% drop in students opting to take English A level in only 10 years. English has dropped from the number 1 choice to number 12.

Year 11 - Learn to Play the Game

The exam is a game. Every game has its rules. Know the rules, know what you can get away with, know the short-cuts, know the simplest tactics to get you the most marks.

Teach what you value in years 7-10, and then prepare for the exams in year 11, and only year 11. Stop preparing students for the GCSE in year 7.

Schools Week

So, yes, I was happy to chat with Jack Dyson.

He quotes me like this:

‘You must make predictions for students’
But Dominic Salles, a YouTuber and former head of English who films his own exam predictions, said pupils “literally can’t revise the whole curriculum”.

“You must make predictions to give your students the best chance.”

In a blog post, Salles said 68 per cent of his viewers “say they went up by at least one grade” from their mocks last year. This was based on an online poll Salles himself ran.

He added “departments which fail to prepare students in this way are failing their students – those marks are simply up for grabs, and exam grades are a zero-sum game.”

I sent him evidence that 66% of my viewers said they wrote better exam answers because they were able to adapt my predictions. But when you are writing an article that says ‘exam influencers’ are causing a huge problem in schools, that kind of stat doesn’t help, does it.

He doesn’t quote the numbers who said they went up by one grade, only that “This was based on an online poll Salles himself ran.” It kind of suggests I might have selected the students to give me an answer I wanted.

Whereas the polls I sent him looked like this:

The evidence that 68% went up one grade comes from here:

These are just viewers who watched my videos. And the big news is how many went up by at least 3 grades - 26%. There isn’t a classroom in the country where this would be true.

Students who are motivated can learn much more than their teachers teach them - it isn’t because teachers are poor - it is because teaching a class of 28 is hard, and students learn at different rates.

But teachers who don’t make predictions are failing - they are letting their students down, because 66% of my viewers wrote better exam answers because of my videos. Imagine if I had them all in a real classroom for 7 hours a fortnight.

Teachers who don’t give their students model essays to every question which could come up are failing - because they are letting their students down. Why should the students have to guess what to revise, and what to write?

Teachers who don’t try to increase the number of students who value English are failing - because they are letting AQA dictate the curriculum, and they have stopped teaching what they value.

And these teachers are failing because they are scared to think differently, to teach differently, to deal with what senior leaders or parents might say. They have given up what they value in return for a quiet life. I understand that. I’ve felt that pressure.

Resist.

Jack also quotes two English teachers - big voices on Twitter, big voices in book deals and CPD. Teachers making money out of teachers’ fears, fuelling anxiety and selling the cures.

How good is their advice? Here’s Amy Forrester:

Amy teaches at Cockermouth School. Their progress 8 is 0.23, respectable. But the English team’s progress 8 is -0.09. So, for every 10 students, 3 of them get a lower grade in English compared to the average of their other subjects.

And English is below national average. Would you take English advice from Amy? I know I wouldn’t.

Jack quotes her like this:

Forrester also viewed a video with her class, breaking down “this is where it’s wrong and this is why it’s bad for advice”. She said secondaries would have to devise whole-school strategies to limit the spread of exam misinformation.

Yes Amy, and maybe they should start with your English team because, you know, Progress 8 is a measure of how your students are doing in their GCSEs.

Talk is cheap. Walk the walk.

↗️ If you would like me to train your English team so that your students enjoy English and make great progress, let me know.