My Little 2.0 Project

I have yet publish anything about our results, but given it is hot topic in the news, I feel something needs to be said.

2021-2022 we had our first entry into the exam. Only my lower ability groups trialled the 2.0 Lift spec and we had surprisingly good results. 34% of students achieved a Grade 4 or above with two students achieving Grade 6. Far better than I could have anticipated.

2022-2023, all lower ability groups and my top set Grade 3 students sat the paper. I had a 25% rate of lower ability students achieving Grade 4 or above, and 50% with my top set Grade 3 students. Overall, we had a 23% of our Pearson 2.0 students achieving Grade 4 or above. One of my students achieved our first Garde 7 for the qualification. When we compared this to our AQA students (our most able students) the pass rate was impressive, under 2% difference as AQA had a 24.9% pass rate. I had proved that Pearson 2.0 Lift had potential with all ability students.

Given these statistics, it was decided it would be rolled out to all our students.

2023-2024 all students were entered into the Pearson English Language 2.0 Lift. We had great student engagement, which was shown by attendance in the exams. Students came out the exams buzzing as they felt they had done well. Conversely, my daughter came out the first exam crying. She was worried she had let me down because she was not confident with her answers. I obviously reassured her that she could not let me down and that I loved her very much. She left her second happy with her narrative writing, but annoyed that she only found 2 similarities. 

Like all parents of children receiving results, despite knowing she had done her best, I was still restless. Anxiety coursed through me as I waited for the college to release results. I wanted her to get the result she deserved. Minutes slowed to hours as I waited for her to get that all important email. Finally it came through, she had the all magical Grade 4. I was one proud Momma Bear.

My JJ is a massive football fan. I said if she got the 4, she could have the home top. I also said that if she scored 87 or above she could have the away top too. I pulled her score. She had only gone and done it! It cost me a small fortune, but the excitement of her finally passing her English was contagious. We are so proud!

Then it dawned on me, I knew the grade boundaries from the November exam, but 87 should have pushed her into a Grade 5. This was not what we expected.

I turned to my students and the rest of the college and my jubilation faded rapidly. There were some great results, but not as many as our mock results had lead us to believe. The jump of 11 marks had a massive impact on our results. We expected a rise, but not as much as this. Our rate dropped by 10%. It was disappointing.

We offer retakes to students within 10 marks. This year we have more students sitting November retakes than we have had in a while. The only other year we had more, was when all students were able to sit following Covid.

I did have an opportunity to speak to people at Pearson. I comprehend how the grade boundaries were decided. Still I think giving some notice of the procedure would have been useful, as we would have raised our standards again. We had taught to 80 to achieve a Grade 4 moving forward, we need to teach to 90.

I wanted to find a positive from our decreased grade rate. I went back to my daughter and looked at her data. Examiners had marked her mock exam and I noticed her marks had increased by 28 for her actual exam. Fantastic progress! She could not be the only one to make progress like this, so I started looking at our whole cohort. I was right, a great number had made significant progress. 75% of students had increased their marks from the mocks, with 42% increasing by 20 or more. These are great statistics but do not reflect our overall results. However we can show our students that they did make progress.

So what’s the plan? Well we are asking students to get their papers back. We are looking at good responses and what we need to develop to increase to 90. Those doing resits have also had their papers back. Members of our team who mark, are going through scripts and honing in on areas for development.

We don’t want to let students down again. We are compiling interventions and running targeted revision sessions. I’m running some 1-1s and my door is open to anyone who wants extra tuition.

There are those among us who want to switch back to AQA. However we have decided to give 2.0 one more year, then make a call. The college has agreed we can wait until results 2025. I personally think there is merit in 2.0. My students had better engagement and actually understand what is expected of them in the exam.

For me, the past two weeks have been quite a roller coaster ride, with many highs and lows. After the blood, sweat and tears of the past three years, the results did leave a bitter taste. Fortunately I am being pragmatic. I am no longer referring to a Grade 4 as a pass, as anything above a U is a pass. Our students already feel like they are failures. We need to change that attitude, otherwise they will not achieve that all wonderful, door opening Grade 4. There is a plan of action. Next week is the start of new groups. Let’s see where this takes us.