A New Take on Grade Inflation

A report released late last year suggests teachers have a tendency to inflate the grades of female and socio-economically privileged students, to reflect “certain student characteristics” that are unrelated to learning and ability.

The PISA report, based on the results of the international school survey by the same name conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), made the first systematic attempt to examine students’ performance in school jointly with the expectations they had for their own educational future. Out of the 75 countries that took part in the survey, 17 participated in an additional, closer look at the way teachers grade students.

Possibly one of the most crucial findings of the report is thus that even when compared to boys and socio-economically disadvantaged students who performed equally well in internal assessments and showed similar attitudes and behaviors, girls and students from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds are more likely to receive higher grades.

In addition to rewarding performance and the set of behaviors and attitudes PISA measured, the report suggests many teachers also reward other behaviors and attitudes, which girls and advantaged students are more likely to adopt, despite their having no direct relationship to learning.

Examples of these attitudes and behaviors that teachers favor include positive views about student-teacher relationships, and behavior promoting a calm learning environment that allows teachers to “keep things moving.” Teachers may also reward behaviors valued in the labor market and other social environments.

The report goes on to highlight the danger of inequalities in grading practices possibly leading to inequalities in educational expectations—and attainment, and later, labor-market outcomes. It says, “This practice could have far-reaching—and long-lasting— effects for two reasons: students often base their expectations of further education and careers on the results they receive in school; and school systems use these results to guide their selection of students for academically oriented programs and, later, for entry into university.”

The report named disadvantaged boys as the group most likely to be negatively affected by grading practices and their potential impact on their opportunities for social mobility. The conclusions have been used as support for the UK Government’s plans to cut down on teacher-marked coursework and internal assessments in favor of end-of-year tests, thus limiting the potential discrepancies.

Under the Conservative Government’s new proposals, from the 2015 GCSEs (the examinations taken by all 16-year-olds in the UK) will be assessed almost entirely through examinations sat at the end of the two-year course. Currently, GCSE assessments are a mix of internally graded coursework and examinations. Last summer saw girls overtake boys by the widest margin since the GCSEs were introduced in the late 1980s. While 24.8 percent of girls’ examinations were graded A* to A, the figure was a mere 17.6 percent for boys.

Professor Alan Smithers, Director of the Center for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said successive governments had failed to get to grips with the continuing lack of progress made by boys relative to girls, particularly in English.

The PISA report highlights the role that grades play in shaping the expectations of students, parents and teachers; these of course go on to impact performance in, and access to, later education. With this in mind, the report makes several recommendations with regard to grading practices and in order to increase their effectiveness in enhancing learning.

Primarily, it recommends that schools use an integrated assessment and grading policy, which outlines grading practices that are objective and criterion-based, giving teachers clear levels of mastery to base grades on (rather than on performance relative to a student’s peers). Quantitative assessments should also be accompanied by in-depth qualitative evaluations, giving students the tools to help develop the skills in question. The report adds that “school systems should thus promote research that provides a complete picture of the assessments used in their school system, their purpose, and what schools, teachers and students are doing with this information.”

Ms. Broman is an integrative child psychotherapist.

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