CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT

It’s exam season once again. 

In schools and universities across the land, students are being coaxed, cajoled and reassured through the doorways of examination halls, for the challenges of SATs, GCSEs, A Levels, Finals… and the rest.  It’s been a busy academic year of preparation, and finishing courses, and revising, and generally psyching ourselves up for the first set of ‘really normal’ exams since the Covid-19 pandemic.  Upper Sixth students, who had centre-determined grades at GCSE and relatively sympathetic grading at AS, have been bewildered by the demands of having to cover entire courses and face the full rigours of formal examinations.  GCSE students, and those sitting a few modules one year early, have been astonished by the pressure, their reactions veering from floods of tears to hysterical laughter, sometimes within moments.  Teachers are stressed out and exhausted, revision classes spilling over into the late afternoon, and Google Classroom notifications sometimes pinging on, late into the night.  We teachers are even losing our sang froid at moments of student recalcitrance – Maths teachers achieve almost unchartable parabolas of fury at students who didn’t bring a protractor or a calculator to their Maths exam; English teachers are left incredulous at just how many GCSE students sidled into their classroom asking, ‘Uh… can I borrow a pen?’ on the morning of the first English paper. 

Exam season will come and go, as it always does.  In another six weeks or so, it will all be a memory, as planes taxi towards ‘end of sixth form’ holidays in Zante, younger pupils head towards summer camps or family holidays, and teachers pack away their mark books and red pens, another year done and those well-earned holidays on the horizon.  

‘It’s all right for you, Miss,’ a GCSE student said to me, a few days ago.  ‘You don’t ever have to do exams again, if you don’t want to.’  And, of course, he’s right… although I did explain that teachers work for, and worry about, exams, alongside our charges.  We lose sleep before results day, before going through every emotion imaginable the next day- exultation, joy, triumph, surprise, disappointment, injustice, let-down, anger, sadness, shock, and so much more.   What I didn’t explain to my student, that day, was just how much teachers are judged on their classes’ results, and schools on their results, overall.  It’s not just Inspectors – although, of course, it is Inspectors too.  Within a school, teachers accrue reputations for ‘getting the grades’ – or not – and a positive reputation, once lost, often through nobody’s fault, is difficult to recover.  League tables and unwritten competition between schools are part of the education climate everywhere, and it’s all too easy to forget that crucial fact, that every grade in a spreadsheet represents not machine-generated data, but the lived experience of a young human being, with all the complications life entails. 

But judgement like this isn’t just for exam season.  We’re all judged every day – all the time – in some kind of ‘Human Life Continuous Assessment’, for which there is no specification, no mark scheme, and no revision guide.   How do we look?  How are our relationships?  Do we have lots of friends?  Is our social life vibrant enough?  Are we just at that point of sufficient, but not irritating intelligence?  Are we well-read, but not reading so much that we’ve missed out on entire TV and box set experiences: to say nothing of social lives?  Are we interesting enough?  Conspicuously compassionate, signing all the right petitions and ‘justgiving’ to all the right, good causes?  Have we left Couch to 5k in the dust, while wearing the right trainers and compression leggings?  What car do we drive- are we in the personalised plates /look how fast I can go brigade or the She’s Electric virtuous elite?  And what about our homes?  Are they big enough? Stylish enough?  Do they smell good enough?  Do we have the right gadgets in the kitchen and the right tv / computer / orangerie / feature wall / built-in barbecue / don’t even start me on the garden……?  What job do we have?  How much are we worth?  Where do we shop, and what do we eat?  Are we taking the latest, modish, supplements, and don’t tell anyone if we still drink Diet Coke when Kombucha is available in a Cola flavour these days….?

The questions rain down like cherry blossom on a brisk, surprisingly cold wind for early May.  The delicately wilting petals of self-doubt get everywhere.  It’ll take a lifetime to rake them up.  And every time you find a stray petal, self-criticism takes hold even more.  The toughest examiners we’ll ever face are ourselves: we all know where we fail, where we’re weak, where we’re unprepared, lacking, dubious.  The reflection is harsh, in exam season light, and every flaw is visible.  ‘Fail better’ is more realistic than feel better, and there’s nothing very feelgood about this kind of examination result…

Exam season continues.  The most important thing on my classroom desk is the list of dates of all my students’ exams.  Four have already been ticked: complete.  So many more challenges lie ahead.  I know that I’ll have sleepless nights of worry ahead of the August results days.  I’ve learned, in time, that falling slightly short can work out fine.  But there’s no denying it: exam season is draining, exhausting, tough: a debilitating tension headache, turned into two months you’ll never forget.

But what’s harder still is the lifetime of continuous assessment, with its unpublished, all-judging mark scheme, the endless league tables of comparison, and no end date to celebrate. Can we ever measure up?  I don’t think I can.  So: I’m lining up my pens, refining all my notes, reading all I can, and preparing myself to fail, even though I’d never dream of failing to prepare. 

Exam seasons come and go.  But in real life, with exam halls just a memory, continuous assessment season never ends.