When it came time to undertake the results review for one of the classes I taught last year, things looked a little bleak.
Such things don’t really hit me on results day when I’m too busy exulting in students’ success to pay close attention to the data. But the day for data soon comes around when the new term dawns.
By all value-added measures, the students in one class had not done as well as they should have; other comparable students elsewhere in the country apparently outperformed them. A case for the defence would have to be made in the boardroom.
I sliced and diced figures, analysed entry interviews, reviewed initial advice and guidance and trawled pastoral logs. But my eye kept drifting back to my class list names. My argument would have to be data-driven, but my teaching practice is instinctively personalist.
I looked at M’s name. M’s father spent much of the last two years very ill indeed and he succumbed to his condition halfway through her last year on the course.
He was insistent she should not stop studying. But M has younger siblings so she spent much of the last few bereaved months caring for them, supporting her mother and carrying her own crippling sadness too.
Alongside this she had her own congenital health issues. So yes, hers is a grade that was lower than comparable students elsewhere. But how many students elsewhere are comparable?
Then I saw C’s name. C came to our college as a school refuser with no qualifications. Over three years, I nurtured her through the process and gave her a firm foundation.
There were breakdowns, walkouts, givings-up, outbursts and surrenders. Even up to the exams themselves, we didn’t know what would happen.
I stood with C outside every one of the exams she sat for me, encouraging, cajoling, enthusing to get her into the hall. The invigilator even reached the point of meeting me at the door as a kind of handover so C could be escorted to her desk.
But C underperformed against comparable students elsewhere. Again, I’m dubious how many students there are who would even be comparable. Anywhere.
Of all my students in this group – some of whom did exceedingly well comparably – M and C stand out for me because they are my success stories. Their attainment was not necessarily high, but their achievement was enormous.
But no grade is given for tenacity. For overcoming. For dealing with life, with its vast complexities. There are no papers in handling family responsibilities, grief, self-doubt, or fear.
I received emails after the results from both M and C. They have progressed on to their desired destinations and are proud of their success. And I am too.
I turned back to the numbers. When it came to my data-driven deep-dive defence of the grades, I had the idea of stripping out my lowest performers and seeing how the group overall then compared.
Value-added rocketed. But that would mean denying and discounting M and C’s results, explaining them away, excluding them.
The essence of their success was the sheer strength of character that gave them the ability to cling on by the tips of their fingers, and to fight for their own inclusion. I could not bring myself to exclude them now.
So I changed my mind. I took the hit. The responsibility for the results was mine. But privately I know how incomparable M and C both were.
Now I have new students, measured again against their own cohorts to judge their success. I continue to keep an eye out for the incomparable ones.
Keeping some of those new students within the class, urging them over the finishing line and even shepherding them into the exam hall will still be the same, no doubt.
That much, maybe, can be compared. I just wish we could have a new data category for resilience. I know who I would place right at the top of that list.
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